(ORDO NEWS) — The Siberian tundra may disappear by the middle of the third millennium. An article about this was published in eLife.
Due to global warming, the average temperature in the Arctic is gradually rising. As a result, the border of the zone of Siberian larch forests is shifting to the north, displacing the tundra.
Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have created a computer model for further expansion of the forest zone at the expense of the tundra.
As a result, they came to the conclusion that only serious measures to protect the climate will allow at least 30 percent of the tundra to be preserved by the middle of the third millennium.
“For the Arctic Ocean and the ice zone, current and future warming will have serious consequences,” says Ulrike Hertzsch.
“But climate change will affect land as well. Vast areas of tundra in Siberia and North America will be significantly reduced. In a worst-case scenario, there will be virtually no tundra left by the middle of the millennium.”
The model used by scientists depicts the entire life cycle of Siberian larch in the transition zone between tundra and forest – from the formation and dispersal of seeds to germination and the formation of adult trees.
Thus, scientists were able to track the northward movement of trees under different scenarios of climate change with an accuracy of individual units. As a result, the maximum speed of movement of the border of the zone was 30 kilometers per decade.
The conservation of the tundra zone is considered an important ecological task, since it is home to a large number of plants and animals that are not found outside.
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