Soil conditions and seed predation could affect the ability of trees to migrate in response to climate change, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
“Researchers grew maple seedlings on the slopes of a Quebec mountain where climate conditions are more favourable for the trees at the bottom than at the top,” the Science Media Centre reports. “To test the effect of soil conditions, they also transported soil from the upper reaches—where maples don’t grow—to the lower reaches, and vice versa.” Even when climate conditions were right, “maples don’t grow well in soil from higher up the mountain, possibly because of a lack of the soil organisms the trees need. They also found that in the higher reaches
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