BACKGROUND Accurate predictions of species distributions are essential for climate change impact assessments. However the standard practice of using long-term climate averages to train species distribution models might mute important temporal patterns of species distribution. The benefit of using temporally explicit weather and distribution data has not been assessed. We hypothesized that short...

As a top predator using rifles and harpoons, humans are shaping ecosystems ina unique way, often killing the wrong animals for the wrong reasons. Considering the ongoing crises of mass extinction and climate change, which is boosted by meat farming, we should employ our species-defining intelligence to reinvent our ecological role and learn to savour alternatives to meat.

In an era of rapid climate change, there is a pressing need to understand how organisms will cope with faster and less predictable variation in environmental conditions. Here we develop a unifying model that predicts evolutionary responses to environmentally driven fluctuating selection and use this theoretical framework to explore the potential consequences of altered environmental cycles. We ...

We consider new developments in coalition theory for the design of international environmental agreements (IEAs). Applying an empirical model on climate change that comprises benefit and cost estimates from abatement for 12 world regions, we analyze how the design of an agreement affects the success of self-enforcing IEAs. We analyze single versus multiple coalitions, open versus exclusive memb...

abstract this research evaluates climate change effects on drought severity in the region of gharesou, iran. the standardized precipitation index (spi) has been used for estimation of drought severity. a geographical information system is applied for calculating the mean areal precipitation time series from 11 meteorological stations, in and out of the area for the hydrological period jan 1971-...

human-induced climate change, with such rapid and continuing global-scale warming, is historically unprecedented and signifies that human pressures on earth’s life-supporting natural systems now exceed the planet’s bio-geo-capacity. the risks from climate change to health and survival in populations are diverse, as are the social and political ramifications. although attributing observed health...

The paper presents a review of the current ability of the climate modelling community to produce predictions of future climate change. Predictions for the next few decades are reasonably robust, whereas predictions for later time periods depend on uncertainties in climate model structure and on the unknown future course of greenhouse gas emissions. Some regional features are noticeable; however...