Some of the plants \u2060that make familiar landscapes recognizable may not survive by century\u2019s end as climate change becomes an increasingly important driver of species loss, according to scientists, reshaping and often shrinking suitable habitats that the plants need to survive.<\/p>\n
Researchers modeled future ranges for numerous species of vascular plants, a category that accounts for almost all the world\u2019s plants \u2014 those with water- and nutrient-carrying tissues. They looked at more than 67,000 species, meaning about 18% of the world\u2019s known vascular plants.<\/p>\n
They \u200bfound that 7% to 16% could lose more than 90% of their range, placing them at high risk of extinction. Examples include Catalina \u200cironwood, or \u200cisland ironwood, a rare endemic California tree, bluish spike-moss from a plant lineage dating back more than 400 million \u200byears, and roughly one third of Eucalyptus species, one of Australia\u2019s most recognizable plant groups.<\/p>\n
The researchers came to their estimates after examining millions of records on plant locations as well as greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios for 2081-2100.<\/p>\n
A plant\u2019s habitat is not simply a place on a map, but \u2060the full array of conditions it needs: temperature, rainfall, soils, land use and landscape features such as shade.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne way to picture this is to imagine plants trying \u2060to follow a moving \u2019climate envelope.\u2019 As temperatures warm, many species can shift northward or uphill to stay cool enough. But temperature is only part of the story,\u201d Junna Wang, a Yale University postdoctoral researcher, and Xiaoli Dong, a professor of environmental science and \u200bpolicy at the University of California, Davis, said in \u2060joint comments.. Wang and Dong helped lead the study published in the journal Science.<\/p>\n
In many places, the study indicated, climate change is shrinking these combinations, leaving fewer areas where all the conditions that a species \u2060needs still exist together.<\/p>\n
For plants, \u200bmovement, or dispersal, usually happens across generations, via seeds or spores carried by wind, water, \u200banimals or gravity. Yet when the researchers compared realistic movement with a scenario in which plants could reach any newly suitable habitat, \u200bextinction rates were \u200cvery similar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf slow movement were the main problem, then allowing unlimited dispersal should dramatically reduce extinction risk. But that is not what we found,\u201d Wang and Dong said.<\/p>\n
That matters for conservation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf dispersal limitation were the main driver, then strategies like assisted migration \u2014 physically helping species move to new areas \u2014 could solve much of the problem. But if climate change is reducing the amount of suitable habitat overall, \u200cthen simply helping species move may not be enough,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n
The projected impacts vary by region. Cold-adapted plants in the Arctic may lose habitat as extreme cold climates shrink. Dry regions, including parts of the western United States and Mediterranean-climate regions, face risk from stronger drought, lower soil moisture and more frequent wildfires. In southern and eastern coastal Australia, coastlines may limit poleward shifts.<\/p>\n
At the same time, local plant diversity could rise across about 28% of Earth\u2019s land surface as \u200bspecies \u200bmove into newly suitable areas, including parts of the tropics and subtropics where increased rainfall \u2014 rather than temperature \u200balone \u2014 could make conditions suitable for additional species, the researchers found.<\/p>\n
They described this as a global reshuffling, with some species disappearing from parts of their historical range \u2060while others move into new areas, but said local gains do not mean plants are doing better overall.<\/p>\n
These shifts could also create \u201cnovel communities\u201d \u2014 combinations of plants that have not historically lived together but would begin encountering one another for the first time. How would these interactions play out? The researchers said they do not know.<\/p>\n
Plants underpin most terrestrial ecosystems. They store carbon, stabilize soils, support wildlife and provide food, timber, \u200bmedicines and other materials. So changes in plant diversity can have cascading effects on nature and people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf climate change reduces vegetation cover, ecosystems may absorb less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which can further intensify warming. That creates a feedback loop in which climate change harms plants, and reduced plant cover\/productivity in turn worsens climate change,\u201d Wang and Dong said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, protecting plant diversity is not only about conserving nature for its own sake \u2014 it is also about maintaining the ecological systems that support human societies,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the plants \u2060that make familiar landscapes recognizable may not survive by century\u2019s end as climate change…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21950,2574,4849,8,33],"class_list":["post-27794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-biodiversity","tag-climate-change","tag-emissions","tag-japan","tag-nihon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}