Bioacoustics Monitoring Contributes to an Understanding of Climate Essay

Bioacoustics Monitoring Contributes to an Understanding of Climate Change - Essay Example The high levels of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) yielded from the continuous combustion of fossil fuels is considered one of the major impacts of climate change on ocean acidification. This huge change contributes to diminishing the absorption of sound. Since half of the total percentage of CO2 caused by the consumption is absorbed by oceans, the percentage of acid in the ocean has increased causing the pH level of oceans to drop (Orr et al., 2005). According to the authors, the diminishing of sound absorption has impact on underwater animals’ behavior and will lead to some of these animals adapting new behaviors. However, these adjustments can be harmful to some and beneficial to others. According to the others, the reduction of sound absorption leads to sound travelling longer distances, which can result to a noisy environment for underwater species. This can lead to the extinction of some species which cannot obtain food in the noisy environment. Also, marine animals such as wheels will have to adjust their frequency, take more time and use more sound to communicate with each other. On the other hand, it would be beneficial for wheel to maintain communication with each other in further distance since sound travels faster and further. However, other studies disagree that the increasing in ocean acidification will cause measurable changes in underwater animals’ behaviors, claiming that these studies need to be tested. Unlike oceans, the impact of climate change on freshwater cannot be easily predicated for many reasons. One of these reason is that fishes in freshwater are ectotherms. Hence, the effect of climate change can vary between species. Another reason according to Hobday and Lough is that freshwater systems, unlike oceans, do not follow under the Global Climate Models because of their small sizes. Animals have established ways of