This week’s discussion will focus on extinctions. What are some of the factors that lead to species’ extinctions and what is the evidence that humans are causing a sixth extinction at a rate 1000 times the background extinction rate?

For this discussion, I would like for you to find recent (no more than 10 years old) peer-reviewed scientific articles that address the ways in which human activity is causing the extinction levels to rise far above the background extinction rate. Please include the full citation for the your and DOI (if available) and a short summary of the article that explains how human activities are causing extinction rates to skyrocket.

Please remember you must be a paper that has science in it: facts, data, and an analysis of that data. No opinion articles. No books. No articles from Economics journals, History journals, etc. Just scientific articles from scientific journals. If you need help please email me or contact a reference librarian at Mardigian Library.

And please read through all the entries before submitting yours, so that you pick a novel scientific article that has not yet been discussed!