These changes have already begun: ecosystems across the world have been impacted during the recent decades of rapid climate change. Some of the strongest impacts are felt at the highest and lowest elevations: mountaintops and coastlines. WLBC researchers work in both of these ecosystems to understand historical changes, monitor contemporary changes, and plan for future changes to plants and to ethnobotanical traditions. We advance these goals through studying changes in vegetation patterns and in plant phenology, and through interviews with traditional knowledge keepers.

Beyond the arctic, mountains are the ecosystem most threatened by climate change. 

The IPCC projects temperatures for alpine regions to rise 6–8°C (11–14°F) by 2080, if the present trajectory of carbon emissions continues.

With increasing temperatures, plants are already moving up in elevation. For the highest alpine plants, however, there’s nowhere to go, and these highest-elevation plants are threatened directly by increased temperatures and indirectly by competition from lower-altitude plants extending their range. Indigenous mountain communities, already coping with the direct effects of climate change, also see traditional plant-based medicines becoming harder to find, alpine pastures declining as vegetation patterns change, and seasonal indicators falling out of synchrony.

Island and coastal indigenous communities are on the frontline of climate change.