Climatic scenarios for the Mediterranean Region forecast increasing frequency and intensity of drought events. We analyzed how Pinus sylvestris modifies its cambial phenology and intra-annual growth under enhanced drought conditions. For this purpose, a rainfall exclusion experiment was applied in 2012 to trees located in the lower elevation limit of a mountain forest in Central Spain. Prelimin...

Fire is the dominant disturbance in forest ecosystems across Canada and Alaska, and has important implications for forest ecosystems, terrestrial carbon dioxide emissions and the forestry industry. Large fire activity had increased in Canadian and Alaskan forests during the last four decades of the 20th century. Here we combined the Palmer Drought Severity Index and historical large fire databa...

In this study, to improve the efficiency of the original Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI_original), we coupled the Soil and Water Assessment tool (SWAT) and PDSI_original to construct a drought index called PDSI_SWAT. The constructed PDSI_SWAT is applied in the Wei River Basin (WRB) of China during 1960–2012. The comparison of the PDSI_SWAT with four other commonly used drought indices reve...

Introduction More than 90% of South Africa is either arid or semi-arid and drought is a characteristic feature of the climate. Because drought has significant ecological and socio-economic impacts, investigations into its causes, consequences and mitigation have been regularly undertaken in South Africa over the last 100 years. Recent climate change scenarios suggest that there will be an incre...

Extreme droughts like the recent 2011–2013 drought impacting the central and western United States present a challenge to sustaining livestock ranching operations and the ecosystem goods and services they produce. Wyoming ranchers manage half of this drought-prone state and are at the forefront of this challenge. We examined Wyoming ranchers’ drought management strategies and how ranch characte...

Drought is a recurring climatic hazard that reduces the crop yields. To avoid the negative effects of drought on crop production, extensive efforts have been devoted to investigating the complex mechanisms of gene expression and signal transduction during drought stress. Receptor-like kinases (RLKs) play important roles in perceiving extracellular stimuli and activating downstream signalling re...

Higher temperatures are usually reported during meteorological drought and there are two prevailing interpretations for this observation. The first is that the increase in temperature (T) causes an increase in evaporation (E) that dries the environment. The second states that the decline in precipitation (P) during drought reduces the available water thereby decreasing E, and in turn the conseq...

isfahan province is located in the center of iran and has arid and semi-arid climate. in recent years, water shortage has increased in this region and has affected crop production. wheat is one of the most important crops of the province. in the present research, an index (dei) has been developed for drought evaluation using long term climatic data through application of principle components an...

High temperature (HT) and drought are both critical factors that constrain tree growth and survival under global climate change, but it is surprising that the transcriptomic reprogramming and physiological relays involved in the response to HT and/or drought remain unknown in woody plants. Thus, Populus simonii saplings were exposed to either ambient temperature or HT combined with sufficient w...

Drought as a natural but temporary imbalance of water availability is the interaction between natural environment and human life resulting in diminished water resources availability and reduced carrying capacity of the ecosystems. Drought indices are essential elements for an efficient drought monitoring system. These indices make the transforming information of climatic anomalies easier and al...