Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Corlett, Richard T.
• Westcott, David A.

Titel

Will plant movements keep up with climate change?

Ist Teil von

• Trends in ecology & evolution (Amsterdam), 2013-08, Vol.28 (8), p.482-488

Ort / Verlag

Kidlington: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Movement was a common response to past climate change and some species are moving now.•Many plant species will need to move >1 km per year to keep up with climate change.•We show that most species will not be able to achieve the velocity required.•This will have consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage. In the face of anthropogenic climate change, species must acclimate, adapt, move, or die. Although some species are moving already, their ability to keep up with the faster changes expected in the future is unclear. ‘Migration lag’ is a particular concern with plants, because it could threaten both biodiversity and carbon storage. Plant movements are not realistically represented in models currently used to predict future vegetation and carbon-cycle feedbacks, so there is an urgent need to understand how much of a problem failure to track climate change is likely to be. Therefore, in this review, we compare how fast plants need to move with how fast they can move; that is, the velocity of climate change with the velocity of plant movement.