Climate change: Plant species might not need to move far for favourable climates | Nature Climate Change

Plant species may only need to move short distances to track their preferred habitats as the climate changes, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change. This finding contrasts with previous models that have predicted the need for major shifts in plant ranges.

It is widely predicted that many species will have to either adapt or move to survive as climate change alters the environment, a prediction that shapes current conservation policy. Previous research has suggested that species seeking favourable climates may need to move long distances, but these studies have used climate data at broad scales, which do not accurately represent the highly heterogeneous microclimate conditions that organisms experience.

Ilya Maclean and Regan Early used historical data from 1977–1995 to model the distribution of 244 European heathland and grassland plant taxa, which they then used to project plant distributions between 2003–2021 to assess the impacts of climate variables. Using macro- and microclimate data, they compared three different grid resolutions: approximately 50 km, 5 km and 100 m length grids. According to the largest scales, species would have had to shift between 3.7 and 62.4 km (14 km median) within 26 years to keep pace with changing climates. However, when microclimate data at 100 m resolution were used, the same species would have to move just a median of 114 m over 26 years, or 4.4 m per year, to shift into favourable microclimates. The authors show that these smaller shifts more closely match the actual observed patterns of species shifts.

The authors propose that conservation efforts should prioritize protection of areas with suitable microclimates within species’ historic geographic ranges.


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