The Effects Of Climate Change On The Environment

Global temperatures have been steadily rising for years. However, this increase in temperature has been more pronounced within the last couple decades. This is due to increased carbon dioxide production by a variety of factors such as cattle, factory emission, and deforestation. These are just some of the factors that contribute to the rapidly changing climate. Carbon dioxide is the suggested as the main cause of global warming because its accumulation in the atmosphere causes heat that is typically reflected to space to be trapped. This trapped heat warms the earth and leads to increased global temperatures (Heger et al. 2011). The Increased global temperatures are now putting new stressors on life on earth. One particularly important group that is being affected is plants. Plants are vital to the planet because of their ability to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and food for themselves, which later can become a food source for an herbivore. More importantly since plants are able to absorb carbon dioxide their large numbers can be used to mitigate the effects of climate change. The

Tolerance is the ability of the plant to resist changing climate without altering itself through evolution. Tolerance is typically an inherent ability in plants, which means some plants are better at it than others. An example of a tolerance mechanism is the ROS pathway. This pathway gets activated when a stressor affects the plant; this includes damage through herbivores, pathogens, and heat stress. Once the stimulus activates the pathway molecules are stimulated and eventually cause a positive feedback loop which leads to a signal cascade that amplifies the initial response. This allows the plant to send various hormones and molecules throughout its system to lessen the damage from the stimulus (Xia et al. 2015). So what traits in a plant typically select for this survival