A new study from the University of California-Berkeley, has found that vegetation around the world is on the move as the result of climate change.

Researchers have found that over the past century, vegetation has been gradually moving toward the poles and up mountain slopes, where temperatures are cooler, as well as toward the equator, where rainfall is greater.

Moreover, the study found that an estimated one-tenth to one-half of the land mass on Earth will be highly vulnerable to climate-related vegetation shifts by the end of this century, depending upon how effectively humans are able to curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study.

“This is the first global view of observed biome shifts due to climate change,” said the study’s lead author Patrick Gonzalez, a visiting scholar at the Center for Forestry at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. “It’s not just a case of one or two plant species moving to another area. To change the biome of an ecosystem, a whole suite of plants must change.”

According to the University of California-Berkeley, researchers calculated that from 1901 to 2002, mean temperatures significantly increased on 76 percent of global land, with the greatest warming in boreal, or subarctic, regions. The most substantial biome shifts occurred where temperature or precipitation changed by one-half to two standard deviations from 20th century mean values, the report said.

“Approximately one billion people now live in areas that are highly to very highly vulnerable to future vegetation shifts,” said Gonzalez. “Ecosystems provide important services to people, so we must reduce the emissions that cause climate change, then adapt to major changes that might occur.”

The massive BP oil spill in the Gulf  is an ecological disaster and will only worsen the pollution that the U.S. already pumps into the Gulf  through the Mississippi River with agricultural and urban waste.

Michigan State University professor Nathaniel Ostrom said that while an out-of-control gusher deep in the Gulf of Mexico fouls beaches and chokes marshland habitat, another threat could be growing below the oil-slicked surface.

The nation’s worst oil spill could worsen and expand the oxygen-starved region of the Gulf labeled “the dead zone” for its inhospitability to marine life, Ostrom said. It could already be feeding microbes that thrive around natural undersea oil seeps, he says, tiny critters that break down the oil but also consume precious oxygen.

“At the moment, we are seeing some indication that the oil spill is enhancing hypoxia,” or oxygen depletion, Ostrom said. “It’s a good hint that we’re on the right track, and it’s just another insult to the ecosystem – people have been worried about the size of the hypoxic zone for many years.”

The dead zone is believed to stem from urban runoff and nitrogen-based fertilizers from farmland swept into the Gulf by the Mississippi River. Higher springtime flows carry a heavier surge each year, nourishing algae blooms that soon die and sink. Those decay and are eaten by bacteria that consume more oxygen, driving out marine life and killing that which can’t move, such as coral. The dead zone can grow to the size of a small state.

With the spill overlapping a section of the dead zone, the impact on that region is unknown. As it happened, Ostrom earlier had tapped zoology major Ben Kamphuis to be on the Gulf in late May for a research cruise focused on nitrogen cycling. When the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig blew out and sank April 20, Ostrom and collaborator Zhanfei Liu from the University of Texas at Austin quickly landed federal support to expand their inquiry.

Kamphuis, a junior from Holland, Michigan, learned far more than water sampling techniques during his week aboard the research vessel Pelican.

“Down there, (the oil spill) really affects a ton of people. I really didn’t realize it before going, but after going on the trip I realized how much we can help the people in that area.”

With dozens of water samples now returned to the lab, Ostrom, Kamphuis and food science sophomore Sam DeCamp, another undergraduate research associate, are setting up equipment to analyze them in the coming months. They want to know whether the oil in the water will promote oxygen starvation, and if so, how.

Oil-hungry microbes can be expected to consume more oxygen from the water as they feast on hydrocarbons, Ostrom says. But the oil slick and chemical dispersants also could reduce the flow of oxygen from the atmosphere to the ocean, and possibly reduce the sunlight available to nourish oxygen-producing marine plant life.

Financial support for the project came from the National Science Foundation and the MSU College of Natural Science.

A jack of many science trades, Ostrom is on faculty in the MSU Department of Zoology and the MSU Environmental Science and Policy Program. He is a biogeochemist who focuses his studies on the interaction of organisms with their chemical and physical environments.

Michigan State researchers were in the right place at the right time to contribute to our understanding of the effects of such a massive oil spill, he says, pointing to the oil-eating microbes as likely the biggest, if unrecognized, players in the drama.

“We’re fortunate to have them,” he said. “They’re doing the cleanup – not BP.”

Iowa State University Extension grain markets specialist Chad Hart said that with the latest failed efforts to stop the flow of oil from an uncapped well into the Gulf of Mexico, projections are that the spill may not be contained until late summer, or later.

That could affect grain prices for the United States and overseas markets, Hart said.

Hart, assistant professor of economics, says that if the oil slick enters the shipping lanes there could be a slowdown in shipping traffic.

“If the oil slick got into what is called the Southwest Passage – which is a canal that goes from New Orleans out to the Gulf of Mexico – we would be looking at severe delays in getting our corn and soybeans shipped overseas,” said Hart.

Ships can sail through the oily water, but would need to be cleaned when they enter port.

“When a ship comes into port, it would have to be cleaned if it went through the oil slick,” said Hart. “And then when it goes to their destination, it would have to be cleaned again when it arrives.”

The result would be much slower movement of grain out of the Midwest to foreign markets.

More than 60 percent of United States grain goes through the port of New Orleans, according to Hart.

Right now, according to Hart, the oil spill is moving mainly to the east, so there has been little impact on the shipping lanes, which lay to the west of the slick.

“If we end up with a bottleneck down there, we could see prices in the U.S. fall from 10 to 50 cents (per bushel),” said Hart. “Katrina had a similar impact. If that happens, people will start to look at alternative shipping routes. For instance, right now, most of our soybeans that are going to China, go through New Orleans. People may start shipping overland to the Pacific Northwest by rail to ship over to China. That is more expensive, but it is an alternative if the gulf slows down.”

As long as the spill stays clear of the shipping lanes for the next few months, Hart doesn’t feel there will be a huge impact on prices.

“In some ways we were lucky on the timing,” said Hart. “We ship most of our grain earlier in the year, so right now there are smaller amounts of grain moving.”