Exhibition+Antarctica+with+Alex+Rothburg

Maya Lin 3B

The speaker at this Teen Science Cafe was Alex Rothburg, an Ichthyologist, who had the chance to go to Antarctica to study fish and other wildlife species in the sanctuary that is the the Scotia Arc, located on Antarctica’s remote, northernmost islands. After an educational game of bingo illustrating factors for extinction among these species, Rothburg shared some stories of his trip and then lectured about how climate change and global warming has affected the ecosystem its fragile food chains. The result of global warming on this ecosystem is the migration of invasive species, which then continues to damage the food webs previously sheltered by the cold temperatures, ultimately leading to species decline and extinction.

Global warming has become a problem that is harming our environment more than ever before, and the effects of it are worsening at faster and faster rates. Not only will the climates and weather patterns change, but countless ecosystems and species will be at risk like the ones examined by Rothburg in Antarctica. This presentation put into perspective the reality of global warming and gave the audience a chance to hear of these potential effects as our ice caps begin to break off and melt away along with the destruction of valuable species and the biodiversity of our planet as a whole. As stated before in previous units of AP Environmental Science, maintaining a stable balance between predator-prey relationships is important for maintaining ecosystems and species diversity; this presentation emphasized this by showing the effects of imbalance in the food chains by giving real world examples and a closer look at how our world is at stake if we continue to allow this type of negative feedback loop to continue.

