The recent IPCC report has been called a wake-up call. It’s not. That was 30 years ago. Since then, we’ve been hitting the snooze button. We are starting to see the beginning of catastrophic climate change. This is already affecting our ability to feed everyone, the nutritional quality of plants and their interactions with animals (including us), human health and biodiversity. This is exacerbated by clearing of native forests and destruction of natural ecosystems for short term gain. The warming is not going to stop at 1.5 °C, or 2°C or even 5°C unless action is taken across the board. There is an urgent need to make it easier for individuals, industry, and agriculture to decarbonise the economy and preserve the environment.
Coconut trees grow slowly and are difficult to clone. Scientists have developed a method to multiply seedlings faster and conserve coconut genetic resources for the long term. This will help to preserve coconut tree biodiversity and meet the increasing demand for coconuts and derived products.
The current world population of 7.8 billion is predicted to reach 10 billion by 2057. Future access to affordable and healthy food will be challenging, with malnutrition already affecting one in three people worldwide. Two new papers recognized that global crop production systems need to expand their outputs sustainably to feed this rapidly growing human population.
Research shows that multi-species mixtures out-yielded perennial ryegrass monocultures receiving double the amount of fertiliser.The most productive swards were a combination of species from the three functional groups of grasses, legumes and herbs. With legume proportion between 30 and 70%, yields were better than the best monoculture.
As temperatures rise, the risk of devastating forest fires is increasing. Researchers are using artificial intelligence to estimate the long-term impact that an increased number of forest fires will have on forest ecosystems. Their simulations show how Yellowstone National Park in the USA could change by the end of the century.
A new study sheds light on how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions presented by climate change. Researchers showed that plants grown in drier conditions simulating the effects of climate change exhibited higher costs of reproduction than those grown under current conditions. The findings offer clues about how plant populations might respond to climate change and could provide guidance for developing conservation strategies.
As the world continues to warm, many arid regions that already have marginal conditions for agriculture will be increasingly under stress, potentially leading to severe food shortages. Now, researchers have come up with a promising process for protecting seeds from the stress of water shortage during their crucial germination phase, and even providing the plants with extra nutrition at the same time.
Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, released today. Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.
Only one species – the Star Plantain (Plantago muelleri) – showed that it was adapting to warmer conditions by displaying an increase in plant size.
The second plant that showed evidence of a change in plant traits was the Cascade Everlasting (Ozothamnus secundiflorus), but it decreased in leaf thickness over a 125-year time period.
“We predicted leaves would become more thicker, as this would be advantageous if plants were facing longer growing seasons and increasing temperatures,” lead author Meena Sritharan said.
Alpine rice flower. Photo: Casey Gibson
PhD research scholar Meena Sritharan.
Star Plantain. Photo: Casey Gibson.
“Our findings suggest that native alpine plants may not be adapting to the substantial local climate change occurring in Australian alpine regions.
“Australian native alpine plants face a bleak future in the face of rapid climate change.”
Ms Sritharan is a PhD research scholar at ANU who participated in the study as an honours student in the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre at UNSW Science’s School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.
The point of the study was to gauge whether alpine plants in the southern hemisphere had changed in morphology, or their physical form, over time in response to recent climate warming.
Ms Sritharan said the 21 alpine plants exist in one of the ecosystems known to be least resistant to the effects of climate change.
“Alpine environments are facing higher-than-average increases in temperature in the last century,” Ms Sritharan said.
“But rapid changes in the environment can promote rapid changes in species.”
“Consequently, we expected that a rapid increase in temperature would result in a change in the plant traits we measured, such as size and leaf shape. These changes in plant traits would suggest that alpine plants may be changing in response to a changing climate.”
Previous studies have also shown that both native and invasive plants are capable of rapid changes in their morphology.
The researchers used herbarium (preserved) plant specimens collected between 1890 and 2016, and modern specimens collected in February, 2017.
Examples of the alpine plants they studied included Cushion Caraway (Oreomyrrhis pulvinifica), Alpine Rice flower (Pimelea alpine), Carpet Heath (Pentrachondra pumila) and Snow Aciphyll (Aciphylla glacialis).
The researchers measured five different plant traits: plant size, leaf shape, leaf area, leaf width and specific leaf area (the ratio of the leaf area to leaf dry mass).
Ms Sritharan said the study findings are surprising as the results were contrary to what they expected and what species in the northern hemisphere are facing.
She said plants in the northern hemisphere are changing substantially and adapting to changed environmental conditions brought by climate change.
“For instance, some British plant species (such as White Nettle (Lamium album) and Kenilworth ivy (Cymbalaria muralis) are flowering earlier than expected in the past decade compared to the previous four decades,” Ms Sritharan said.
“The plant height of species growing in tundra ecosystems (treeless regions in cold climates) have also increased with warming over the past three decades.”
Scientists also forecast that plant species will migrate to higher elevations to escape the effects of climate warming.
But Ms Sritharan said she was surprised to find that a shrub – Cascade Everlasting (Ozothamnus secundiflorus) – had moved downslope over time rather than to a higher elevation.
“This indicates that we should look into if, and where, other native Australian alpine species may be migrating to, in the face of climate change,” she said.
Ms Sritharan’s supervisor, the director of UNSW’s Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, Professor Angela Moles, is currently investigating whether Australian alpine plants are shifting their distributions uphill.
“This summer we will be doing heatwave experiments to measure how Australian alpine plants respond to an increased duration of heatwaves, which is what climate researchers forecast for the future,” Prof. Moles said.
