drought is a climatic phenomenon that causes much detrimental influence on ecological environments. this research investigates the performance of meteorological drought indices in different time scales in thetajan basin in iran. indices undergone in this study include: percent normal precipitation index (pnpi), z-score index (zsi), standard precipitation index (spi), china z index (czi), modifi...

In sub-Saharan Africa rain-fed agriculture cropping system uses a limited agricultural technology, occupies more than 95% of cultivated land. The impact of meteorological drivers on crop yields, and, in addition, the effects of herbicide application on farm productivity were examined at two locations; with a 70km distance between them, El Mazmum and El Dali in semi-arid Sudan. For ten successiv...

The relationship between carbon isotope discrimination (131) of C3 vegetation and long-term (30 years) and short-term (growing period) precipitation was investigated. Different species of Stipa, a dominant grass genus in the (semi-)arid Asian steppes, and other C3 species were collected along aridity gradients in Inner Mongolia in 2005 (11 sites, 71 samples) and in the Republic of Mongolia in 2...

This study conducts a detailed analysis of multiscale periodic features involved in the annual and seasonal precipitation signals at the typical coastal reclamation region in China by selecting the suitable continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and innovatively combining the improved Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT), and further deduces the precipitation trend and its impacts on the future soil hydro...

Annuals are an important component part of plant communities in arid and semiarid grassland ecosystems. Although it is well known that precipitation has a significant impact on productivity and species richness of community or perennials, nevertheless, due to lack of measurements, especially long-term experiment data, there is little information on how quantity and patterns of precipitation aff...

Tree mortality due to warming and drought is a critical aspect of forest ecosystem in responding to climate change. Spatial patterns of tree mortality induced by drought and its influencing factors, however, have yet to be documented at the global scale. We collected observations from 248 sites globally where trees have died due to drought and then assessed the effects of climatic and forest fa...

Our objective was to understand and describe local spatial and temporal variability in precipitation around Kibale National Park, a tropical forest area of high conservation value. Continental or regional-scale trends are often relied upon to make policy and management decisions, but these analyses are often at too coarse a resolution to capture important variability at a finer scale where mana...

Seasonality and interannual variability in North American photosynthetic activity reflect potential patterns of climate variability. We simulate 24 yr (1983–2006) and evaluate regional and seasonal contribution to annual mean gross primary productivity (GPP) as well as its interannual variability. The highest productivity occurs in Mexico, the southeast United States and the Pacific Northwest. ...

Water use efficiency (WUE) reflects the coupling of the carbon and water cycles and is an effective integral trait for assessing the responses of vegetated ecosystems to climate change. In this study, field experiments were performed to examine leaf WUE (WUEleaf) in response to changes in CO2 concentration and other environmental variables, including soil moisture and air temperature. We al...