InTheNews.co.uk
Breaking News:
Your source for news

Associate Article

 16 May 2008 02:08 BST

Climate change threatens rare flowers

Climate change threatens rare flowers

Across the globe, the effects of climate change can take many forms. Many reports are highlighting the plight of species of rare flowers that are under threat, due to the changes in the weather, their habitat and the seasons.

In the Scottish Highlands, a third of the country’s snow cover has disappeared over the last 30 years and the rest is predicted to do so over the next few decades. This is due to the heating of the land: an effect of global warming; rare flowers, animals and birds are suffering as a result.

Although it harbours five of Scotland’s highest mountains, the Cairngorms are under continual threat. Adam Watson, one of the region’s most eminent ecologists says: “All native species are being pushed further and further up the mountains. Soon they will have nowhere to go.”

The area has been suffering for a long time anyway, but Global Warming is only exacerbating the situation. As well has hoping to cope with the annual increase in temperature of 0.5 degrees, the Cairngorms are also a victim of nitrogen pollution – again intensified by climate change.

Most of the water on the Cairngorms arrives as low cloud or mist, which is then absorbed by mosses and other plants that are used to Arctic weather conditions. Thanks to the steady temperature increase and the fact that the low clouds and mist are now collecting nitrogen from lowland factories, other plant such as grass and sedge are now able to survive in these areas – where once they would have been unable. In turn, the mosses and rare Arctic plants have to compete with the grasses for survival, jockeying for position when it comes to sunlight. With the grasses being naturally taller, the mosses and Arctic plants are dying off.

And this, in turn, has another effect on the local ecology. Rare birds, such as the dotterel, who feed on insects and larvae that feed on and can be found in the mosses, are becoming rarer. Without the moss to thrive on, the insect life has deteriorated. Without the insect life to feed on, the dotterel has deteriorated.

The flowers there are also in danger of having their relationship with local pollinators irrevocably changed. With many of these flowers now being forced to exist at much higher altitudes, their synchronicity with pollinators such as bees and butterflies is being disturbed.

With the increase in temperature, particularly at lower altitudes, bees, butterflies and other insects that carry pollen between flowers are waking from their hibernation period before the flowers do. This results in a much shorter period of time in which the flowers can be pollinated and the result is that they are becoming fewer and fewer. As the temperature increases by half a degree annually, that period is set to become shorter each year.

There is an awareness of the inevitability of Global Warming, but it is the unpredictability of the forms in which it takes that makes climate change a very real danger to plants and the ecology that supports and depends upon them.

The European Native Seed Conservation Network coordinates seed conservation activities of wild plants in Europe.

In The News has teamed up with Interflora to offer readers a discount on flowers. Simply enter the promotional code “web123” when ordering to get free next day delivery.End of story

Also In The News 

© 2008 Advertise | Privacy | Terms of Use