Above ground: How plants changed with warming

The percentage of grasses and forbs in experimental plots warmed by 2 C (3.6 F) over three decades was much lower than in nearby control plots, while shrubs became more common.

Charts show shrubs increasing while grasses and forbs, such as wildflowers, decrease.

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Percentage reflects coverage; forbs are flowering, non-grass herbaceous plants such as wildflowers

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-NDSource: Lara Souza, et al., PNAS, 2026Get the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper