F E AT U R E
Plants for a changing landscape The current plant palette for each climatic zone may no longer be resilient enough to cope with the effects of climate change, nor provide the appropriate services in the most effective manner. Ross Cameron
University of Sheffield
Research at the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield, is closely aligned with the UN Sustainability Goals on Climate Action and Sustainable Cities. Landscape architects have a huge role to play in adapting our cities to climate change. Specifically, this means using landscape and its associated vegetation to cool our cities, mitigate floods, trap atmospheric carbon and enable our built infrastructure to save energy. Green infrastructure is fundamental in ensuring our cities remain liveable in the forthcoming decades, and green
infrastructure largely means ‘plants’ – but which plants? Sadly, the current plant palette for each climatic zone may no longer be resilient enough to cope with the effects of climate change, nor provide the appropriate services in the most effective manner. We need to think more imaginatively to ensure our green infrastructure actually survives and remains functional in the future. Our research has been evaluating the impacts of climate change on landscape plants. We have tried to identify future ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ through a better understanding of how key plant traits affect both a plant’s capacity to survive (resilience) and to continue to provide the services we desire (functionality), as the climate warms. Understanding these traits may help us identify appropriate landscape taxa for future use, without the need for extensive, long-term trialling (Cameron and Blanusa, 2016). Traits include obvious factors such as leaf size, but also aspects such as the capacity
to regulate their internal life systems when under stress. These approaches are analogous to food crops, where science is trying to identify those traits that ensure survival but also underpin a viable crop yield. Predicting The Future? It is a brave person that predicts the future, but powerful modelling based on CO2 emissions has allowed us to develop different future scenarios; so called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). Most scientists believe we are on the RCP6 pathway, which represents an increase in mean global temperature of between 1.4 and 3.1oC. As this is mean temperature, that equates to a UK climate by 2100 roughly equivalent to northern Spain today. What does this mean for landscape plants? If climate change meant a smooth transition from one climate to another, and that this transition was slow enough, 1. The ‘wild’ native primrose has traits and strategies that helped it cope with a range of stress factors associated with a changing climate. © Ross Cameron
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