Biology:Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity

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Alpine plants are one group expected to be highly susceptible to the impacts of climate change (alpine flora at Logan Pass, Glacier National Park, in Montana, United States).

Changes in long term environmental conditions that can be collectively coined climate change are known to have had enormous impacts on current plant biodiversity patterns; further impacts are expected in the future.[1] Environmental conditions play a key role in defining the function and geographic distributions of plants, in combination with other factors, thereby modifying patterns of biodiversity.[2] It is predicted that climate change will remain one of the major drivers of biodiversity patterns in the future.[3][4] Climate change is thought to be one of several factors causing biodiversity loss (human-triggered mass extinction), which is changing the distribution and abundance of many plants.[5]

Predicting the effects that climate change will have on plant biodiversity can be achieved using various models, however bioclimatic models are most commonly used.[6][7]

Direct impacts

Changing climatic variables relevant to the function and distribution of plants include increasing CO
2 concentrations (see CO2 fertilization effect), increasing global temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and changes in the pattern of 'extreme weather events such as cyclones, fires or storms.

Because individual plants and therefore species can only function physiologically, and successfully complete their life cycles under specific environmental conditions (ideally within a subset of these), changes to climate are likely to have significant impacts on plants from the level of the individual right through to the level of the ecosystem or biome.

Effects of temperature

One common hypothesis among scientists is that the warmer an area is, the higher the plant diversity. This hypothesis can be observed in nature, where higher plant biodiversity is often located at certain latitudes (which often correlates with a specific climate/temperature).[8] Plant species in montane and snowy ecosystems are at greater risk for habitat loss due to climate change.[9] The effects of climate change are predicted to be more severe in mountains of northern latitude.[9]

Changes in distributions

Pine tree representing an elevational tree-limit rise of 105 m over the period 1915–1974. Nipfjället, Sweden

If climatic factors such as temperature and precipitation change in a region beyond the tolerance of a species phenotypic plasticity, then distribution changes of the species may be inevitable.[10] There is already evidence that plant species are shifting their ranges in altitude and latitude as a response to changing regional climates.[11][12] Yet it is difficult to predict how species ranges will change in response to climate and separate these changes from all the other man-made environmental changes such as eutrophication, acid rain and habitat destruction.[13][14][15]

When compared to the reported past migration rates of plant species, the rapid pace of current change has the potential to not only alter species distributions, but also render many species as unable to follow the climate to which they are adapted.[16] The environmental conditions required by some species, such as those in alpine regions may disappear altogether. The result of these changes is likely to be a rapid increase in extinction risk.[17] Adaptation to new conditions may also be of great importance in the response of plants.[18]

Predicting the extinction risk of plant species is not easy however. Estimations from particular periods of rapid climatic change in the past have shown relatively little species extinction in some regions, for example.[19] Knowledge of how species may adapt or persist in the face of rapid change is still relatively limited.

It is clear now that the loss of some species will be very dangerous for humans because they will stop providing services. Some of them have unique characteristics that cannot be replaced by any other.[20]

Distributions of species and plant species will narrow following the effects of climate change.[9] Climate change can affect areas such as wintering and breeding grounds to birds. Migratory birds use wintering and breeding grounds as a place to feed and recharge after migrating for long hours. If these areas are damaged due to climate change, it will eventually affect them as well.[21]

Lowland forest have gotten smaller during the last glacial period and those small areas became island which are made up of drought resisting plants. In those small refugee areas there are also a lot of shade dependent plants.[20] As an example, the dynamics of the calcareous grassland were significantly impacted due to the climate factors.[22]

Changes in the suitability of a habitat for a species drive distributional changes by not only changing the area that a species can physiologically tolerate, but how effectively it can compete with other plants within this area. Changes in community composition are therefore also an expected product of climate change.

