{"id":20008332,"date":"2014-06-11T11:49:12","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T06:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=8332"},"modified":"2021-01-06T22:20:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T16:50:08","slug":"climate-change-threatens-tibets-rare-alpine-plants-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/climate-change-threatens-tibets-rare-alpine-plants-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change threatens Tibet\u2019s rare alpine plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every spring in south-west China, there is an explosion of colour in the Daxue Shan, a mountain range on the eastern Tibetan plateau. As\u00a0the terrain rises toward the snowy mountain peaks, shrubs give way to alpine meadows filled with\u00a0tiny yellow and purple flowers.<\/p>\n

Western botanists have travelled to mountainous corners of China, India and Myanmar since colonial times in search of rare plants and flowers. Some of their trans-Himalayan specimens are now in storage at botanical institutions across Europe and the United States.<\/p>\n

Yet a handful of scientists are travelling to mountainous areas of Asia today with a new purpose: probing the effects of climate change and other factors on alpine meadow ecosystems. Their emerging research suggests that alpine shrubs are colonising the meadows, and that alpine plants are essentially walking up mountainsides in search of cooler temperatures and new habitats.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs these meadows disappear, species are disappearing,\u201d said Jodi Brandt, a professor at Dartmouth College in the United States who studies alpine ecological dynamics in south-west China.<\/p>\n

Brandt and other scientists reported last year that at least 39% of alpine meadows they studied had converted from meadows to shrubs in a study site in north-west Yunnan province between 1990 and 2009. Their\u00a0study<\/a>, in the journal Biodiversity Conservation, said there appeared to be a broader conversion occurring across the region from herbaceous to \u201cshrub-dominated\u201d ecosystems. Part of the reason, they wrote, was that declining snow cover often gives shrubs a competitive advantage over herbaceous plants.<\/p>\n

And in a February\u00a0paper in the journal Human Ecology<\/a>, Brandt and other scientists charted a nearly 70% decline in meadow area from 1974 to 2004 in China\u2019s Jiuzhaigou national park, in Sichuan province.\u00a0Brandt said that in her study sites, climate change appeared to be one of several causes of meadow shrinkage, along with overgrazing by yaks.<\/p>\n

The presumed causes are so intertwined that it is unclear which has a greater impact, she added. However, \u201cIf shrubs take over everywhere, Tibetans would have to abandon their herding practice \u2014 and yak herding for Tibetans is a very strong cultural thing.\u201d\u00a0She said shrub plants are generally considered less nutritious than alpine meadow plants, and that yaks who graze on them typically produce lower-quality milk.<\/p>\n

Important role of alpine meadows<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Alpine meadows, which lie above the tree line but below the snow line,\u00a0function as \u201csponges<\/a>\u201d by absorbing melting snow and acting as natural water towers. They typically have high herbaceous species richness and are filled with plants well-adapted to harsh climates.\u00a0For example, in northern India\u2019s Sikkim Himalaya, nearly a\u00a0third<\/a>\u00a0of plant biodiversity is found above 4,000 metres, and some plants live at above 5,500 metres.<\/p>\n

And on some mountains, alpine meadows provide the leaves, tubers and rhizomes for traditional medicines. In India\u2019s Uttarakhand province, the root of the plant\u00a0Aconitum balfourii, which grows at up to 4,000 metres, is\u00a0used<\/a>\u00a0to treat rheumatism.<\/p>\n

But although alpine plants are well-adapted to cold climates, scientists say they also tend to be highly sensitive to climatic changes.<\/p>\n

In Europe, scientists have been studying the apparent influence of climate change on mountain ecosystems since at least 2000, often with support from the Vienna-based Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In a 2012\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0of ecological changes on 66 European peaks, plants were found to have migrated an average of 2.7 metres upward between 2001 and 2008.<\/p>\n

The study, in the journal Science, said that although the average number of species on European mountains appeared to be increasing with warmer temperatures, the long-term effect could be to \u201chomogenise\u201d species composition on mountain summits.<\/p>\n

GLORIA-linked researchers are now processing data from a similar, seven-year study of several Asian mountains, and Brandt said the publication of their findings would likely attract more international interest in Asia\u2019s alpine ecosystems.\u00a0But for the moment, comprehensive data about them is still relatively scarce.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the ecology side there\u2019s so little known about these ecosystems,\u201d says\u00a0Raj Pandit, the director of the\u00a0Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Mountain & Hill Environment<\/a>\u00a0in New Delhi. \u201cYou can assume they work similar to the Alps, but a lot of things in Asia don\u2019t work the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emerging research in Asia appears to support the emerging hypothesis that climate change is a key factor contributing to shrub encroachment in alpine meadows, and that further warming may threaten the survival of rare alpine plants.<\/p>\n

A 2013\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0in the journal PLoS One, by Pandit and three other scientists, for example, found that 87% of 124 endemic plants surveyed in India\u2019s Sikkim Himalaya were migrating up mountains, partly in response to a warming climate. The study, which compared contemporary data with 19th century records, warned that continued warming there may lead to \u201cexacerbated species extinction\u201d in upper alpine regions.<\/p>\n

And in Iran, climate change and competition from drought-tolerant species that live at lower altitudes is threatening dozens of alpine plants, in part because the\u00a0\u201cpotential to escape to suitable cold habitats is highly\u00a0limited,\u201d according to a 2011\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0by researchers from Austria and Germany. Like Brandt\u2019s 2013 study from south-west China, it noted that earlier snow melt appeared to be disadvantageous for some mountain plant species.<\/p>\n

But Pandit said scientists in the Himalayas typically would rather focus on rivers and potential ecological threats posed by hydropower dams. He said comparatively little attention is paid to dynamics of floral communities, partly because conducting research in remote Himalayan mountain chains requires of trekking through steep terrain at up to 5,000 metres.<\/p>\n

Another obstacle, he added, is a lack of interest from Indian policymakers.<\/p>\n

The loss of more alpine plants \u201cwould be a great loss to the whole world because these species have not been scientifically investigated in detail,\u201d Pandit said. \u201cBut at the government level, nobody even asks me, \u2018what should we do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In China, the government has given more than 1 billion yuan (US$160 million) per year since 2000 for climate change adaptation projects, according to\u00a0Xu Jianchu,\u00a0regional coordinator for East and Central Asia at the\u00a0World Agroforestry Centre<\/a>.\u00a0He said the Canadian government had also committed nearly US$1.5 million between 2012 and 2015 for a project to improve water governance across the Asian highlands in response to climate change.<\/p>\n

Xu cautioned that climate change is only one of several complex factors influencing alpine ecosystem change, and that building local knowledge and responses to changing conditions should be a key policy priority.\u00a0But he said there is often a disconnect in China between emerging research on alpine regions and village-level policies for people who live there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lack a messenger to take our message to local communities,\u201d Xu said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every spring in south-west China, there is an explosion of colour in the Daxue Shan, a mountain range on the eastern Tibetan plateau. As\u00a0the terrain rises toward the snowy mountain peaks, shrubs give way to alpine meadows filled with\u00a0tiny yellow and purple flowers. Western botanists have travelled to mountainous corners of China, India and Myanmar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":20014220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761,764],"tags":[511,523,539],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000110,20000111],"class_list":["post-20008332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","category-nature","tag-biodiversity","tag-conservation","tag-endangered-species","country-china","country-india"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nClimate change threatens Tibet\u2019s rare alpine plants | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every spring in south-west China, there is an explosion of colour in the Daxue Shan, a mountain range on the eastern Tibetan plateau. 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