The consequences of climate change can be seen particularly clearly in the cold regions of the world. In the Arctic, the temperature has risen by around two degrees Celsius over the past 50 years - more than anywhere else. This also has consequences for the unique vegetation of the polar region, as Stefan Kruse and Ulrike Herzschuh from the Alfred Wegener Institute report: if global warming is not limited by rigorous climate protection measures, by the middle of the millennium, only just under six percent of the current area of the Siberian tundra in northeastern Russia could be left, the researchers write in the journal "eLife". This would be a disaster for the local flora and fauna.
For her study, Kruse and cardiac shelter used a model that allowed them to present changes in the tree line to the tundra at the level of individual individuals. It was shown that the Siberian larch forest extends through the warmer temperatures at a speed of about 30 kilometers per decade north. The tundra, which is limited on the other side by the Arctic Ocean, will continue to shrink until it disappeared almost completely from the scene in the mid -millennium.
The researchers also modelled what happens if it is possible to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius with climate protection measures from a global perspective. In this case, a large part of the tundra would also be lost, but about 30 percent could probably be saved. However, these would be limited to two widely separated areas on the Taimyr Peninsula in the west and Chukotka in the east.
"If we continue like this, this ecosystem will disappear in the long term," explains Eva Klebelsberg from the WWF Germany, who, together with the Alfred Wegener Institute, works for the designation of protected areas, in a press release. It is therefore important to expand the protected areas and to strengthen the protective measures to save what is still saved and to maintain the unique biodiversity of the tundra. In the Siberian tundra, whose vegetation is primarily characterized by lichen, mosses, grasses and dwarf bushes that grow over permafrost floors, numerous animal and plant species are native that have adapted to the extreme weather conditions over time. The former include reindeer and arctic bumblebees, the latter white silver root and arctic poppy.
