Oh the irony when art and reality collide…
The plants which Henry David Thoreau catalogued around Walden Pond in Massachusetts more than 150 years ago, and the information which he gathered, is helping to illustrate the effects of invasive species and global warming on the area today.
Climate change has given invasive and nonnative species a leg up in the Walden Pond area, and the native species are hurting as a result.
A group of researchers compared Thoreau’s information with data on temperature and plant populations from this century as well as full information on plant phenology. They found that the average temperature in Concord, Massachusetts has increased 2.4 degrees Celsius since Thoreau’s time, and that some nonnative plants have adapted by flowering as much as three weeks earlier than they once did. Other native species have seen their populations drop dramatically.
“These results demonstrate for the first time that climate change likely plays a direct role in promoting nonnative species success…Our research suggests quite decisively that nonnative and invasive species have been the climate change winners. Climate change will lead to an as yet unknown shuffling of species, and it appears that invasive species will become more dominant”
said author Charles C. Davis, an assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
The team did not just count the plants to come up with this observation. They also examined
“habit, plant height at maturity, leaf mass per area, flower diameter, pollination syndrome and seed weight”
in order to come up with a complete picture of the health of the species in the area.
This is not the first time that Davis and his colleagues have studied Walden’s plants. Two years ago, they found that 27% of the plant species Thoreau recorded from 1851 to 1858 are now locally extinct. In addition to this, 36%
“are so sparse that extinction may be imminent.”
At that previous time, species like lilies, orchids, violets, roses and dogwoods were shown to have seen the biggest losses.
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