Where Animals and Plants Might Survive Climate Change
KQED recently published an article about refugia, or pockets on the landscape that may experience less change in climate compared to the surrounding landscape. Acadia National Park in Maine has many initiatives underway identifying refugia locations, work that has been led by Northeast CASC research ecologist Toni Lyn Morelli.
Scientists are searching for places with unique natural conditions where warming is happening less quickly than the surrounding areas. Researchers hope that as the earth gets hotter, these areas could serve as refugia for plants and animals from climate impacts. Scientists and mangers have been working together to identify refugia locations in places like the Sierra Nevada in California and in Acadia National Park in Maine. Northeast CASC research ecologist Toni Lyn Morelli has led the work in Acadia where climate havens for 30 different plants and animals have been mapped.
Toni Lyn says, "there’s urgency in identifying these places so we can protect them." Identifying climate refugia could be an important strategy for land managers to consider to lessen climate impacts.
Get Our News
These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.