Montane regions worldwide have experienced relatively low plant invasion rates, a trend attributed to increased climatic severity, low rates of disturbance, and reduced propagule pressure relative to lowlands. Manipulative experiments at elevations above the invasive range of non-native species can clarify the relative contributions of these mechanisms to montane invasion resistance, yet such e...

Increased droughts due to regional shifts in temperature and rainfall regimes are likely to affect forests in temperate regions in the coming decades. To assess their consequences for forest dynamics, we need predictive tools that couple hydrologic processes, soil moisture dynamics and plant productivity. Here, we developed and tested a dynamic forest model that predicts the hydrologic balance ...

Many studies have analyzed the impact of climate change on crop productivity, but comparing the performance of water management systems has rarely been explored. Because water supply and crop demand in agro-systems may be affected by global climate change in shaping the spatial patterns of agricultural production, we should evaluate how and where irrigation practices are effective in mitigating...

[1] Many climate change forecasts project more extreme precipitation regimes (MEPR) in the future, characterized by more intense but less frequent storms. Plausible impacts of MEPR have drawn considerable attention from hydrologists and ecologists, but the hydrological impacts of MEPR in snowfall-dominated regions are less clear. Here we quantify the impacts of MEPR on the maximum seasonal snow...

BACKGROUND Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) compute the terrestrial carbon balance as well as the transient spatial distribution of vegetation. We study two scenarios of moderate and strong climate change (2.9 K and 5.3 K temperature increase over present) to investigate the spatial redistribution of major vegetation types and their carbon balance in the year 2100. RESULTS The world's...

Climate warming strongly influences reproductive phenology of plants in alpine and Arctic ecosystems. Here, we focus on phenological shifts caused by experimental warming in a typical alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau. Under soil water stress caused by warming, most plants in the alpine meadow advanced or delayed their reproductive events to be aligned with the timing of peak rainfall. As a ...

Historically, Michigan's climate had mainly three challenges for grape production: growing season temperatures were too low, the growing season was too short and there was too much rain near harvest. However, climate change in the past decades has led to a vastly different landscape that is evolving to meet the new climate. Recently, there has been a significant move from Vitis labrusca (North ...

Climate change is causing rapid changes to forest disturbance regimes worldwide. While the consequences of climate change for existing disturbance processes, like fires, are relatively well studied, emerging drivers of disturbance such as snow loss and subsequent mortality are much less documented. As the climate warms, a transition from winter snow to rain in high latitudes will cause signific...

Rain barrels can be technically shared through social practices or mutual agreement between individual households. This study proposes the evaluation system for a rain barrel sharing network (RBSN) considering three performance criteria of reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability, under plausible climate change scenarios. First, this study shows how the system can be improved in terms of the ...