Climate change, which currently seems to be accelerating, regularly throws up a whole host of issues with more or less direct impact on the agricultural sphere. While some regions are prone to recurrent droughts and water shortage, climate conditions are growing a little more clement in others, raising the question of possible geographical shifts where some crops are concerned (will Cornwall one day be a claret-producing region?). Such a shift may occur through choice and human action (with the species concerned simply being planted elsewhere), but might it also happen naturally through the biological evolution of plants reacting to the new climate conditions?
To answer such a question, we need very long-term comparative data (going back to earlier periods of climate change) on long-lived, slowly-evolving plant species, whose behaviour we have been able to gauge over time. Here, trees (and the forests of which they are part) represent a particularly interesting subject for observation, as Antoine Kremer outlines in this article, drawing on the case of the temperate oaks. In the light of the evolutionary history of trees (their migration over time, natural selection, their resilience, adaptation and genetics), we can assess their capacity to cope with climate change, both individually and collectively. As Kremer goes on to emphasize, this enables us to learn various lessons for forest management with regard to assisting the migration of species, the timescales involved in such forestry management, the make-up of forests etc. At a time when the mortality of species and genetic changes in forests are increasingly under discussion, knowledge around the biological evolution of trees brings new elements for consideration in the adaptation to climate change.
This article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
