Vegetational Continuum

Paleoecology meets genetics: deciphering past vegetational dynamics

O the past few decades, Quaternary paleoecological studies have provided an impressive global database of pollen and macrofossils. Not only are these fossil records essential for detecting past species distributions (Baker 1959), but they have also played a key role in testing ecological theories and evaluating model predictions of climatic and biotic changes, from the past and into the future....

Wetland-dryland Vegetational Dynamics in the Pennsylvanian Ice Age Tropics

Sensitivity and rapidity of vegetational response to abrupt climate change.

Rapid climate change characterizes numerous terrestrial sediment records during and since the last glaciation. Vegetational response is best expressed in terrestrial records near ecotones, where sensitivity to climate change is greatest, and response times are as short as decades.

The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms

the climatic factors, though for purposes of separation and classification of systems it is a legitimate procedure. In fact the climatic complex has more effect on the organisms and on the soil of an ecosystem than these have on the climatic complex, but the reciprocal action is not wholly absent. Climate acts on the ecosystem rather like an acid or an alkaline " buff er " on a chemical soil co...

Continuum and Non-continuum Modelling of Nanofluidics

Recent development in nanoand biotechnology has opened a new field of microand nanofluidics. Many MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical-systems) and NEMS ( nano-electromechanical-systems ) are based on the fluid motion. Additionally, the analysis of biological samples, drug design and nanomedicine are connected to nanoliter fluid flow. The challenge for understanding such small systems lies in the dif...