As a Result of Global Warming, Taiga Advancing Northward Reducing Size of Tundra, Tyumen Scholars Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 9 – As a result of global warming, the taiga is moving north at a rate of more than three kilometers a year, cutting into the size of Russia’s tundra areas and threatening the environment there because destructive insects are moving north even faster than trees and other useful plans, according to a study conducted by Tyumen and Helsinki scholars.

            There has not been anything like this during the last 7,000 years for which researchers have established a record, Viktor Gennadinik of Tyumen State University says; and consequently, its impact remains uncertain but it is beyond any doubt going to be dramatic (nauka.tass.ru/nauka/7652797).

            The scholars say that what is particularly striking is that different species of plants and animal life are moving northward at different rates, thus creating environments which are different than those which existed further south rather than simply extending them northward as many had expected.

            Many kinds of trees appear to be advancing northward at the rate of approximately a kilometer each year while insects and some other animals are moving that way two, three or even more kilometers a year, imposing changes on the tundra ecology even before the trees arrive and make it part of the taiga forests.

            And because the animals are all part of an integrated food chain, the movement of some northward more rapidly than others means that some species will increase in number rapidly while others may be at risk of extinction in these new zones, the Russian and Finnish scholars say.

            Some of these changes may benefit human inhabitants of these regions; but others will threaten their way of life.