Climate change is leading to an increase in late blight and other diseases in Andean potato fields, and farmers are moving up the mountain in response. They’re also trying to figure out which of their dozens of varieties — plus others from genebanks, especially CIP’s — are going to do best, where. Hear all about it at NPR. There’s a great slideshow too.
Project BudBurst tracks climate change
Here’s a great idea:
Project BudBurst allows people to enter their backyard spring leaf budding and bloom data into an online database that will help track the changing blooming times of specific types of plants.
It covers basically native ornamental trees and shrubs in the US, but surely it could be applied to agricultural species, and be extended worldwide?
More from the Human Flower Project.
SBSTTA [decides]
SBSTTA’s recommendations on the review of the CBD’s programme of work on agrobiodiversity are out, after last week’s smackdown. As usual, there are analyses at UKabc and IISD. The general consensus seems to be that the recommendations have been weakened, but I talked to one person familiar with the negotiations who thought the text was actually clearer and more focused now. But a lot of square brackets remain, in particular the whole section on biofuels. One thing that struck me is the invitation by SBSTTA “to evaluate and characterize germplasm potentially suitable for adaptation to climate change.” I didn’t find that in the original document, so I am assuming it was added during the negotiations. It seems unusual for a CBD document in recognizing — albeit implicitly — the importance of ex situ conservation, at least in the context of climate change. But I don’t really know how these things work. I hope someone will explain it to me.
Agrobiodiversity and climate change in Madagascar
There’s a workshop going on in Antananarivo on the Impacts of Climate Change on Madagascar’s Biodiversity and Livelihoods. My friend Robert Hijmans is there and he sent me the link to the flickr site of one of the participants, Ratoza Harinjaka, who’s got some photos of the meeting up. Including this one of Robert.
Ratoza has kindly given his permission for us to use the photo. He has blogged about the workshop. Thanks for the use of the pic, Ratoza. If either you or Robert would like to write something for us on the meeting, you’re most welcome to do so. It sounds like the recommendations will be on the Foko website in due course. But it’s always nice to get it from the horse’s mouth.
Plantstress website
All you ever wanted to know about helping plants cope with environmental stresses.