There’s a fascinating feature in today’s New York Times regarding the effect of climate change on weeds. The abundance of CO2 that comes from global warming is a primary ingredient in plant growth, but the effect on plants is little understood and studied.
Lewis Ziska, a researcher with the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, is studying the effect of the CO2 levels that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict for 50 years from now. He found that Baltimore, MD was a perfect test environment, as it’s heated climate and high-levels of CO2 are roughly the same to these levels when compared to the surrounding countryside.
Read how varying test plots in different environments fared over a five-year period in a surprising exploration of the benefits of climate change on weeds, leading to far heartier and more resistant weed species. The article goes into great depth into the change that is happening all over the globe that leads to far fewer native species and less biodiversity.
Andrew McDonald of Cornell University is conducting research into the role of climate change for the geographic distribution of damaging agricultural weeds. Mapping weeds plays a large role in this research, as the territory for these weeds will widely expand as the climate heats up. It’s a sobering exploration of one of the potential implications of climate change, one that will make if far more costly and labor intensive to produce food.
