LIFE & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

If you want to understand how plant populations will respond as the climate changes, just examine the plants in different locations.

 

Professor Carolin Frank’s research into the nitrogen-fixing properties of bacteria inside the needles of some high-elevation pine trees is the topic of a new paper in the journal New Phytologist.

 

Even without all the industrial and technological growth that has accelerated climate change, humans can — and do — dramatically impact ecosystems.

 

A new paper in Nature Communications, co-authored by UC Merced Professor Marilyn Fogel, indicates early humans were responsible for the fairly rapid extinction of the 10-foot-tall flightless bird Genyornis newtoni in Australia about 47,000 years ago, simply through hunting and the interruption of reproduction.

Many species of trees and plants have begun migrating as the climate changes, but some, like California’s giant coastal redwoods, can’t just pick up and move.

 

The proximity of the ocean, which has unique effects on temperature and climate, makes it challenging to predict what the redwoods’ habitat will look like in the future. By using California’s historical climate data, UC Merced researchers have developed near-term predictions about the coastal habitat for the archetypal redwoods.

 

The basic structure of Earth’s ecosystems lasted for 300 million years but changed about 6,000 years ago, and humans are the most likely reason.

 

A team of about 25 researchers from around the globe, including UC Merced Professor Jessica Blois, outline that discovery in a paper published today in the journal Nature.

 

Shakespeare might have been right when he wrote “what’s past is prologue,” but not when it comes to modeling climate change.

 

A new study shows that rising air temperatures could have a crippling effect on the likelihood of precipitation falling as snow.