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A new study finds native wildflowers in California are losing species diversity after multiple years of drier winters. The first direct evidence of climate change impacts in the state’s grassland communities, the study shows that 15 years of warmer and drier winters are creating a direct loss of native wildflowers.
The researcher team confirmed that drought-intolerant species suffered the worst declines. Similar trends have been found in other Mediterranean environments, such as those of southern Europe, bolstering the case for increased climate change awareness in the world’s semi-arid regions. Taken together with climate change predictions, the future grassland communities of California are expected to be less productive, provide less nutrition to herbivores, and become more vulnerable to invasion by exotic species, the study said. The researchers expect these negatives to cascade up through the food web—affecting insects, seed-eating rodents, birds, deer and domesticated species like cattle, all of which rely on grasslands for food.Image credit: Susan Harrison
