Assessing the impact of climate change on the assembly and function of arable plant communities

多样化的植物群落是乡村结构的重要组成部分。除了具有内在的文化和审美价值外，它们还提供了支持野生动物的资源。全球变暖很可能会改变个别植物物种的分布和群落的组成。例如，气温升高会影响植物开花的时间，改变降雨模式可能会增加夏季的干旱压力。气候变化甚至可能允许入侵植物物种(例如，目前适应地中海气候的物种)在英国生存。一种用来预测物种分布如何随气候变化而变化的方法是，确定目前发现物种的地区的气候范围，然后预测该范围可能如何变化。然而，这种方法是有限的，而且只在大陆范围内有用，因为它没有考虑到可能决定一种植物能否在当地生存的所有其他因素，如土地管理或来自其他植物的竞争。多年来，科学家们一直在研究适应于作物田(杂草)的植物对这些因素的反应，以便为农民提供如何管理它们的建议。这项提案将利用有关杂草的现有信息，帮助在区域范围内对气候变化对植物群落的影响有一个总体的了解。我们将通过将能够预测植物对环境和管理的反应的计算机模型与未来天气可能是什么样子的模拟相结合来实现这一点。这项工作将帮助我们决定，如果气候变化，在控制哪些植物在哪里生长时，什么是最重要的--是天气还是土地管理方式？我们还将能够预测，对于一个给定地点的农场，在气候变化下，能够在作物中生长的植物是否会与现在大致相似，或者是否会发生变化。这可能会对杂草的控制方式和它们所能支持的生物多样性产生影响。

Diverse plant communities are an important component of the fabric of the countryside. As well as having intrinsic cultural and aesthetic value, they provide the resources that support wildlife. It is likely that global warming will alter the distribution of individual plant species and the composition of communities. For example, increasing temperatures will affect the time plants flower and changing rainfall patterns may increase drought stress in the summer. Climate change may even allow invasive plant species (for example, ones that are currently adapted to a Mediterranean climate) to establish in the UK. One way that has been used to predict how the distribution of species may vary in response to climate change is to determine the climatic range of the areas where a species is currently found now and then to predict how that range may shift. However, this approach is limited and is only useful on a continental scale, because it doesn't take into account all the other factors that might determine whether a plant can survive in a locality such as land management or competition from other plants. For many years, scientists have been studying how plants adapted to cropped fields (weeds) respond to these factors in order to advice farmers how to manage them. This proposal will use the information available on weeds to help develop a general understanding of the impact of climate change on plant communities at a regional scale. We will do this by combining computer models that are able to predict the response of plants to the environment and management with simulations of what the weather might be like in the future. The work will help us to decide what is most important in controlling which plants grow where if the climate changes - is it the weather or the way land is managed? We will also be able to predict whether, for a farm in a given location, the plants that are able to grow in the crops will be broadly similar to now under climate change or if there will be changes. This may have consequences for the way weeds are controlled and the biodiversity they can support.