The global geographic distribution of biodiversity and biomes is determined by species-specific physiological tolerances to climatic constraints. Current vegetation models employ empirical bioclimatic relationships to predict present-day vegetation patterns and to forecast biodiversity changes and biome shifts under climatic change. In this paper, we consider trade-offs in plant functioning and...

This paper analyses the interactions between land use, institutions and culture in the context of climatic extremes in Vietnam. Although there has been a long history of examining the evolutionary nature of markets and institutions within an institutional economics framework, developing the institutional economic approach to include society environment interactions allows examination of process...

Analyses relating long-term records of tree growth to interannual climatic variation at La Selva, Costa Rica have revealed marked forest sensitivities to both temperature and dry-season intensity (Clark et al. 2010). The tropical-forest biome is certain to become warmer, and many areas may become drier. Testing the generality of the La Selva findings with similar analyses of field data from div...

BACKGROUND Although some studies have indicated that climate changes can affect Pinus koraiensis mixed forest, the responses of composition and structure of Pinus koraiensis mixed forests to climatic changes are unknown and the key climatic factors controlling the composition and structure of Pinus koraiensis mixed forest are uncertain. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Field survey was conducte...

A climatic regime shift is characterized by an abrupt transition from one quasi-steady climatic state to another. We attempted to explain the change of multifractal behavior of climate indices when a regime shift occurred. We used the wavelet transform method to analyze the multifractal behaviors of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index (Niño3.4 index), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)...

0022-1694/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2012.12.020 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: State Key Lab. of Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Ch Ecology Building RM301, 18 Shuangqing Rd., Beijing 1 62849102. E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Lu). China is facing a growing water crisis due to climate and land use change, and rise in huma...

There is compelling evidence from glacial and interglacial periods of the Quaternary of the utilization of microrefugia. Microrefugia are sites that support locally favorable climates amidst unfavorable regional climates, which allow populations of species to persist outside of their main distributions. Knowledge of the location of microrefugia has important implications for climate change rese...

Over the last 20 years, climate models have been developed to an impressive level of complexity. They are core tools in the study of the interactions of many climatic processes and justifiably provide an additional strand in the argument that anthropogenic climate change is a critical global problem. Over a similar period, there has been growing interest in the interpretation and probabilistic ...

Land suitability analysis is a prerequisite to achieving optimum utilization of the available land resources. Lack of knowledge on best combination of factors that suit production of rice has contributed to the low production. The aim of this study was to develop a suitability map for rice crop based on physical and climatic factors of production using a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) & GIS ap...