Mesic Prairie is highly vulnerable to climate change. Maintained by periodic fire, this system may have less capacity to adapt to climate change due to their extreme rarity and small and isolated nature that limit options to rearrange and migrate.

Submitted by dshannon on

Mesic Prairie is highly vulnerable to climate change (when evaluated in low to high climate change emissions scenarios). Mesic Prairie ecosystem occurs where soil depth and annual precipitation (and periodic fire) are primary drivers of prairie development and maintenance. Of all the prairie types, mesic prairie is considered to be the most vulnerable to climate change due to a combination of negative climate-related impacts and the small and isolated nature of remnants that confine and reduce opportunity to rearrange and migrate as a means to accommodate stressors. It’s possible that the frequency, intensity and timing of precipitation and drought may reduce burn windows and ultimately determine if, where and when managers can use prescribed wildfire treatments. The threat of woody species invasion due to lack of fire may be exacerbated by carbon dioxide enrichment and nitrogen deposition, in addition to the nutrient rich, moist soils associated with this community typ. Non-native invasives may get a boost from increasing carbon dioxide and nitrogen, longer growing seasons, milder winters, and ameliorated conditions associated with brush invasion. Significant factors that influence adaptive capacity of mesic prairie remnants are: 1) their small and isolated nature; and 2) their limited numbers in the state, and commensurately low genetic diversity. The landscape context of existing remnants is typically agricultural fields, roads or developed areas, thus opportunities for plants to adapt to a changing climate by shifting to newly suitable habitat niches are limited. Their small size also predisposes them to greater negative influences from external disturbances such as runoff. Given that mesic prairies often have high floral diversity, however, they enjoy built-in ‘functional redundancy’ that can buffer these systems from fluctuations and extremes in precipitation and temperature