www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
World
Home / World / Reporter's Journal

Modern science is racing to catch up with Earth's plant life

By Chris Davis in New York | China Daily USA | Updated: 2016-05-11 11:24
Share
Share - WeChat

Plants are everywhere, but how much do we really know about them?

A report from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, calling itself the first document to collate current knowledge on the state of the world's plants, is laying out a baseline for the massive undertaking of doing inventory on planet Earth's plant collection.

Just how many vascular plant species are known to science? How many new species are there? How many are being lost forever? How is climate change affecting them?

The plan is for the study - "State of the World's Plants" - to be updated and added to each year, appropriately a kind of organic, growing data base.

"We cannot claim to have covered all of the evidence currently available," the report's author Professor Kathy J. Willis, science director at Kew gardens, writes. "We hope to raise the profile of plants among the global community and highlight not only what we do know about threats, status and uses, but also what we don't."

"The positive is we're still discovering lots of new plants, about 2,000 each year, new plants for food, for fuel, for drugs," Willis said. "On the negative, we've seen a huge change in land cover, mainly driven by cultural activity, with a little bit of climate change in there as well."

More than 80 top scientists contributed to the document and their findings suggest this project could turn into a mushrooming affair.

With an estimated 391,000 vascular plant species known to science, an average of 2,000 new ones are discovered and named each year.

China, Brazil and Australia have been the top three source countries for the identification of new plants for the last 10 years, with China logging in about 150 new species annually.

Among the new finds for 2015 was a carnivore - the insect-eating Drosera magnifica which grows to five-feet tall. Seems hard to miss, but it's in Brazil.

And gastronomes will be pleased to learn that 13 new members of the onion, garlic, scallion, shallot, leek and chives family were discovered, including five new cultivatable onions.

The report also finds that 21 percent of species are threatened with extinction, mainly because habitat is being cleared for human use.

An estimate 369,000 species of flowering plants are documented by modern science; 31,128 plant types are used for medicine (17,810 species in the pursuit of good health), human and animal food, fuel and things like textiles and construction materials.

It is too early to accurately judge the impact of climate change, Willis told The Associated Press, but the report finds most of the world's ecosystems have experienced a greater than 10 percent change in land-cover in the last 10 years, due to changes in land use and climate change.

Yet, "less than 10 percent of the Earth's vegetated surface demonstrates high sensitivity to climatic variability," the report said.

The arcane method of discovering, describing and naming a new species may seem of only academic value, but Timothy M.A. Utteridge, head of identification and naming at the Royal Botanical Gardens, explained that the information is vital if modern science is to protect plants.

Last year alone he helped name 12 new species and sees a remarkable number of new plants tagged in Australia, Brazil and China, all of which are developing new databases with comprehensive details about their plants.

That's step one in protecting those plants, he said.

"If this plant doesn't have a name, and it falls over in the forest, no one knows," he said. "Once we have a specimen, and a name, we put that on the map," he said, adding that it's important for "conservation assessment."

Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com.

Most Viewed in 24 Hours
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
主站蜘蛛池模板: 中文字幕无线码中文字幕网站 | 日韩专区亚洲国产精品 | 综合色久七七综合七七蜜芽 | 久久草网站 | 日韩视频欧美视频 | 国产精品久久久久久久久久一区 | 嫩草一区二区三区四区乱码 | 欧美日韩国产亚洲综合不卡 | 国产免费资源 | 三及毛片 | 农村寡妇偷毛片一级 | 亚洲国产老鸭窝一区二区三区 | 国产第九页 | 日日摸人人拍人人澡 | 亚洲网站www | 久热色 | 亚洲另类激情综合偷自拍图 | 亚洲国产精品乱码在线观看97 | 日韩精品一区二区三区免费视频 | 国产女人在线视频 | 久久精品国产精品亚洲综合 | 日本韩国欧美一区 | 日韩中文字幕精品 | 国产91成人 | 国产91色综合久久免费 | 香港黄页亚洲一级 | 色日韩 | 欧美成人免费观看国产 | 美女张开腿给男人捅 | 成年人视频免费网站 | 91香蕉成人 | 扒开两腿猛进入爽爽视频 | 欧美三级成版人版在线观看 | a级毛片免费观看网站 | 97国产成人精品视频 | 久久精品成人欧美大片免费 | 色老头老太做爰视频在线观看 | 成年免费大片黄在线观看一 | 欧美成人影院免费观 | 久草视频在线首页 | 日韩国产午夜一区二区三区 |