GLOBAL WARMING: Climate change 'could WIPE OUT Alpine plants'
UNCONTROLLED global warming will kill off Alpine plants as they run out of habitat where they can survive, a study warned.
The plants thrive in the unique environment of high altitude regions, above the 'tree line' with good drainage and usually cold, dry winters.
But climate change threatens their existence as they run out of room on mountain peaks.
A changing climate presents a special challenge for alpine plant species, including primula clusiana, a native of Austria.
To escape increased greenhouse warming, the species have to move to a higher-altitude habitat.
But because of the pyramidal structure of mountains, little surface area is available for this endeavour.
Now Swiss, French and Austrian scientists have developed a new computer modelling to predict the extinction risk of these plants.
Prince Charles speaks out about climate change
They applied their model to four alpine plant species and used supercomputers to simulate the dispersal and adaptation of these species under three possible climate scenarios up to the year 2090.
If climate change continues to develop without restraint the plants will have a big problem
The more favourable climate scenarios that assume a warming by one degree show that the plant populations recover again if the warming slows after 2090.
Assistant Professor Frédéric Guillaume of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Zurich said: "If climate change continues to develop without restraint the plants will have a big problem."
He warned this problem may remain undetectable because the longevity of these alpine plants favours a persistence in the habitats they currently occupy.
At the same time, however, fewer and fewer young plants are gaining a foothold. According to an article recently published by the researchers, "longevity prevents a renewal of the populations."
As a result, the populations are noticeably badly adapted to their changing environment - and they are starting to thin out.
Professor Guillaume added: "The population numbers of these plants are dropping faster than the plants can adapt to the new conditions or spread to more favourable grounds."
As a whole, the simulations performed have demonstrated that the adaptability of the plants cannot keep up with the fast climate changes.
The circumstance that older individuals persist in a worsening environment, hides the fact that an extinction debt is slowly developing.
The study published in Nature Communications concluded that not only the dispersal of the alpine plant species, but also the local population densities, must be correctly measured in order to determine this invisible extinction debt.