Environment

Mountains hold climate change surprise, scientists find

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
by Pete Spotts, Staff writer

Mountains are shaped differently than scientists thought they were, and that could be good news for mountain-dwelling species adapting to climate change

A bird flies over a blossoming poppy field against the backdrop of a city and the Tien Shan mountains at outskirts of Almaty, Kazakhstan, May 14. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)
A bird flies over a blossoming poppy field against the backdrop of a city and the Tien Shan mountains at outskirts of Almaty, Kazakhstan, May 14. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

Global warming is expected to leave many plants and animals living on the world’s mountains with nowhere to go but up – increasing their risk of extinction as they chase climatological comfort zones through landscapes that relentlessly shrink as they approach a summit.

At least that’s the concept that has held sway for the past 30 years. But this simple picture is wrong for many of the world’s major mountain ranges, a new study finds.

Instead, in many cases these migrants may wind up reaching altitudes where the landscape is relatively flat and extensive, giving them more room to spread out than they had at their original locations and perhaps enhancing their chances of surviving. More…