Saturday, December 22, 2018

Plant Hardiness Zones and Climate Change


The News-Gazette is publishing a series on how climate change may affect planting in the future with interviews with climatologists, looking at the USDA Hardiness Zone data and recent climate change assessments. Here's a quick excerpt from today's article:
Given the recent publication of the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the ominous conclusion that climate change is happening at an even faster rate than previously predicated, I have to wonder how it will impact plant hardiness zones.

How have these zones changed in the past? How will they change in the future? What do gardeners need to consider when selecting plants now and in the future? Over the next two editions of this column, I will be exploring the answers to these questions to help all of us as gardeners draw some meaningful conclusions...

The take-home message to me is that we really haven't experienced a significant shift in cold hardiness zones (with respect to historical data sets of average low temperatures) in recent iterations of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map since 1960. Although a half zone shift by itself is significant (5F), we have both lost and gained that amount in past map updates. However, recent national climate assessments in 2014 and 2018 do predict a significant change in climate that will impact the map as average annual low temperatures gradually rise. In addition, other aspects of the Illinois climate will change, along with temperature that will have an impact on gardening.
The full article is available here.

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