FIU: Cloud forests struggle to keep pace with climate change

The cloud forests of the Andes Mountains are not migrating fast enough in the face of global warming, according to FIU researchers.

Plant and animal species are migrating upslope throughout the tropics to mitigate the effects of increasing global temperatures. But the cloud forests, with their signature cloud and mist cover along the rainsforest canopy, are not keeping pace.

Evan Rhem, a biological sciences Ph.D. student and researcher at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens, has spent three years in Manú National Park (Peru) studying how the region’s tropical cloud forests will adapt to climate change. The delicate and interconnected ecosystem comprises less than 1 percent of all the world’s forests, but is among the most biologically diverse and ecologically important places on Earth.