Using records from a civilian scientific database dating back to the mid-1700s, a research team led by the University of Cambridge found that plants were flowering a month before global warming due to the effects of climate change.
For their analysis, the researchers based their analysis on more than 400,000 observations of 406 plant species from the Nature Almanac maintained by the Woodland Trust and compared the dates of the first flowering to temperature measurements using instruments. The average first flower date from 1987 to 2019 was found to be one month earlier than the average first flower date from 1753 to 1986. The same period coincides with the acceleration of human-caused global warming. The results have been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Biological Research Journal.
While the first spring flowers are always welcome, early blooms can have consequences for the UK’s ecosystem and agriculture. Other species whose migration or hibernation has coincided may be left without the flowers and plants that depend on them – a phenomenon called ecological divergence – which can lead to biodiversity loss if populations are not able to adapt quickly enough.
The change could also have implications for growers and gardeners. For example, fruit trees bloom early after a mild winter, and the entire crop can be destroyed if the flowers are exposed to a late frost. While the effects of climate change can be seen through extreme weather events and increased climate variability, the long-term effects on the ecosystem are more subtle and therefore difficult to identify and quantify.
“We can use a wide range of environmental databases to see how climate change affects different species, but most of our records only have one or a handful of species in a relatively small area. To understand what climate change is doing, most of our records have only one or a handful of species in a relatively small area,” said Ulf Büntgen, a geographer at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the study. Climate really does affect our world, we need much larger databases looking at an entire ecosystem over a long period of time.
The United Kingdom has such a database: since the 18th century, observations of seasonal changes have been recorded by scientists, naturalists, amateur and professional gardeners, and by organizations such as the Royal Meteorological Society. In 2000, the Woodland Trust teamed up with the Center for Ecology and Hydrology and compared these records to the 1736 Nature Almanac, which now contains about 3.5 million records.
“Anyone in the UK can make a note of the Nature Almanac by keeping a record of their observations of plants and wildlife. It is an incredibly rich and diverse source of data, and in addition to temperature records, we can use it to determine how climate change is affecting the functioning of different components of an ecosystem. across the UK,” Büntgen said.
In the current study, researchers used more than 400,000 records from the Nature Almanac to study changes in 406 species of flowering plants in the UK between 1753 and 2019. First-date observations of flowering trees, shrubs, grasses and creepers were used in locations ranging from the Channel Islands to Shetland and Northern Ireland to Suffolk. The researchers categorized the observations in different ways: by location, by elevation, and by whether they came from urban or rural areas. The date of first flowering was then compared with the monthly climatic records. To achieve a better balance in the number of observations, the researchers split the entire database into records up to 1986 and beyond. The average first bloom came a full month earlier and is strongly correlated with rising global temperatures.
“The results are really concerning, given the environmental risks associated with flowers in the past. When plants bloom too early, they can be destroyed by a late frost – a phenomenon that most gardeners will experience at some point. But there is a greater risk of environmental variation. Plants, insects, birds and life have evolved Other wildernesses come together to a point to synchronize their stages of development.A particular plant blooms, attracts a certain type of insect, attracts a certain type of bird, etc.
But if one component responds faster than the others, there is a risk of desynchronization, which could lead to a species collapse if it can’t adapt quickly enough,” Buntgen said.
If global temperatures continue to rise at current rates, Büntgen says, spring will finally begin in the UK in February. However, many of the species that forests, gardens, and farms depend on can have serious problems due to the speed of change.
“Continuous monitoring is required to ensure a better understanding of the consequences of climate change. Contributing notes to the Nature Almanac is an activity anyone can participate in,” said Professor Tim Sparks, a University of Cambridge zoologist who co-authored the study.
The research was supported in part by the European Research Council, the Fritz and Elisabeth Schwingruber Foundation, and the Woodland Trust.
(Source: University of Cambridge)
