Climate Change and Its Impact on Mountainous Plant Species: A Review

Abstract

Climate change poses unprecedented threats to ecosystems worldwide, and mountainous regions with rare ecosystems, unique landscapes, a large number of endemic species, and enormous plant biodiversity are highly sensitive to the effects of climate change. Early spring and late autumn events are major phenological changes observed in plants in response to climate change, and such changes mainly disturb the interaction between plants and their pollinators, thereby affecting the fitness and survival of both species. Climate warming is causing plant species to shift upward along the elevational gradient in the mountain, resulting in species accumulation at higher elevations and range contraction of several alpine plant species. Further, climate warming is augmenting the plant invasion by removing climatic barriers, thus threatening the diversity of native plant species. Moreover, climate warming is contributing to habitat fragmentation and loss and accelerating the associated impacts. All these impacts of climate change can potentially alter the composition, structure, and function of pristine mountain ecosystems, which leads to irreversible biodiversity losses. Thus, various climate change mitigation strategies, such as conventional mitigation strategies, negative emissions technologies, and radiative forcing or geoengineering technologies, are suggested to stabilize climate warming, thereby conserving irreversible global biodiversity loss.