Climate change is impacting Illinois' natural areas and the delicate ecological balances everywhere from our lakes and rivers to forests and wildlife. These native ecosystems and the valuable services they provide are at risk from intense storms events which can destroy trees, disturb and kill animals, and spread invasive species. Both extreme heat and drought stress plants and animals. Rivers and creeks are likely to flood more often. Animal species will be forced to move to seek more habitable environment.
Learn more about the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Climate Action Plan.
Pollinators' complicated relationship with climate change
The general consensus is that habitat loss is the biggest threat to pollinators, but climate change is still a major threat to pollinators. Perhaps worse, its impacts could exacerbate the threats that are already pushing pollinators into decline, such as habitat loss, pesticide exposure, pathogens, and invasive species impacts.
Climate change has many direct and indirect impacts on insect pollinators.
Direct impacts are usually driven by things like air temperature, precipitation, or CO2 levels. Our hypothetical direct impact shows how precipitation drops can stress insects. Temperature changes can be similarly disastrous, causing issues with life-stage development or interfering with insect’s ability to overwinter.
Indirect impacts are more tangential and can be harder to understand. The following three indirect impacts are an illustration of how complex these knock-on climate change impacts can be: Pollen protein levels, decreases in flower biodiversity, and reduced genetic diversity.
Explore how to help pollinators
Climate change and invasive species
Shifts in growing conditions will be good for some species and bad for others. This will also be true with invasive species as they are a diverse and varied group and climate change will affect them in a variety of ways.
When looking at invasive plants and climate change, it is useful to talk about two different plant strategies: being a generalist or a specialist.
- Generalist plants tend to be able to grow across the spectrum of habitat types - dry or wet forests, upland or lowland soils, sunny or shady environments - and have a wide tolerance of different climatic conditions.
- Specialist plants have a narrow range of habitat conditions that they can grow in and tend to not be found when conditions vary outside of that narrow window. They also tend to have a restricted range due to climatic constraints.
In general, invasive plants tend to be super generalists with extremely wide climatic tolerances and will likely be less impacted by shifts in climate compared to many of our native plant species which are more specialists. As many native species reduce in abundance due to shifts in climate change, invasive plants will continue to thrive.
The shifts in growing conditions in Illinois are expected to increase temperatures on average, which may allow southern invasive species to expand northward, aided by the high seed production and effective long-distance dispersal mechanisms such as wind and bird-dispersed seed, both traits that are common among invasive species in Illinois. We are already seeing expansions of invasive privets (Ligustrum sp.) and Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) into central and northern Illinois.
Controlling invasive species and promoting a high diversity of native species and intact communities are sound management strategies to both provide some resilience to climate change and lessen the impacts of invasive species.