Climate Change Threatens Giant Pandas' Bamboo Buffet -- And Survival

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2012) — China's endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations -- and quickly -- based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive.

In this week's international journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences give forecast how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century.

The scientists studied possible scenarios of climate change in the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province. At the northern boundary of China's panda distributional range, the Qinling Mountains are home to around 275 wild pandas, about 17 percent of the remaining wild population. The Qinling pandas vary genetically from other giant pandas, and their geographic isolation makes it particularly valuable for conservation, but vulnerable to climate change.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121111153722.htm