Effects of climate change on mountain plants is delayed

Percentage of unsuitable occupied ecological sites

Percentage of unsuitable sites among those predicted to be occupied.

A modeling study from the European Alps suggests that population declines to be observed during the upcoming decades will probably underestimate the long-term effects of recent climate warming on mountain plants. A European team of ecologists around Stefan Dullinger from the Department of Conservation Biology, Vegetation and Landscape Ecology of the University of Vienna presents a new modeling tool to predict migration of mountain plants which explicitly takes population dynamic processes into account. Their results are published in “Nature Climate Change“.

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