Moving Flora and Fauna
by Chris Tilley
Pine Bettle killed forest in Colorado.(source)
The effects that climate change is going to have on the flora and fauna of the world is something that we don’t completely understand. The systems are quite complex and the small changes can have significant effects. There are things that we are currently observing and some of the effects. As the world warms the plants and animal will have to change.
First of all plants are moving north at least in the northern hemisphere. Spruce trees are currently moving into tundra areas. This is because the tundra is staying thawed for longer in the summer with the rising temperatures and that is allowing the trees to move in. The harm of that is that are creatures such as caribou that live on plants in the tundra and people who’s way of living is dependent on the cariboo.(source)
Animal have the same trouble. Bird are flying farther north, earlier.(source) Bugs are also moving north. Two examples, the first are wasps that are on the increase in Alaska.(source) The second is Mosquitoes will move farther in to the north.(source) Of course the poor polar bears world is changing making it hard for them to find food. Pine beetles were kept in check by cold winters and now they are spreading.
In either the case of the animals or the plants some of these will be considered invasive. With invasive species quite often the local predators that keep species in check are not able to handle the new guys.(source)
The other side of that equation is changing also. Plants and animals are dependent on each other in complex ways. One of those is pollination. Plants and animals are responding differently to the changing temperatures. Some respond to changes in temperature others to the amount of day light. So what can happen is that the pollinators are not there when the plant need to be pollinated. It can also be that a food source isn’t there when the animal arrive. One study ran a simulation with a 1420 pollinators and 429 plant species to look at these problems. The result was that some species would go extinct.(source)
So even subtle changes in the temperature can cause major changes to the plants and animals of the world. It could and probably will be a very different world in a hundred years.