How Climate Change Impacts the Extent of Tropical Rain Forests
Posted in Science on January 5 2011, by Plant Talk
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Scott A. Mori, Ph.D., Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany, has been studying New World rain forests for The New York Botanical Garden for over 35 years. He has witnessed an unrelenting reduction in their extent and, as a result, is concerned about their survival. |
Deforestation followed by fires for creating agricultural fields and pasture releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at such an accelerated rate in the tropics that it is a major contributor to global warming. Photo by Scott Mori
There are many different types of vegetation in the New World tropics. But rather than being a homogeneous whole, what grows where and when in these tropics is determined to a large extent by water availability and temperature variation. Climate change could potentially have a drastic impact on this region, especially on the rain forests. Liebig’s Law of the Minimum states that plant or animal growth is controlled by the scarcest resource in the environment; this is known as a limiting factor. For example, if a soil possesses all nutrients needed for plant growth except potassium, then the paucity of that nutrient will limit the potential growth of all plants except those that can grow in potassium-poor soils. Potassium is therefore a limiting factor for that soil.
More on the application of Liebig's Law to the destruction of Amazonian rainforests below.