of the many climatic events that influence the earth’s environment, drought is perhaps the one that is most linked with desertification. drought is the consequence of a natural reduction in the amount of precipitation received over an extended period, usually a season or more in length. drought monitoring is an essential component of drought risk management. it is normally performed using vario...

Climate change affects the abundance, distribution and activity of natural enemies that are important for suppressing herbivore crop pests. Moreover, higher mean temperatures and increased frequency of climatic extremes are expected to induce different responses across trophic levels, potentially disrupting predator-prey interactions. Using field observations, we examined the response of an aph...

Understanding how tropical trees will respond to extreme temperatures and drought is essential to predict how future increases in the severity, frequency and duration of extreme climatic events will affect tropical systems. In this study, we investigated leaf thermotolerance by quantifying the temperatures that resulted in a 50 % decrease in photosystem II function (T50) in experimentally grown...

The authors propose a new climatic drought index: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI). The SPEI is based on precipitation and temperature data, and it has the advantage of combining multiscalar character with the capacity to include the effects of temperature variability on drought assessment. The procedure to calculate the index is detailed and involves a climatic wa...

I Introduction By linking climatic variations with the fundamental biological requirement of water availability , drought is a primary topic within applied climatology. Drought acts as a unifying climatological approach that provides valuable information for agricultural, ecological, and hydrological applications. While a lack of water is straightforward to comprehend and appreciate, a wide arr...

Of the many climatic events that influence the Earth’s environment, drought is perhaps the one that is most linked with desertification. Drought is the consequence of a natural reduction in the amount of precipitation received over an extended period, usually a season or more in length. Drought monitoring is an essential component of drought risk management. It is normally performed using vario...

Attributed to climatic change and uncertainty of weather conditions, drought has become a recurrent phenomenon. It is manifested by erratic and uncertain rainfall distribution in rainfall dependent farming areas. The hitherto methods of monitoring drought employed conventional methods that rely on availability of metrological data. The objectives of this research were to: 1) identify the critic...

The study examined the spatiotemporal distribution of drought in the Maasai rangelands of Kenya. The implications of this distribution, in concert with the documented existing and/or projected social and biophysical factors, on critical rangeland resources in Maasai-pastoralism are discussed using an integrated approach. Participatory interviews with the Maasai, retrieval from archives, and acq...

Climatic scenarios for the Mediterranean region forecast increasing frequency and intensity of drought events. Consequently, a reduction in Pinus sylvestris L. distribution range is projected within the region, with this species being outcompeted at lower elevations by more drought-tolerant taxa such as Quercus pyrenaica Willd. The functional response of these species to the projected shifts in...

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...