Lincoln University ecologist Philip Hulme has warned that climate change and tourism are causing weeds to spread “twice as fast” as native plants in New Zealand’s alpine ecosystems.
Hulme is the co-author of a European climate change study that used more than 130,000 records collected over 20 years in the Italian Alps to analyse the impact of rising temperatures on 1,334 plant species.
It found that weeds were spreading to higher altitudes much faster than native plants, with alpine roads and tourism developments helping to spread seeds.
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