U Mina^1,, D. Singh¹, P. Kumar²

Climate has a defining role in growth, composition and distribution of plant populations and communities of natural as well as manmade ecosystems of the world. Changing climatic variables such as -increasing carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration, rising global temperature, altered precipitation patterns and significant increase in ‘extreme’ weather events, such as drought, floods, cyclones, fires or storms variably affects different ecosystems plant populations and communities. The effects of climate change on plant populations and communities are assessed through various approaches - controlled field experiments, modeling and correlation between long term climate data and associated changes etc. The manuscript is an attempt to report the direct or indirect effects of the increase or shift in temperature, alteration in precipitation in different regions on plants population and community ecology attributes such as growth, phenology, composition, distribution range, incidence of pest, productivity etc. Therefore, the manuscript emphasizes that ecological understanding of plant populations and communities responses to climate change from a holistic and pragmatic perspective is critically important to address the issues pertaining to plant biodiversity, global food security, poverty elevation and sustainable development.

climate change, plants, population, community, ecology