New research by scientists at U. California-Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service indicates that climate change is moving global vegetation and biomass, possibly leaving people and wildlife vulnerable.

In a paper published Friday in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, Patrick Gonzalez, a visiting scholar at the campus’s Center for Forestry, indicates that nearly one billion people and numerous plants and animals live in vulnerable ecosystems that are at risk.

“Field observations from tropical, temperate and boreal ecosystems around the world show that climate change is shifting major vegetation zones up mountain slopes and toward the equators and poles,” Gonzalez said. “Boreal forests and tropical woodlands are shifting, not just single species.”

According to the paper, written in conjunction with Forest Service researchers Ronald Neilson, James Lenihan and Raymond Drapek, one-tenth to one-half of global land area could be highly vulnerable to more major vegetation shifts, putting both humans and wildlife at risk.

“Many plants and animals have specific habitat requirements,” Gonzalez said. “These vegetative shifts alter habitats in fundamental ways.”

Wildlife have different physiological tolerances to climate change, according to Dr. Terry Root, a biology professor, by courtesy, at Stanford University. Species must change location, either by moving toward the poles or moving up in elevation, in order to stay at the same temperature. Those who do not adapt suffer population drops that could lead to their eventual extinction.

The vegetation shifts could create an environment fostering wildfires, a particular concern for fire-prone California.

“Vegetation shifts can increase fuel for wildfires by increasing the amount of biomass available for burning,” Gonzalez said.

According to Stephen Schneider, a professor of biology at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, climate change has already resulted in early melting of California snow packs resulting in limited water supplies during the summer. This additional fuel, combined with drier, hotter weather and limited water supply may drastically increase the occurrences of wildfires in California.

Using a statistical analysis of observed climate data from the 20th century and climate projections for the 21st century, the team conducted further analysis of the results and classified land into one of five vulnerability classes – very high, high, medium, low or very low – as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uncertainty levels.

Classifying the land allows natural resource management agencies such as the National Park Services “to identify areas vulnerable to climate change and potential refuges so that they can plan how to help species and ecosystems adapt to changing conditions,” Gonzalez said.

While the data is useful to help mitigate the effects of shifts, actually lessening biome shifting and the associated risks to people and wildlife requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to Gonzalez.

“We can avoid the most drastic impacts of climate change by reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and cars that cause climate change,” he said.