Please respond in a 100 words to the below student discussion post.
As I sit here typing my response to this question, the morning news is playing in the background. Two chief meteorologists are talking about the lack of rain in California for 2022. Today marks day 54, breaking the previous record for consecutive days without rain for a new year.
California’s lack of adequate rain for more than a decade has had a devastating effect on other ecosystem functions. Precipitation is one of the most significant abiotic components of any ecosystem. Water is essential to life. It makes up over one-half of a typical mammal’s body weight, and no organism can survive without it (Friedland & Relyea, 2016, p. 55).
Successively dryer than average rain seasons in California over the past decade has not only contributed to near baren reservoirs throughout the state it has also contributed to dryer conditions on land. Add to this increased temperatures during the hottest summer months, and the state of California has seen some unbelievably devastating wildland fires ravage the golden state. For example, the Camp Fire of 2018, which annihilated the small town of Paradise, CA, destroyed more than 11,000 homes and claimed the lives of 85 people. The Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California history.