Habitat distribution and seasonal occurrence of carabid beetles were determined using pitfall traps in 1999 and 2000 in the temperate forest zone of the Dongling Mountain, North China. Eight sites differing in vegetation and moisture were selected so as to represent four habitat types. Carabid assemblages of the six forested habitats (lowland, upland and coppice) were more similar to each other...

After giving an overview of climate change induced vegetation shifts in the Palearctic region in our previous paper, in this article we review literature available in Web of Science on North and South America. We study different geographical regions such as Canada, Alaska, California, Southwestern, Eastern and Southeastern USA, the Great Lakes region, the Great Plains, intermontane basins and p...

Shrublands are one of the major types of ecosystems in the desert regions of northern China, which is expected to be substantially more sensitive to global environmental changes, such as widespread nitrogen enrichment and precipitation changes, than other ecosystem types. However, the interactive effects of nitrogen and precipitation on them remain poorly understood. We conducted a fully factor...

We sampled shrub canopy volume (height times area) and environmental factors (soil wetness, soil depth of thaw, soil pH, mean July air temperature, and typical date of spring snow loss) on 471 plots across five National Park Service units in northern Alaska. Our goal was to determine the environments where tall shrubs thrive and use this information to predict the location of future shrub expan...

Extreme drought events and plant invasions are major drivers of global change that can critically affect ecosystem functioning and alter ecosystem-atmosphere exchange. Invaders are expanding worldwide and extreme drought events are projected to increase in frequency and intensity. However, very little is known on how these drivers may interact to affect the functioning and resilience of ecosyst...

Scientists and students from five countries combined research and education in an investigation of bioclimatic zonation along a Canadian Arctic transect, from Amund Ringnes Island and Ellesmere Island in the north to the Daring Lake research camp at the southern edge of the tundra in Nunavut. We addressed three important needs in Arctic science: 1) to integrate education and research, 2) to pro...

We compared the distribution of sympatric Ixodes scapularis Say and Amblyomma americanum (L.) within several suitable forested habitats at different spatial scales and characterized differences in microhabitat features accounting for the observed distribution of questing ticks. We used automatic data loggers placed in the shrub and litter layers to contrast mesoclimate and microclimate conditio...

Overstory, shrub-layer, and herbllayer flora composition and abundance patterns in eleven forest sites were studied to evaluate species diversity and richness before implementing three types of harvest treatments. The sites were within the Wine Spring Creek Watershed and were classified as high elevation, dry, Quercus rubra-Rhododendron calendulaceum based on McNab and Browning’s Landscape Ecos...

In this study, we evaluated changes in the potential flammability of different Mediterranean shrub species a pine (Pinus pinea) forest Doñana Natural Park (of SW Spain) as result goat grazing. Plant height, total biomass, fine fuel biomass and leaves/wood ratio were measured individual plants each both grazed ungrazed areas. Moisture content, mean time ignition, combustion, gross heat combustio...

Annual and seasonal evapo-transpiration (ET) were compared among Mojave Desert shrubs with different leaf phenologies over a 3-year period during which annual precipitation varied from well below average to more than twice average. During the wet year, soil wetting fronts reached maximum depths of 0)75 m to '1)95 m, depending on soil texture at the study sites. The evergreen shrubs Larrea tride...