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USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone Map Shows Half the Country Has Shifted 42

Posted by BeauHD from the compare-and-contrast dept.
The newly updated U.S. Department of Agriculture's "plant hardiness zone map" has gardeners across the nation researching what new plants they can grow in their warming regions, as the 2023 map is about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 2012 map. NPR reports: This week the map got its first update in more than a decade, and the outlook for many gardens looks warmer. The 2023 map is about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 2012 map across the contiguous U.S., says Chris Daly, director of the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University that jointly developed the map with the USDA. Daly says the new map means about half the country has shifted into a new half zone and half hasn't. In some locations, people may find they can grow new types of flowers, fruits, vegetables and plants.

Daly says he is hesitant to explicitly attribute the specific changes from the 2012 map to the 2023 map to climate change because of the volatility of the key statistic they used to create this map. They were mapping "the coldest night of the year, each year, over the past 30 years", Daly says, and it's a highly variable figure. In an email, a press officer for the USDA says, "Changes to plant hardiness zones are not necessarily reflective of global climate change because of the highly variable nature of the extreme minimum temperature of the year." But Daly says, in the big picture, climate change is playing a role in changing what grows where in the US: "Over the long run, we will expect to see a slow shifting northward of zones as climate change takes hold."
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USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone Map Shows Half the Country Has Shifted More

USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone Map Shows Half the Country Has Shifted

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  • It's not the climate zone that'll do in your plants, it will be the bugs, wildlife and too much/too little watering.

    The only thing I've ever had any luck growing is dollar weed.

    • Up here in the maritime Pacific Northwest, it's not the winter cold that kills many things... it's the rain. Lots of plants won't tolerate soil which can remain waterlogged sometimes for weeks on end, even if they can handle the temperature.

      If a person likes to grow vegetables, you can have lots of success overwintering lots of things (onions, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, garlic, etc. etc.) simply by using raised beds - formal framed ones or even just raised / flattened mounds of soil. And putting a simple co

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Where I live it is the climate. Plants and trees that used to remain vibrant in the Phoenix metro area with sufficient water are no longer tolerating the climate with any amount of water, the number of days above 110F is too much for them.

      Granted, these sorts of plants wouldn't manage to survive here without human intervention to begin with, it's still kind of sad to see older neighborhoods lose their fifty+ year old trees because they can't handle the changes.

  • "the coldest night of the year, each year, over the past 30 years"

    In 2019 here it got down to -35

    So it will be a while for that record to change

  • I'm not celebrating (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dcooper_db9 ( 1044858 ) on Friday November 17, 2023 @09:51PM (#64013711)
    My zone has moved from zone 8a to 8b and that matches my experience. It used to be that if I wanted to grow bananas, canna lilies and a few other tropical plants I'd have to protect them in the winter. Now they do fine on their own. On the other hand the list of plants that we are losing to disease includes azaleas, oaks, crape myrtles, knockout roses, and loblolly pine. That last one is native to this area but it's on the way out. I just had to go through my property and destroy hundreds of pine saplings that were infected with rust. Now I'm planting longleaf and hoping they resist the disease.
    • My zone just moved from 4b to 5a, but I don’t think that really sums up what’s happening. I have no doubts the average minimum temperature is accurate but the volatility of the weather is increasing as are invasive pests. This year we had close to average rainfall, but we had weeks on end with no rain, then had it all come in a single massive storm in under an hour where it mostly ran off and didn’t do much for soil moisture levels. This has caused lasting drought conditions, and has ta
  • Trump, Tucker and Jones say it’s a hoax. They know better than the scientists. /eyeroll

    And huge numbers of people in the US are migrating SOUTH. For some absolutely insane reason. I will be moving opposite of the herd, because I dislike hot climates. If I live long, I’ll almost certainly wind up in Canada.

    • The problem is there are natural short-term climate cycles and that's enough for many to bury their heads in the sand. The fact that the 'real' damage will take 100+ years to hit us is enough for a huge number of others to do the same.

      The part I love is that elevated CO2 levels impair cognition; we're as smart as we're going to get - evolution can't select for the change quickly enough to result in effective adaptation, we're going to get dumber and less capable for the foreseeable future. Maybe not by hu

      • Imagine a future where office and university buildings utilize active CO2 removal, just in order to provide air where brains can properly function.

        Sure we rendered the planet uninhabitable, but for a beautiful moment, we created SO much shareholder value!
  • Siberia, Canada, Alaska, and Finland will be the long-tail remaining farming regions of the world. As such, Russia is poised to be economically dominant after it gets a certain KGB head out of it's posterior when the rest of the world starves and flees for survivable regions. Today's settled people will be tomorrows vilified and demonized migrants with ever more recycled Hilteresque tropes (sans or with Godwin's Law).

    • That's a bit simplistic. The driving factor isn't temperature so much as water. Some northern places will become conducive to farming as winters shorten. In some areas temperature rise will change how early or late in the year a crop can be planted, and there will be changes in which crops can be planted where. But even the warmest places on earth can grow food as long as there's enough water. In fact, higher temperatures generally increase productivity.

      Meanwhile, Siberia, Canada, and Alaska all hav

  • Seriously, someone please come tell my crops the hardiness zones have changed.

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