{"id":5802,"date":"2022-02-02T11:14:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T10:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=110753"},"modified":"2022-02-02T11:32:10","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T10:32:10","slug":"climate-change-is-causing-uk-plants-to-flower-a-month-early","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/climate-change-is-causing-uk-plants-to-flower-a-month-early\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change is causing UK plants to flower a month early"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Sara Rigby\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 02 February 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Climate change is driving plants to flower earlier and earlier, a study has found. By studying records going back as far as 1753, a research team has shown that the average first flowering date of UK plants is a month earlier than it was before 1986, and it shows a strong correlation with our warming climate.<\/p>\n

The team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, analysed more than 400,000 records from the citizen science database Nature\u2019s Calendar<\/a>. Since the 18^{th<\/sup> Century, gardeners, scientists and naturalists in the UK have been contributing observations of the changing seasons. In 2000, the Woodland Trust and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology collated these into Nature\u2019s Calendar, which now comprises around 3.5 million records.<\/p>\n}

These 400,000 records were of the first flowering dates of 406 different species of trees, shrubs, herbs and climbers around the UK. The team calculated the average first flowering dates in the periods 1752-1986 and 1986-2019, and compared these with monthly climate records. They found that the average first flowering dates were almost a full month earlier<\/a> than they were in the 1752-1986 period.<\/p>\n

The team warn that if warming continues at the same rate, eventually, spring could start in February in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can use a wide range of environmental datasets to see how climate change is affecting different species, but most records we have only consider one or a handful of species in a relatively small area,\u201d said Professor Ulf B\u00fcntgen<\/a> from Cambridge\u2019s Department of Geography, the study\u2019s lead author. \u201cTo really understand what climate change is doing to our world, we need much larger datasets that look at whole ecosystems over a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some crops are at risk if they flower too early. For example, if fruit trees flower early, a late frost could kill off the whole crop. A bigger environmental risk of early flowering is called \u2018ecological mismatch\u2019. \u201cPlants, insects, birds and other wildlife have co-evolved to a point that they\u2019re synchronised in their development stages,\u201d explained B\u00fcntgen. \u201cA certain plant flowers, it attracts a particular type of insect, which attracts a particular type of bird, and so on.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if one component responds faster than the others, there\u2019s a risk that they\u2019ll be out of synch, which can lead species to collapse if they can\u2019t adapt quickly enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nature\u2019s Calendar is open to anyone who wants to get involved with tracking our changing climate. \u201cAnyone in the UK can submit a record to Nature\u2019s Calendar, by logging their observations of plants and wildlife,\u201d said B\u00fcntgen. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly rich and varied data source, and alongside temperature records, we can use it to quantify how climate change is affecting the functioning of various ecosystem components across the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n