French islands under threat from rising sea levels
By the year 2100, global warming will have caused sea levels to rise by 1 to 3 meters. This will strongly affect islands, their flora, fauna and inhabitants. A team of researchers from the Ecologie, systématique et évolution (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud) laboratory studied the impact of rising sea levels on 1,269 French islands throughout the world. Their model shows that between 5% and 12% of these islands could be totally submerged in the future. On a worldwide scale, they predict that about 300 endemic island species are at risk of extinction, while the habitat of thousands of others will be drastically reduced. This research has been published in the journals Global Ecology and Biogeography (August 2013) and Nature Conservation (September 2013).