In the face of climate change, will trees be…shorter?

Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.

Climate refers to the prevailing weather conditions in a specific area over an extended period. As the saying goes, “Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.” Climate is influenced by geographic factors, such as latitude, terrain, and proximity to bodies of water.

Though evaporation from plant leaves drives transpiration, it also results in loss of water. Because water is critical for photosynthetic reactions and other cellular processes, evolutionary pressures on plants in different environments have driven the acquisition of adaptations that reduce water loss.

Water plays a significant role in the life cycle of plants. However, insufficient or excess of water can be detrimental and pose a serious threat to plants.

Survival trees are a non-parametric method used in survival analysis to model the relationship between a set of covariates and the time until an event of interest occurs, often referred to as the "time-to-event" or "survival time." This method is particularly useful when dealing with censored data, where the event has not occurred for some individuals by the end of the study period, or when the exact time of the event is unknown.
 Building a Survival Tree
Constructing a...

Many human characteristics, like height, are shaped by both nature—in other words, by our genes—and by nurture, or our environment. For example, chronic stress during childhood inhibits the production of growth hormones and consequently reduces bone growth and height. Scientists estimate that 70-90% of variation in height is due to genetic differences among individuals, and 10-30% of variation in height is due to differences in the environments that individuals experience,...