If you were to take a seed and zap it into the future to see how it will respond to climate change, how realistic might that prediction be? After all, seeds that actually grow in the future will have gone through generations of genetic changes and adaptations that these “time traveling” seeds don’t experience.
If you were to take a seed and zap it into the future to see how it will respond to climate change, how realistic might that prediction be? After all, seeds that actually grow in the future will have gone through generations of genetic changes and adaptations that these “time traveling” seeds don’t experience.
Scientists from the University of California, Davis, and the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom examine that question in a study published today in the journal Global Change Biology. They found that specialized outdoor laboratories more closely resemble what happens in nature than was previously realized.
About FACE
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the Industrial Revolution and is now at the highest concentration the Earth has seen for several million years. Scientists have been investigating how plants are likely to respond to future climate change at outdoor facilities called Free Air CO2 Enrichment, or FACE, where fields of crops are blasted with air containing increased amounts of carbon dioxide.
The study authors compared plant responses at FACE facilities with plant responses across 11 naturally occurring, high-CO2 springs. Plants at these springs survive extremely high concentrations of carbon dioxide, up to 1,000 parts per million in some areas, for many years over multiple generations.
Read more at University of California - Davis
Image: Free Air CO2 Enrichment facilities, like this one in Italy, blast crops with air containing increased amounts of carbon dioxide to understand how plants will respond to future climate change. (Credit: Gail Taylor/UC Davis)