Changes in life-cycles

The timing of phenological events such as flowering are often related to environmental variables such as temperature. Changing environments are therefore expected to lead to changes in life cycle events, and these have been recorded for many species of plants.[11] These changes have the potential to lead to the asynchrony between species, or to change competition between plants. Both the insect pollinators and plant populations will eventually become extinct due to the uneven and confusing connection that is caused by the change of climate.[23] Flowering times in British plants for example have changed, leading to annual plants flowering earlier than perennials, and insect pollinated plants flowering earlier than wind pollinated plants; with potential ecological consequences.[24] A recently published study has used data recorded by the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau to confirm effects of climate change on the phenology of some species in the area of Concord, Massachusetts .[25] Another life-cycle change is warmer winter which can be leads to summer rainfall or summer drought.[22]

Indirect impacts

All species are likely to be directly impacted by the changes in environmental conditions discussed above, and also indirectly through their interactions with other species. While direct impacts may be easier to predict and conceptualise, it is likely that indirect impacts are equally important in determining the response of plants to climate change.[26][27] A species whose distribution changes as a direct result of climate change may invade the range of another species or be invaded, for example, introducing a new competitive relationship or altering other processes such as carbon sequestration.[28]

The range of a symbiotic fungi associated with plant roots (i.e., mycorrhizae)[29] may directly change as a result of altered climate, resulting in a change in the plant's distribution.[30]

Challenges of modeling future impacts

Predicting the effects that climate change will have on plant biodiversity can be achieved using various models, however bioclimatic models are most commonly used.[6][7]

Accurate predictions of the future impacts of climate change on plant diversity are critical to the development of conservation strategies. These predictions have come largely from bioinformatic strategies, involving modeling individual species, groups of species such as 'functional types', communities, ecosystems or biomes. They can also involve modeling species observed environmental niches, or observed physiological processes. The velocity of climate change can also be involved in modelling future impacts as well.[31]

Although useful, modeling has many limitations. Firstly, there is uncertainty about the future levels of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change [32] and considerable uncertainty in modeling how this will affect other aspects of climate such as local rainfall or temperatures. For most species the importance of specific climatic variables in defining distribution (e.g. minimum rainfall or maximum temperature) is unknown. It is also difficult to know which aspects of a particular climatic variable are most biologically relevant, such as average vs. maximum or minimum temperatures. Ecological processes such as interactions between species and dispersal rates and distances are also inherently complex, further complicating predictions.

Improvement of models is an active area of research, with new models attempting to take factors such as life-history traits of species or processes such as migration into account when predicting distribution changes; though possible trade-offs between regional accuracy and generality are recognised.[33]

