News

Climate change may push Andean species skyward

27.02.2012

A new study led by researchers at Duke University has identified and mapped hundreds of endemic plant and animal species across 17,000 miles of east-facing Andean uplift, a section ranging through Bolivia and Peru. It found that only 20 percent of areas with the highest levels of biodiversity are protected by government regulations. Warming temperatures have accelerated a process of upslope migration, begun at the close of the last ice age, that threatens to push the region's biodiversity into increased competition, nutrient-poor soil conditions and, finally, thin air, according to forest ecologists working in the region. Home to nearly one-sixth of the world's plant species, as well as hundreds of kinds of mammals, birds and amphibians, the Andean cloud forests are one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth. They are also among the most vulnerable.