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

多样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单个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，而降雨模式的变化可能会增加夏季的干旱压力。气候变化甚至可能使入侵植物物种（例如，目前适应地中海气候的植物）在英国生根发芽。一种用来预测物种分布如何随着气候变化而变化的方法是确定当前发现物种的地区的气候范围，然后预测该范围如何变化。然而，这种方法是有限的，而且只在大陆范围内有用，因为它没有考虑到所有其他可能决定一种植物是否能在一个地方生存的因素，比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农田的植物（杂草）如何对这些因素做出反应，以便为农民提供管理它们的建议。该提案将利用现有的杂草信息，帮助人们在区域尺度上对气候变化对植物群落的影响有一个大致的了解。我们将把能够预测植物对环境和管理的反应的计算机模型与对未来天气的模拟相结合来做到这一点。这项工作将帮助我们确定，如果气候发生变化，控制哪些植物在哪里生长的最重要因素是什么——是天气还是土地管理方式？我们还将能够预测，在给定地点的一个农场，能够在作物中生长的植物是否会在气候变化下与现在大致相似，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.