Climate change is also predicted to interact with other drivers of biodiversity change such as habitat destruction and fragmentation, or the introduction of foreign species. These threats may possibly act in synergy to increase extinction risk from that seen in periods of rapid climate change in the past.[34]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Sahney, S.; Benton, M.J.; Falcon-Lang, H.J. (2010). "Rainforest collapse triggered Pennsylvanian tetrapod diversification in Euramerica". Geology 38 (12): 1079–1082. doi:10.1130/G31182.1. 
  2. ↑ FITZPATRICK, MATTHEW C.; GOVE, AARON D.; SANDERS, NATHAN J.; DUNN, ROBERT R. (2008-02-07). "Climate change, plant migration, and range collapse in a global biodiversity hotspot: the Banksia (Proteaceae) of Western Australia". Global Change Biology 14 (6): 1337–1352. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01559.x. ISSN 1354-1013. Bibcode: 2008GCBio..14.1337F. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01559.x. 
  3. ↑ "Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100". Science 287 (5459): 1770–4. March 2000. doi:10.1126/science.287.5459.1770. PMID 10710299. 
  4. ↑ Duraiappah, Anantha K. (2006). Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems And Human-well Being—biodiversity Synthesis. Washington, D.C: World Resources Institute. ISBN 978-1-56973-588-6. http://www.millenniumassessment.org/. 
  5. ↑ Chapin III, F. Stuart; Zavaleta, Erika S.; Eviner, Valerie T.; Naylor, Rosamond L.; Vitousek, Peter M.; Reynolds, Heather L.; Hooper, David U.; Lavorel, Sandra et al. (May 2000). "Consequences of changing biodiversity". Nature 405 (6783): 234–242. doi:10.1038/35012241. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 10821284. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Garcia, Raquel A.; Cabeza, Mar; Rahbek, Carsten; Araújo, Miguel B. (2014-05-02). "Multiple Dimensions of Climate Change and Their Implications for Biodiversity". Science 344 (6183). doi:10.1126/science.1247579. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 24786084. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1247579. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Sönmez, Osman; Saud, Shah; Wang, Depeng; Wu, Chao; Adnan, Muhammad; Turan, Veysel (2021-04-27). Climate Change and Plants. CRC Press. doi:10.1201/9781003108931. ISBN 978-1-003-10893-1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1201/9781003108931. 
  8. ↑ Clarke, Andrew; Gaston, Kevin (2006). "Climate, energy and diversity". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273 (1599): 2257–2266. doi:10.1098/rspb.2006.3545. PMID 16928626. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Applequist, Wendy L.; Brinckmann, Josef A.; Cunningham, Anthony B.; Hart, Robbie E.; Heinrich, Michael; Katerere, David R.; Andel, Tinde van (January 2020). "Scientistsʼ Warning on Climate Change and Medicinal Plants" (in en). Planta Medica 86 (1): 10–18. doi:10.1055/a-1041-3406. ISSN 0032-0943. PMID 31731314. 
  10. ↑ Lynch M.; Lande R. (1993). "Evolution and extinction in response to environmental change". Biotic Interactions and Global Change. Sunderland, Mass: Sinauer Associates. pp. 234–50. ISBN 978-0-87893-430-0. https://archive.org/details/bioticinteractio0000unse_w9x4/page/234. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems". Nature 421 (6918): 37–42. January 2003. doi:10.1038/nature01286. PMID 12511946. Bibcode: 2003Natur.421...37P. 
  12. ↑ "Ecological responses to recent climate change". Nature 416 (6879): 389–95. March 2002. doi:10.1038/416389a. PMID 11919621. Bibcode: 2002Natur.416..389W. 
  13. ↑ "Going against the flow: potential mechanisms for unexpected downslope range shifts in a warming climate". Ecography 33 (2): 295–303. 2010. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0587.2010.06279.x. 
  14. ↑ Groom, Q. (2012). "Some poleward movement of British native vascular plants is occurring, but the fingerprint of climate change is not evident". PeerJ 1 (e77): e77. doi:10.7717/peerj.77. PMID 23734340. 
  15. ↑ "Historical changes in the distributions of invasive and endemic marine invertebrates are contrary to global warming predictions: the effects of decadal climate oscillations". Journal of Biogeography 37 (3): 423–431. 2010. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02218.x. 
  16. ↑ "Range shifts and adaptive responses to Quaternary climate change". Science 292 (5517): 673–9. April 2001. doi:10.1126/science.292.5517.673. PMID 11326089. Bibcode: 2001Sci...292..673D. 
  17. ↑ "Extinction risk from climate change". Nature 427 (6970): 145–8. January 2004. doi:10.1038/nature02121. PMID 14712274. Bibcode: 2004Natur.427..145T. https://pure.qub.ac.uk/ws/files/733227/Thomas&Cameron_Extinctions_Cover&Article_Nature_2004.pdf. 
