We are limited in our ability to predict climate-change-induced range shifts by our inadequate understanding of how non-climatic factors contribute to determining range limits along putatively climatic gradients. Here, we present a unique combination of observations and experiments demonstrating that seed predation and soil properties strongly limit regeneration beyond the upper elevational ran...

This research examines the climatic origins of the diffusion of Neolithic agriculture across countries and archaeological sites. The theory suggests that a foraging society's history of climatic shocks shaped the timing of its adoption of farming. Specifically, as long as climatic disturbances did not lead to a collapse of the underlying resource base, the rate at which hunter-gatherers were cl...

Climatic niche models for invasive plants are usually constructed with occurrence records taken from literature and collections. Because these data neither discriminate among life-cycle stages of plants (adult or juvenile) nor the origin of individuals (naturally established or man-planted), the resulting models may mispredict the distribution ranges of these species. We propose that more accur...

Climate change is considered to be a significant influence for infectious disease risk in Western Europe. Climatic and non-climatic developments act together resulting in current and future infectious disease risk. This study uses a survey to explore Dutch expert perspectives on climate change induced infectious disease risk. The results show that the experts consider temperature change, precip...

Recently there has been increased interest within the U.S. Navy in the use of climatology-based products to support the planning and execution of military operations. Climatological databases of atmospheric features that impact electromagnetic (EM) propagation have been developed to provide guidance on weapons and sensor system performance for expected environmental conditions. However, the mar...

The 30 th anniversary of NCL, the New Zealand controlled environment laboratory, was marked on 20 March 2000. This anniversary opens the fourth decade of service by NCL to researchers in New Zealand and internationally. Looking forward into this decade provides the stimulus for this workshop series, focused on current issues in controlled environment (CE) science. The workshop series is designe...

Weather and climate prediction rely on inherently different predictors at different time scales. Some of the variability in precipitation on climate time-scales (i.e., interannual) could be attributed to accumulated noise on weather (i.e., daily) time-scales. To determine a lower bound on how much climate variability is due to processes at climate time-scales, weather generator models with no m...

To generate realistic projections of species' responses to climate change, we need to understand the factors that limit their ability to respond. Although climatic niche conservatism, the maintenance of a species's climatic niche over time, is a critical assumption in niche-based species distribution models, little is known about how universal it is and how it operates. In particular, few studi...

Rapid climatic change poses a threat to global biodiversity. There is extensive evidence that recent climatic change has affected animal and plant populations, but no indicators exist that summarise impacts over many species and large areas. We use data on long-term population trends of European birds to develop such an indicator. We find a significant relationship between interspecific variati...