<
https://theconversation.com/almost-a-third-of-australias-plant-species-may-have-to-migrate-south-if-we-hit-3-degrees-of-warming-226009>
"For ecologists, one of the most pressing questions is to understand how
ecosystems will change or adapt as the climate changes rapidly. We are already
seeing many species of plant and animal moving uphill and towards the poles in
response to higher temperatures. It’s very likely most species will move to
track their preferred temperature niche.
But what’s strange is that many species can survive in much broader temperature
ranges than their current distribution suggests. We don’t yet fully understand
why temperature affects ecosystems so strongly.
To shed light on this puzzle, our new research used the current range of
Australian plants and calculated each species’ minimum and maximum temperature
preferences. These data told us how many and what percentage of species are
lost or gained when transitioning from, say, a 15°C to a 16°C average annual
temperature.
The results were astonishing. In Australia’s wetter east coast, you gain on
average 19% more species and lose 14% of species when moving up the temperature
gradient by 1°C. In the dry centre, you gain 18% of species and lose 21% of
species for every extra degree.
That’s at in our current climate. What will happen if the world warms by 3°C,
which we are still heading towards?
If we assume the whole flora is trying to track their current climate niche, we
would likely see 30% of our plant species in Australia moving south. That would
be an enormous shift. Almost one in every three species would change in the
natural vegetation around us."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
