Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: Plant communities migrating, inland, towards poles and higher elevations as temperatures and sea levels rise

September 16, 2019

 

 

As skeptics continue to reject the reality of climate change, scientists are quietly documenting measurable climate-related migration in native plant communities.  

 

Coastal plant communities are among those most dramatically impacted. As early as 2013, NOAA Landsat satellites documented Florida mangroves moving northward. Currently, the migration is being studied by the U.S. Geological Survey Predicting Future Mangrove Forest Migration in the Everglades Under Rising Sea Level project, among others. Scientists expect mangroves to migrate towards the poles in both hemispheres as climate change accelerates.

 

As mangroves migrate, they can displace other coastal native plant communities, such as salt marshes.

 

Salt marshes, in turn, appear also to be migrating as sea level rise sends salt water inland. Researchers in the Chesapeake Bay examined the seeds in thecsoil (seed banks) in soils stretching from the coastal marsh to the nearest forest. They found seeds of salt-tolerant marsh species as much as 15 meters into the upland forest community.

 

Species with a wide range of salt tolerance were found most frequently in the seed banks, suggesting that seed bank diversity allows for plant community resilience in response to unpredictable environmental changes.

 

The study’s authors concluded “If we are to maintain marshes, inland migration will be an important aspect of preserving marsh area and ecosystem services.”

 

An article in the online journal "Botany One" discussing the Chesapeake Bay study notes  that understanding more of how wetlands move could help protect communities from some of the damage of rising sea levels.

 

These phenomena are not confined to coasts. Many alpine native plant communities are migrating upward as temperatures rise at higher elevations. The Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) monitors mountain plant communities throughout the world.

 

In this era of accelerating climate change, understanding these migrations is critical to planning and building climate resilient cities and towns as well as to conserving native plant communities and their ecosystem services.