According to China Science Daily on Thursday, a group of researchers has uncovered the reasons that drive the higher movement of the world's treelines, offering new proof for the influence of climate change on global ecosystems.

The extent to which climate change affects mountain treelines is unknown, as they may also be influenced by human activity.

A research team led by Zeng Zhenzhong of China's Southern University of Science and Technology's School of Environmental Science and Engineering created a global mountain treeline database by collecting high-resolution remote-sensing images covering 916,000 kilometers of closed-loop mountain treelines across 243 mountains around the world.

Mountain treelines that are closed-loop ring a mountain and are less likely to have been impacted by human activities and land use.

The group discovered that temperature is the primary climatic driver of treeline elevation in boreal and tropical regions, but precipitation is the primary influence in temperate zones after studying the database.

According to the study, which was published in the journal Global Change Biology, almost 70 percent of closed-loop mountain treelines rose higher at an average rate of 1.2 meters per year throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The study also discovered that treelines shift the fastest in tropical environments, at a rate of 3.1 meters each year on average. Some treelines, for example, are rising at a pace of 10 meters per year in Malawi, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia.

According to He Xinyue, the paper's first author, while the upward movement of treelines means more trees can absorb more carbon from the atmosphere and increase the habitat of some forest species, it also offers challenges for vulnerable ecosystems at high altitudes.

High-altitude plants and animals are often extremely sensitive to environmental changes. As treelines rose, they began to fight for space and nourishment, endangering some indigenous species, he added.

(With input from Xinhua)

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