Research published in Regional Environmental Change has shown that as climate zones shift toward hotter and drier conditions, ecological diversity will decline, posing a major threat to terrestrial ecosystems with far-reaching social and ecological impacts. The research team analyzed Kenya's geographic distribution and arrangement of climate zones between 1980-2020. Over that time, tropical climate regions expanded from 91 to 93% with over 13,000 square kilometers shifting from alpine and temperate regions to tropical ones, and arid climate regions expanded from 72 to 81%, a roughly 50,000 km2 shift from humid and semi-humid-to-semi-arid to arid regions. “With a better understanding of how climate shifts occurred in an environment like Kenya, we can estimate how food security will be impacted in other regions with similar geographic patterns”