  18. ↑ "Running to stand still: adaptation and the response of plants to rapid climate change". Ecol. Lett. 8 (9): 1010–20. 2005. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00796.x. PMID 34517682. 
  19. ↑ Botkin DB (2007). "Forecasting the effects of global warming on biodiversity". BioScience 57 (3): 227–36. doi:10.1641/B570306. 
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Kappelle, Maarten; Van Vuuren, Margret M.I.; Baas, Pieter (1999-10-01). "Effects of climate change on biodiversity: a review and identification of key research issues" (in en). Biodiversity & Conservation 8 (10): 1383–1397. doi:10.1023/A:1008934324223. ISSN 1572-9710. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008934324223. 
  21. ↑ Clairbaux, Manon; Fort, Jérôme; Mathewson, Paul; Porter, Warren; Strøm, Hallvard; Grémillet, David (2019-11-28). "Climate change could overturn bird migration: Transarctic flights and high-latitude residency in a sea ice free Arctic" (in en). Scientific Reports 9 (1): 17767. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-54228-5. ISSN 2045-2322. PMID 31780706. Bibcode: 2019NatSR...917767C. 
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Sternberg, Marcelo; Brown, Valerie K.; Masters, Gregory J.; Clarke, Ian P. (1999-07-01). "Plant community dynamics in a calcareous grassland under climate change manipulations" (in en). Plant Ecology 143 (1): 29–37. doi:10.1023/A:1009812024996. ISSN 1573-5052. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009812024996. 
  23. ↑ Bellard, Céline; Bertelsmeier, Cleo; Leadley, Paul; Thuiller, Wilfried; Courchamp, Franck (2012-01-18). "Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity". Ecology Letters 15 (4): 365–377. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01736.x. ISSN 1461-023X. PMID 22257223. 
  24. ↑ "Rapid changes in flowering time in British plants". Science 296 (5573): 1689–91. May 2002. doi:10.1126/science.1071617. PMID 12040195. Bibcode: 2002Sci...296.1689F. 
  25. ↑ "Phylogenetic patterns of species loss in Thoreau's woods are driven by climate change". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105 (44): 17029–33. November 2008. doi:10.1073/pnas.0806446105. PMID 18955707. Bibcode: 2008PNAS..10517029W. 
  26. ↑ Dadamouny, M.A. (2009).. "Population Ecology of Moringa peregrina growing in Southern Sinai, Egypt.". M.Sc.. Suez Canal University, Faculty of Science, Botany Department. pp. 205. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261638155. 
  27. ↑ Dadamouny, M.A.; Zaghloul, M.S.. "Impact of Improved Soil Properties on Establishment of Moringa peregrina seedlings and trial to decrease its Mortality Rate". https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261638276. 
  28. ↑ Krotz, Dan (2013-05-05). "New Study: As Climate Changes, Boreal Forests to Shift North and Relinquish More Carbon Than Expected | Berkeley Lab". http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/05/05/boreal/. 
  29. ↑ Rédei, G. P. (2008). Encyclopedia of genetics, genomics, proteomics, and informatics. Springer Science & Business Media. 
  30. ↑ Craine, Joseph M.; Elmore, Andrew J.; Aidar, Marcos P. M.; Bustamante, Mercedes; Dawson, Todd E.; Hobbie, Erik A.; Kahmen, Ansgar; Mack, Michelle C. et al. (September 2009). "Global patterns of foliar nitrogen isotopes and their relationships with climate, mycorrhizal fungi, foliar nutrient concentrations, and nitrogen availability". New Phytologist 183 (4): 980–992. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.02917.x. ISSN 0028-646X. PMID 19563444. 
  31. ↑ Barber, Quinn E.; Nielsen, Scott E.; Hamann, Andreas (2015-10-06). "Assessing the vulnerability of rare plants using climate change velocity, habitat connectivity, and dispersal ability: a case study in Alberta, Canada". Regional Environmental Change 16 (5): 1433–1441. doi:10.1007/s10113-015-0870-6. ISSN 1436-3798. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10113-015-0870-6. 
  32. ↑ Solomon, S., et al. (2007). Technical Summary. In 'Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change'. (Eds. S. Solomon, et al.) pp. 19-91, Cambridge University Press : Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
  33. ↑ Thuiller W (2008). "Predicting global change impacts on plant species' distributions: Future challenges". Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 9 (3–4): 137–52. doi:10.1016/j.ppees.2007.09.004. 
  34. ↑ Mackey, B. (2007). "Climate change, connectivity and biodiversity conservation". Sydney: WWF-Australia. pp. 90–6. 

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