Climate change has shifted the boundaries of plant and animal

[Cricket]

Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
LiveScience.com
Tue Aug 12, 1:03 PM ET




Climate change has shifted the boundaries of plant and animal
habitats, with some birds in the United States extending their
boundaries northward and trees moving farther up mountains, new
studies show.

Between 2000 and 2005, New York state's Department of Environmental
Conservation had thousands of volunteers all over the state observe
and report the birds they could identify, creating a Breeding Bird
Atlas of the various species' breeding ranges.

Researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) compared this
atlas to another one conducted between 1980 and 1985 for 83 species
of birds that traditionally have bred in New York and found that many
had extended their range boundaries northward, some by as many as 40
miles (64 kilometers).

"But the real signal came out with some of the northerly species that
are more common in Canada and the northern part of the U.S.," said
Benjamin Zuckerberg, a Ph.D. student at SUNY. "Their southern range
boundaries are actually moving northward as well, at a much faster
clip."

Some of the species making this southern boundary shift are the
Nashville warbler, a little bird with a yellow belly; the pine
siskin, a common finch that resembles a sparrow; and the red-bellied
woodpecker, considered the most common woodpecker in the Southeast.

The shifts, announced today, are occurring in a relatively short
amount of time, the researchers also pointed out, happening in a
matter of decades. These changes are also consistent with the
predictions of regional warming, they added.

Warming is also forcing some mountain plant species to adapt by
moving to higher altitudes as it kills them in their traditional
ranges. In Southern California, for example, warming temperatures and
longer dry spells have killed thousands of tree and plants, while
pushing their habitats an average of 213 feet up the Santa Rosa
Mountains over the past 30 years, according to a new study detailed
in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.

Previous studies have also catalogued the ways that climate change is
knocking the nature out of whack: birds are migrating earlier in the
season; reptiles and amphibians are also heading for the hills to
reach cooler climes; and the timing of plant blooms is shifting as
the Earth heats up.


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Original Story: Plants and Animals Move as Climate Warms
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