Category: Climate Change
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Climate Change Is Changing Your Garden
The Third National Climate Assessment confirms that landscapes across the country are changing rapidly. The report predicts that “species, including many iconic species, may disappear from regions where they have been prevalent or become extinct, altering some regions so much that their mix of plant and animal life will become almost unrecognizable.”
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The Forests Of The US Southwest Reveal An Unfolding Future And It Isn’t Pretty
The more forests die, the less carbon they take out of the air, the warmer it gets, the more forests die, It’s a thermostat gone bad.
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Can Forests Grow Our Way Out Of Climate Change? Not If Bugs Have A Say
Carbon dioxide typically makes plants grow faster and makes them more efficient in how they use nutrients. But the amount of damage caused by leaf-munching bugs in the study nearly doubled under high carbon dioxide conditions
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Climate Change Is Tinkering With Forest Dynamics
In the long-term, the survival of some woodland plants could be affected as plants compete for light under the woodland canopy.
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Best Landscape For Capturing Carbon? Forests? No! Wetlands
One of reasons wetlands perform better compared to forests in capturing carbon is in the way organic matter and sediments are collected underwater, resulting in a slower breakdown that lets swamps act like carbon sinks.
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Forests Work To Turn Down Atmospheric Thermostat
As temperatures warm, plants release gases that help form clouds and cool the atmosphere, according to new research. The new study identified a negative feedback loop in which higher temperatures lead to an increase in concentrations of natural aerosols that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere
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Plants Will Be Here Long After We Are Gone: They Survive Mass Extinctions Better
In the plant kingdom, mass extinction events can be seen as opportunities for turnover leading to renewed biodiversity,
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What Is Responsible For The Disappearance Of California’s Big Trees?
California has lost half its big trees since the 1930s, according to a study. (Click on title or image for full story.)
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Earth’s Vegetation 50-Million Years Ago Revealed At Last
They found something surprising — habitats lost dense tree cover and opened up much earlier than previously thought based on other paleobotanic studies. This is significant because the decline in vegetation cover occurred during the same period as cooling ocean temperatures and the evolution of animals with the type of teeth that feed in open, dusty habitats.
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Deforestation Changes Global Weather Patterns (Not A Global Warming Story)
Tropical deforestation delivers a double whammy to the climate–and to farmers. Most people know that climate change is a dangerous global problem, and that it’s caused by pumping carbon into the atmosphere. But it turns out that removing forests alters moisture and air flow, leading to changes–from fluctuating rainfall patterns to rises in temperatures–that are just as hazardous, and happen right away. The impacts go beyond the tropics–the United Kingdom and Hawaii could see an increase in rainfall while the US Midwest and Southern France could see a decline.”