By Hope Elena Sardella , March, 18, 2019
The response to the increasing global temperatures across many diverse regions in the United States is currently seeing symptoms of global warming. An illuminating passage from Smith & Smith (2015), explains that the average size a species may have the tendency to increase in proportions if the overall global temperature were to decrease, although a comparative theory poses to examines a more relevant theory; that increased global temperature is causing the growth in body mass in growing populations from increased availability of food readily in warmer regions (pg. 7.14, para. 2). In retrospect it is not surprising that in more more temperate climates that food is more accessible to people as that when the weather is nice human-beings, and animals are usually outside, and away from their home, thus making it more likely for someone to eat out when the weather is nice, hence the same example can be compared to the rate the vegetation in a forest’s or landscape’s terrain average growth rate.
There is a significant accumulation of published studies describing the role of climate change on our environment. To be specific, Hatfield & Prueger (2015), maintains that increasing temperature correlated with the changing climate will directly alter the growth and development of plants, trees, and vegetation; as well as changes in crop yields. Further evidence to support the relationship between climate change and plant growth suggests that in controlled indoor experiments when the indoor temperature was increased, the results were that the grain yield rates were reduced to eighty to ninety percent during the reproductive stage of growth; furthermore phenological development rates were higher, in comparison, no change was observed with the amount of leaf area or biomass (Hatfield & Prueger, 2015, pg.1, para. 1). Moving forward, I would like to provide the reader with a basic understanding of how current rising global temperatures are currently affecting two specific plant species and their ability to reproduce and function at their optimum level. In light of these ideas, the author has selected to review a study conducted by Chang X-Y et al. (2015), in which collectively fifty-five years of extensive data was analyzed pertaining to the tree growth rates of trees species existing in the regions of the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve Guangdong province, located in China(DBR), and the Barro Colorado Island located in Panama (BCI) (pg. 2, para. 4). The results of the analysis from DBI showed that from the period of observation of 1955 until 1985, that the temperature and precipitation increased, furthermore the results of the twenty-five years of data obtained from the BCI showed that the temperature was growing annually but that the precipitation rates had significantly declined from the years nineteen-eighty-one and two-thousand- and five (Chang X-Y et al., 2005, pg. 3, para. 8).To conclude, the investigations showed that the growth rates in populations of trees in both BCI and DBR decreased, to add; a total of seventy-seven different species reviewed in the BCI and conclusively there was a correlation in the decreasing growth and excess food and abundance (as cited in Chang X-Y et al., 2005, pg. 4, para. 2).
References
Chang X-Y, Chen B-M, Liu G, Zhou T, Jia X-R, Peng S-L (2015) Effects of Climate Change on Plant Population Growth Rate and Community Composition Change. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0126228. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126228 (Links to an external site.)
Hatfield, J. L., & Prueger, J. H. (2015). Temperature extremes: Effect on plant growth and development. Weather and Climate Extremes, 10, 4-10. Retrieved from doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.08.001
Smith, T. M., & Smith, R. L. (2015). Elements of Ecology. Retrieved from https://ashford.redshelf.com/course/course_details/68505/
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