ScienceDaily
(Nov. 11, 2012) — China's endangered wild pandas may need new dinner
reservations -- and quickly -- based on models that indicate climate change may
kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive.
In
this week's international journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from
Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences give forecast how
changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the
forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most
optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime
panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century.
The
scientists studied possible scenarios of climate change in the Qinling Mountains
in Shaanxi Province. At the northern boundary of China's panda distributional
range, the Qinling Mountains are home to around 275 wild pandas, about 17
percent of the remaining wild population. The Qinling pandas vary genetically
from other giant pandas, and their geographic isolation makes it particularly
valuable for conservation, but vulnerable to climate change.
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!