An international research team found that planet warming drove major changes in vegetation and future warming may drive similarly dramatic changes around the world.
As the last ice age came to an end and the planet warmed, the Earth’s vegetation changed dramatically, reports a University of Arizona-led international research team in the journal Science.
The current warming from climate change may drive an equally dramatic change in vegetation within the next 100-150 years unless greenhouse-gas emissions are reduced, the team wrote.
"We found that ecosystems all over the globe experienced big changes," said Connor Nolan, a doctoral candidate in the UA Department of Geosciences. "About 70 percent of those sites experienced large changes in the species that were there and what the vegetation looked like."
The researchers used their analysis of how vegetation changed after the last ice age to project how much current ecosystems could change in the 21st century and beyond as global warming progresses.
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Image via Ellis Q. Margolis
