Overview
- The UC Davis team, publishing in Science on Thursday, projects that 7% to 16% of plant species could lose at least 90% of their habitat by 2100.
- The authors identify climate‑driven habitat loss, not slow dispersal, as the main driver of extinctions, which weakens the case that assisted migration will prevent large losses.
- Hotspots for high risk include southern Europe, the western United States, southern Australia, the Arctic and the Mediterranean, where suitable conditions are projected to vanish.
- The models also show local gains in species counts in wetter regions such as the eastern United States, India, Southeast Asia and southern South America as ranges reshuffle.
- A companion Kew Gardens analysis finds nearly 10,000 endangered flowering plants whose loss would erase about 21% of plant evolutionary history, raising risks for foods and materials people rely on.