Word: fielded
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Beyond that, says David Lobell, a Stanford colleague of Field's and his co-author on a major 2007 review of how plants and climate interact, "while there's pretty clear evidence that CO2 helps plants, there's plenty of debate about how much it helps." One reason is that plants depend not only on carbon dioxide for healthy growth, but also on water and other nutrients. Increase CO2 without increasing the other factors, and you can get plants that are bigger, but relatively deficient in, say, nitrogen - meaning insects may have to eat more of each plant to stay...
...could be good for crops, since you can deliberately plant seeds that are suited to long summers. But in arid parts of the tropics, he says, where plant growth is limited by the availability of water, more frequent droughts could make things worse. "Large parts of the world," says Field, "are already at the warm edge of where things like to grow...
...principle, plants can shift their ranges as the climate changes. But as Kuparinen and her colleagues are only the most recent to note, that shifting won't necessarily keep pace with a shifting climate. "In general," says Field, "we don't have very good understanding of the mechanisms that allow plants to move around on the landscape." Current estimates, he says, are based largely on studies of ancient ecologies. "But our models are mostly not validated for the modern, human-dominated environment...
...short, says Field, "we've got a huge number of studies that have given us important insights about how plants will respond to climate change." But there's even more he and his colleagues don't know yet. And that means that any straightforward conclusion about whether climate change is good or bad for plants is by definition extremely premature...
...immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. The three Pakistani intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they lacked authority to speak to media on the record. They cited field informants and sources in militant ranks...