Plant migration under climate change

Climate change exposes plant communities to a variety of stressors that may require species to relocate to track suitable conditions. For most plants, this process is unlikely to happen on its own due to the rapid speed of climate change coupled with barriers to dispersal. However, limited information is available on candidate species that could be planted to create climate-resilient communities. This study aims to identify species that can be planted to build ‘climate-smart’ wetland forest communities in the Northeastern United States. We selected Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) as a species characterizing these communities for its large latitudinal range and unique ability to tolerate flood conditions in wetland communities, which are especially threatened in the Northeast. We used multivariate analyses using 645 plots from comparable plant surveys from state and Federal agencies to test for significant differences between communities across USDA hardiness zones. Our study found that hardiness zones are a significant predictor of differences between forested wetland plant communities. This suggests that forested wetland communities can be maintained with a variety of native plant species as temperatures warm with climate change. From these results, we generated a list of common species associated with multiple hardiness zones that can be used to support the climate-informed management of communities.