Climate change causes plants to grow earlier in Swiss mountain regions
Published: Tuesday, Jun 25th 2024, 13:00
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At higher altitudes in the Alps, plants now start to grow on average six days earlier than in 1998 due to rising temperatures in mountain regions as a result of climate change, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Avalanche Research reported on Tuesday.
While the plants in the mountain regions began to grow from June 20 in 1998, they are now already sprouting from June 14, according to the press release from the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SFL). The growth rate and the point of maximum growth have also changed over the last 30 years, according to SFL biologist Michael Zehnder, who is quoted in the press release.
He investigated this using the weather stations of the Intercantonal Measuring and Information System (IMIS). Since the end of the 1990s, around 190 such stations have been measuring numerous weather data such as wind speed and temperature every half hour - and two thirds of them also measure snow depth.
In addition to snow, the ultrasound signal from the snow depth sensor measures the size of every object under the sensor. Zehnder took advantage of this: "We can use the snow depth signal to track plant growth in summer and observe how it changes over the years without having to be on site ourselves."
The weather stations thus help to investigate the consequences of climate change for the growth of alpine vegetation. Unless it snows - which also happens more often in summer, as the stations are located throughout the Swiss Alps. According to the SFL, algorithms then help to distinguish whether the sensors are measuring snow or grass. By linking to the sensors at the measuring station, the algorithms can separate snow from plants.
Measuring the height of the plants using the IMIS stations is not new, Zehnder said in the press release, but the new ML approach makes the results more accurate.
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