A study analyzing the effects of climate change on vascular plants in the United States finds that the fate of individual plant species tends to be a regional phenomenon.
A study analyzing the effects of climate change on vascular plants in the United States finds that the fate of individual plant species tends to be a regional phenomenon.
A plant species found in the Southwest U.S., for example, may be more vulnerable to climate change than the same species in the Midwest, or vice versa, the study found. This showed that focusing on regional rather than national data yielded the most reliable results for understanding which species are most in need of conservation, and where, the researchers said.
The findings are reported in the journal Ecography.
The regional zones used in the study were delineated more than a decade ago by the U.S. Geological Survey National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, a multi-institutional project initiated by the U.S. Department of the Interior to “protect the country’s natural and cultural resources from the dramatic effects of climate change.” The study included seven CASC regional zones: Midwest, North Central, Northeast, Northwest, South Central, Southeast and Southwest. Each of these regions in the contiguous U.S. includes between three and 14 states and is defined by state boundaries.
Read More: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Image: Ph.D. student Weiqing Qu and her colleagues explored how the same species of plant fares in different parts of the U.S. in response to climate change. Factors that appear to reduce a species’ vulnerability to climate change include a broader geographic distribution across a range of latitudes or elevations and the region’s glacial history. Photo by Fred Zwicky via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
