As temperatures go up, bison get smaller. Joseph Craine, research assistant professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University, examined how climate change during the next 50 years will affect grazing（放牧） animals such as bison and cattle in the Great Plains. The study, "Long-term climate sensitivity of grazer performance: a cross-site study," was recently published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE.

 

"Bison are one of our most important conservation animals and hold a unique role in grasslands¹ in North America," Craine said. "In addition to their cultural and ecological² significance, they're economically important both from a livestock³ perspective and from a tourism perspective. There are about half a million bison in the world."

 

Craine analyzed⁴ a data set of 290,000 weights, ages and sexes collected from 22 bison herds⁶ throughout the U.S. The information came from herds owned by the university's Konza Prairie Biological Station; Oklahoma's Nature Conservancy; Turner Enterprises; and other federal, state, nonprofit and commercial entities⁷. The organizations kept annual records of each animal in the herd⁵ and matched the data with the climates of the sites.

 

Based on differences in sizes of bison across herds, Craine found that during the next 50 years, future generations of bison will be smaller in size and weigh less. Climate is likely to reduce the nutritional⁸ quality of grasses, causing the animals to grow more slowly.

 

"We know that temperatures are going to go up," Craine said. "We also know that warmer grasslands have grasses with less protein, and we now know that warmer grasslands have smaller grazers. It all lines up to suggest that climate change will cause grasses to have less protein and cause grazers to gain less weight in the future."

 

Craine said the results of climate change in coming decades can already be seen by comparing bison in cooler, wetter regions with those in warmer, drier regions. For example, the average 7-year-old male bison in South Dakota weighed 1,900 pounds, while an average 7-year-old male bison in Oklahoma -- a warmer region -- weighed 1,300 pounds. The cause: grasses in the southern Great Plains have less protein than grasses in the northern Great Plains because of the warmer climate.

 

"The difference in temperature between those two states is around 20 degrees Fahrenheit⁹, which is about three times the projected increase in temperatures over the next 75 years," Craine said. "That's a pretty extreme difference and beyond the worst-case scenario¹⁰. But it is a clear indicator¹¹ that long-term warming will affect bison and is something that will happen across the U.S. over the next 50-75 years."

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