[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EW-07-10-12-Poison-Ivy.mp3|titles=EW 07-10-12 Poison Ivy]
Plants make food from carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse gas; its increasing presence in our atmosphere contributes to a warming earth.
Exposing plants to higher carbon dioxide levels is, in effect, putting them on a high-carb diet.
That has been shown in a long-term experiment in North Carolina, where a pine forest was bathed in elevated carbon dioxide. For at least a few years, the growth of trees in the experimental plots outpaced their counterparts in ambient conditions.
Other plants in the experimental plots also had growth spurts…
“Poison ivy just grows gangbusters under high CO2.”
Dr. Jacqueline Mohan, a professor at University of Georgia, conducted this research as a graduate student at Duke University…
“The juvenile trees – little trees about the same size as the poison ivy I was measuring – they grew on average about 8% faster with the elevated CO2. Poison ivy, being a vine, grew 149% faster. So it’s just remarkably faster-growing with the high CO2, and it’s making a more poisonous form of the urushiol chemical – so it’s becoming more poisonous.”
This is just one of the many public health implications of climate change, which also include an increase in pollen production and the spread of diseases like West Nile Virus and encephalitis.
At time, the dangers of climate change seem remote. We can’t see or smell rising carbon dioxide. But quality-of-life problems – like excessive poison ivy and ragweed pollen – will bring climate change into our daily lives.
Web Extra
Full interview with Dr. Jacqueline Mohan, a professor at University of Georgia…
[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Mohan_full_edited.mp3|titles=Mohan_full_edited]Web Links
Jacqueline Mohan, University of Georgia
http://www.ecology.uga.edu/facultyMember.php?Mohan-30/
ClimateCentral: Does More CO2 Mean More Poison Ivy?
http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/does-more-co2-mean-more-poison-ivy/
Photo, taken on September 23, 2007, courtesy of Leonora Enking via Flickr.