A new paper involving Environment Institute member Barry Brook as well as Yasmeen Telwala (University of Dehli), Kumar Manish (University of Dehli) and Maharaj K Pandit (University of Dehli & National University of Singapore) has recently been published in the journal PLoS One.
The paper titled ‘Climate-Induced Elevational Range Shifts and Increase in Plant Species Richness in a Himalayan Biodiversity Epicentre’ uses historical and recent data on temperature and local species’ elevational ranges to perform a correlative study in the two alpine valleys of Sikkim Himalaya.
Flora of major mountain ranges are highly sensitive to climate change and mountains serve as suitable observation sites for tracing climate-induced biological response. The Himalaya constitute an important global biodiversity hotspot, yet studies on species’ response to climate change from this region are lacking.
The study shows that the ongoing warming in the alpine Sikkim Himalaya has transformed the plant assemblages and lends support to the hypothesis that changing climate is causing species distribution changes.
Read the paper to find out more.
