Looking ahead it s just scary, said James Coleman, vice president of research and business development at the Desert Research Institute. We re talking about a massive change of that whole ecosystem. Coleman and colleagues from the University of Nevada, Reno and University of Nevada, Las Vegas examined how carbon dioxide affects desert plants over the last three years. Their conclusions were published in the science journal Nature. At a specially designed desert enclosure at the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas, scientists sprayed high concentrations of carbon dioxide some 50 percent higher than what is found in the air today across plots of desert plants.
Carbon dioxide helps fuel photosynthesis, the process through which plants are nourished and grow.
As expected, the elevated levels of carbon dioxide accelerated growth of the desert plants at the research site, both native and non-native. But the reaction of exotic grasses was particularly impressive. While scientists expected desert plants to react more strongly to a high carbon dioxide environment than plants found in other climates, they found the reaction by non-native grasses particularly surprising. That suggests that as emissions pour more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in coming decades, red brome will spread readily across southern Nevada s Mojave Desert while cheatgrass does the same thing in northern Nevada. Impacts would range from the loss of native plants and the animals that need them to increasing wildfire danger.