While warming is pushing some European vegetation north, toward cooler weather, a new study finds that for many forest plants, there is a much greater pull westward. Researchers say these plants are chasing down nitrogen, a key nutrient supplied by pollution in Western Europe.
For the study, researchers tracked 266 forest plants over several decades, finding that many plants found in Eastern Europe — such as tufted hair grass and seedlings of silver fir, hornbeam, and sycamore — are migrating west, where cars, power plants, and factories are producing huge sums of nitrogen dioxide.
For some plants the shift is rapid — wood sorrel is moving west at a rate of around 3 miles a year. And nitrogen-loving plants are often displacing native vegetation.
The study, published in the journal Science, found that plants are 2.6 times more likely to move west than north, challenging the conventional view that vegetation is primarily migrating north, in response to climate change.
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