university of oregon prairie plant study climate change

Research technician Chelsea Little (right) takes notes while Laurel Pfeifer-Meister gathers plant data as part of a University of Oregon study into the effects of climate change on the Northwest's native prairie plants.

(University of Oregon)

The Northwest's native prairie plants — including grasses and forbs — may face a tough time in their current ranges as temperatures warm because of global warming.

Preliminary results from a four-year, $1.8 million, U.S. Department of Energy-funded study show that plants grown in experimental plots under current-range conditions struggled to germinate with warming temperatures. Plants grown under conditions that they would experience beyond their present ranges (e.g. if populations shifted their ranges over time) experienced no negative effects from warming.

Scott Bridgham, a professor of biology at the University of Oregon, is leading the research, which has received a new $2.3 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue collecting data.

Bridgham's team — which includes collaborating scientists from Portland State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Duke University — has been growing 12 species of native grasses and forbs in experimental plots at three sites in Southern Oregon, Eugene and Olympia, Wash.

Scott Bridgham

Infrared lamps boost the temperatures, and an irrigation system increases rainfall. The equipment is used to mimic future climate conditions that are expected in the Northwest.

Climate projections say we can expect a more severe Mediterranean-like climate — with wetter winters and hotter, longer summers — by 2100, Bridgham said.

Those projections also suggest that the Washington plot's site will become more like Southern Oregon and that Southern Oregon will be more like California come the turn of the century, he said.

And while the simulated warming temperatures affected some of the plants, rainfall increases that are expected (and were mimicked) had little impact.

The team's overall results suggest native plants may have to shift their ranges further north or higher in elevation to survive the changing climate.

Meanwhile, another finding from the DOE-funded study: Carbon dioxide emissions from soil microbes and Northwest prairie plant roots in the Southern Oregon plot did not increase with warming temperatures but often decreased because the hotter temps dried out the soil.

UO doctoral student Lorien Reynolds, who is submitting a paper on the CO2-emission findings for publication, called the discovery "a bit of good news."

Researchers are concerned not only about the native prairie plants' responses to climate change but what those responses mean in terms of ecosystem conservation and invasive species.

In other science news (for the week ending Aug. 16, 2014):

— There are do-it-yourself projects, and then there's this: A Portland Community College student is perfecting and producing prosthetic hands using 3-D printing technology at MakerSpace, PCC's creative engineering lab. Jordan Nickerson hopes to turn his efforts into a business that helps improve access to low-cost prosthetics for people born without a hand or who have lost one through war or accidents. So far, Nickerson has won a little startup money and enlisted his roommate as a business partner in the venture, known as GRASP. And, yes, it just so happens that Nickerson was born without a left hand. (The Oregonian)

— Wow, the cool science and technology projects just keep coming from students: An elementary school Lego League robotics competition team from Canby has launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an app that would turn a smartphone into a beacon that helps rescue workers find victims following a natural disaster or other emergency. The app is designed to work with the phones even if cellphone towers are down. The app's appropriately called iRescue, and the kids (and their adult helpers) hope to bring it to market in about a month. (Kickstarter, KPTV)

— Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics think they may be onto possible evidence of dark matter. While looking at the elemental composition of galaxy clusters, the researchers found a bit of unusual emission data that could be from the decay of a dark matter particle. However, confirmation of the data still needs to come from other observations before anyone gets too OMG-they're-gonna-get-a-Nobel-for-this-for-sure excited. (IFLS)

— Flesh-ravaging, toxin-producing bacteria ordinarily wouldn't sound like a good thing — unless you can train those microbes to nosh on tumors. And researchers from a Johns Hopkins University cancer center have done just that, excising a toxin-makin' gene from Clostridium novyi, a soil bacterium, to turn it into a tool for enzymatically digesting tumors from the inside out while leaving healthy tissue unharmed. Their work is in what's called a "proof of concept" stage, or an early phase of clinical drug development. (Discover, National Institutes of Health's PubMed database)

— She was the first submarine in history to sink a warship, and now the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate sub of Civil War lore, is slowly, laboriously being restored by scientists in South Carolina. The sub was discovered in 1995 and brought to a lab in 2000, at which time some work on the sub began, including recovering the remains of crew members who had died aboard her when she sank in 1864. On Tuesday, cleaning and restoration went into full swing on the sub, which will ultimately be put on museum display. (CBS News)

— Domestic cats: So fluffy, so cuddly, so mysterious in their ways. And now our feline friends may be forced to give up some of their mysteries. That's because sequencing of the cat genome has finally been completed. Researchers hope all that genetic info will provide insights into feline evolution and disease, and the disease part could be particularly interesting, considering that cats and humans share about 250 analogous genetic ailments with humans, not to mention similar infectious illnesses, such as leukemia and AIDS. As such, coming to understand our kitty companions better could expand on what we know about ourselves and our health. (Smithsonian.com)

— Finally, for all those helpful members of the public who like to point out every typo a journalist ever makes, I give you this: Science says it's hard to catch your own typos because the brain is designed to generalize what it's reading and to come up with meaning based on expectations. When we're reading our own work, we know what we meant to convey and we fill in the gaps (or subconsciously edit the errors). Therefore, it's harder to spot specific errors that don't meet our expectations of meaning. These days many news organizations have fewer staff members available to proofread copy, so more writers (yours truly included) are proofing their own work. As such, to the persistent typo-spotters who like to point out every tiny imperfection, I say (in a friendly spirit): We appreciate the heads-up, but give us a break sometimes, would ya? And to the researchers who study typos, I say: Thanks for collecting data on what curmudgeonly copy editors* have known anecdotally, oh, since the invention of curmudgeonly copy editors — that it's far easier to spot someone else's mistakes than it is to find your own. (*Yours truly also has been a curmudgeonly copy editor and curses herself often for missing her own typos.) (Wired)

— Susannah L. Bodman, sbodman@oregonian.com, www.facebook.com/Sciwhat.Science, Twitter: @Sciwhat