Climate change or increase in carbon dioxide levels across the world, while one on hand, is revealing a grim future for many species, on the other, is letting others thrive.
Like the grapevines, trumpet vine, poison ivy and Virginia creeper, the vines in the two South Carolina forests are found to increase surprisingly in their number by 10-fold! And, the increase in the last two decades is considerable.
The study in this growth suggests a major change in these forests’ landscape. Using adhesive roots or tendrils to climb trees, the vine stems have increased to 500 in 27 acres of forest area studied.
The study’s lead author, Bruce Allen informed that the simultaneous increase in all these plants’ growth reveals similar patterns in temperate and tropical forests in the south. Not just that. The increasing number of vines leads to the decreasing density of small trees at a fairly uniform rate.
So, though it seems to be true that this booming growth of the vines, creepers and the poison ivy in the wild will add to the nature’s green lush, this pace of the growth will also change the makeup of the forest to a considerable extend soon.
This in turn will have a major impact on other wild lives dependent on the present pattern.
Image