Mountain vegetation rapidly retreats higher as climate gets warmer

By James Gamble via SWNS

Mountain vegetation is rapidly retreating higher as the climate warms, reveals new research.

The study, which compared satellite images of mountainous regions in the west of North America, suggests plants are responding to changes in the climate with unexpected speed which often outpaces the adaptations of animals.

Scientists hope further research into species distribution could provide valuable insights into the velocity of climate change and aid attempts at conservation.

Researchers from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, on the eastern coast of the United States, analyzed 27 years' worth of high-resolution satellite elevation data from nine mountain ranges in western North America, taken between 1984 and 2011.

Using the satellite images, they measured changes in vegetation cover at different altitudes in mountain ranges of varied ecosystems, including tropical, subarctic, coastal and interior desert environments.

As climate change warms areas of the planet, species are forced to move to higher elevations to retain their historical temperature range.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Climate, found upward shifts in vegetation present across all the diverse ecosystems.

Researchers also discovered that the vegetation often adapted to changes in the climate faster than animals.

However, the study concluded that more research was needed, as the current data did not include any changes from the past 12 years.

A lack of data prior to 1984 also limits the researchers' conviction that rapid changes in the distribution of vegetation are causatively linked with climate change.

Co-author Dr. James Kellner says similar research could have a vast influence on conservation efforts.

He said: "Our findings help to characterize patterns of vegetation across elevations in mountains that range from the subtropics to the subarctic.

"If substantiated, this finding could warrant reconsideration of a current cornerstone of conservation planning."

He added: "More work is needed to better contextualize how the vegetation shifts we observed, which measure any green vegetation, relate to individual species movements and broader ecosystem transitions–as this sort of integration offers the potential to create a more holistic understanding of change in montane systems.

"NASA satellites, in combination with powerful computing, provide a view of our planet like never before, giving us the ability to understand how natural ecosystems are responding to changes in the environment."