Aims We aim to construct a comprehensive global database of litter decomposition rate (k value) estimated by surface floor litterbags, and investigate the direct and indirect effects of impact factors such as geographic factors (latitude and altitude), climatic factors (mean annual tempePlrature, MAT; mean annual precipitation, MAP) and litter quality factors (the contents of N, P, K, Ca, Mg an...

age were examined relative to climate variability and climate change. Good correlations were also found with climatic variables such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Aleutian Low Pressure Index, or water temperature alone (Peterman, MacFarlane, Brown, Schweigert, Bonk, Tarasyuk). Competition with other pelagic species was suggested as a possible mechanism explaining changes in growth of chub...

The study of life history variation is central to the evolutionary theory. In many ectothermic lineages, including lizards, life history traits are plastic and relate to several sources of variation including body size, which is both a factor and a life history trait likely to modulate reproductive parameters. Larger species within a lineage, for example tend to be more fecund and have larger c...

The Hohokam, an irrigation-based society in the American South West, used the river valleys of the Salt and Gila Rivers between 500 and 1500 AD to grow their crops. Such irrigated crops are linking human agency, water sources and the general natural environment. In order to grow crops, water available through rain and river flows needs to be diverted to land where the plants are grown. With a f...

The current study used the Biome-Bio Geochemical Cycle (Biome-BGC) model to simulate water-use efficiency (WUE) of Piceacrassi folia (P. crassifolia) forest under four representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios, and investigated the responses of forest WUE to different combinations of climatic changes and CO2 concentrations in the Qilian Mountains of Northwest China. The model was val...

Quantifying the effects of nutrient additions on soil microbial respiration (R m) and its contribution to soil respiration (R s) are of great importance for accurate assessment ecosystem carbon (C) flux. Nitrogen (N) addition either alone (coded as LN and HN) or in combination with phosphorus (P) (coded as LN + P and HN + P) were manipulated in a semiarid alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau si...

Methods In total, 292 lower/southern limit and 310 upper/northern limit sites with available climatic data for all 11 extant beech species were collected by reviewing the literature, and 13 climatic variables were estimated for each site from climate normals at nearby stations. We used principal components analysis (PCA) to detect climatic variables most strongly associated with the distributio...

The present article proposes a climatic approach to the study of the interaction between influenza spreading and climatic and meteorological factors in different climatic domains of the Iberian Peninsula. This association can be used to help in the prevention and mitigation of influenza epidemics. A biometeorological index has been defined and applied to the epidemic periods that took place in ...