TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schurr, Frank Martin
A1  - Pagel, Jörn
A1  - Sarmento, Juliano Sarmento
A1  - Groeneveld, Juergen
A1  - Bykova, Olga
A1  - O'Hara, Robert B.
A1  - Hartig, Florian
A1  - Kissling, W. Daniel
A1  - Linder, H. Peter
A1  - Midgley, Guy F.
A1  - Schröder-Esselbach, Boris
A1  - Singer, Alexander
A1  - Zimmermann, Niklaus E.
T1  - How to understand species' niches and range dynamics: a demographic research agenda for biogeography
JF  - Journal of biogeography
N2  - Range dynamics causes mismatches between a species geographical distribution and the set of suitable environments in which population growth is positive (the Hutchinsonian niche). This is because sourcesink population dynamics cause species to occupy unsuitable environments, and because environmental change creates non-equilibrium situations in which species may be absent from suitable environments (due to migration limitation) or present in unsuitable environments that were previously suitable (due to time-delayed extinction). Because correlative species distribution models do not account for these processes, they are likely to produce biased niche estimates and biased forecasts of future range dynamics. Recently developed dynamic range models (DRMs) overcome this problem: they statistically estimate both range dynamics and the underlying environmental response of demographic rates from species distribution data. This process-based statistical approach qualitatively advances biogeographical analyses. Yet, the application of DRMs to a broad range of species and study systems requires substantial research efforts in statistical modelling, empirical data collection and ecological theory. Here we review current and potential contributions of these fields to a demographic understanding of niches and range dynamics. Our review serves to formulate a demographic research agenda that entails: (1) advances in incorporating process-based models of demographic responses and range dynamics into a statistical framework, (2) systematic collection of data on temporal changes in distribution and abundance and on the response of demographic rates to environmental variation, and (3) improved theoretical understanding of the scaling of demographic rates and the dynamics of spatially coupled populations. This demographic research agenda is challenging but necessary for improved comprehension and quantification of niches and range dynamics. It also forms the basis for understanding how niches and range dynamics are shaped by evolutionary dynamics and biotic interactions. Ultimately, the demographic research agenda should lead to deeper integration of biogeography with empirical and theoretical ecology.
KW  - Biodiversity monitoring
KW  - climate change
KW  - ecological forecasts
KW  - ecological niche modelling
KW  - ecological theory
KW  - geographical range shifts
KW  - global environmental change
KW  - mechanistic models
KW  - migration
KW  - process-based statistics
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02737.x
SN  - 0305-0270
VL  - 39
IS  - 12
SP  - 2146
EP  - 2162
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - De Frenne, Pieter
A1  - Graae, Bente J.
A1  - Brunet, Jörg
A1  - Shevtsova, Anna
A1  - De Schrijver, An
A1  - Chabrerie, Olivier
A1  - Cousins, Sara A. O.
A1  - Decocq, Guillaume
A1  - Diekmann, Martin
A1  - Hermy, Martin
A1  - Heinken, Thilo
A1  - Kolb, Annette
A1  - Nilsson, Christer
A1  - Stanton, Sharon
A1  - Verheyen, Kris
T1  - The response of forest plant regeneration to temperature variation along a latitudinal gradient
JF  - Annals of botany
N2  - The response of forest herb regeneration from seed to temperature variations across latitudes was experimentally assessed in order to forecast the likely response of understorey community dynamics to climate warming.
 Seeds of two characteristic forest plants (Anemone nemorosa and Milium effusum) were collected in natural populations along a latitudinal gradient from northern France to northern Sweden and exposed to three temperature regimes in growth chambers (first experiment). To test the importance of local adaptation, reciprocal transplants were also made of adult individuals that originated from the same populations in three common gardens located in southern, central and northern sites along the same gradient, and the resulting seeds were germinated (second experiment). Seedling establishment was quantified by measuring the timing and percentage of seedling emergence, and seedling biomass in both experiments.
 Spring warming increased emergence rates and seedling growth in the early-flowering forb A. nemorosa. Seedlings of the summer-flowering grass M. effusum originating from northern populations responded more strongly in terms of biomass growth to temperature than southern populations. The above-ground biomass of the seedlings of both species decreased with increasing latitude of origin, irrespective of whether seeds were collected from natural populations or from the common gardens. The emergence percentage decreased with increasing home-away distance in seeds from the transplant experiment, suggesting that the maternal plants were locally adapted.
 Decreasing seedling emergence and growth were found from the centre to the northern edge of the distribution range for both species. Stronger responses to temperature variation in seedling growth of the grass M. effusum in the north may offer a way to cope with environmental change. The results further suggest that climate warming might differentially affect seedling establishment of understorey plants across their distribution range and thus alter future understorey plant dynamics.
KW  - Anemone nemorosa
KW  - climate change
KW  - common garden
KW  - growth chambers
KW  - latitudinal gradient
KW  - local adaptation
KW  - Milium effusum
KW  - plant regeneration
KW  - range edges
KW  - recruitment
KW  - seedling establishment
KW  - temperature
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcs015
SN  - 0305-7364
VL  - 109
IS  - 5
SP  - 1037
EP  - 1046
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Huggel, Christian
A1  - Clague, John J.
A1  - Korup, Oliver
T1  - Is climate change responsible for changing landslide activity in high mountains?
JF  - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group
N2  - Climate change, manifested by an increase in mean, minimum, and maximum temperatures and by more intense rainstorms, is becoming more evident in many regions. An important consequence of these changes may be an increase in landslides in high mountains. More research, however, is necessary to detect changes in landslide magnitude and frequency related to contemporary climate, particularly in alpine regions hosting glaciers, permafrost, and snow. These regions not only are sensitive to changes in both temperature and precipitation, but are also areas in which landslides are ubiquitous even under a stable climate. We analyze a series of catastrophic slope failures that occurred in the mountains of Europe, the Americas, and the Caucasus since the end of the 1990s. We distinguish between rock and ice avalanches, debris flows from de-glaciated areas, and landslides that involve dynamic interactions with glacial and river processes. Analysis of these events indicates several important controls on slope stability in high mountains, including: the non-linear response of firn and ice to warming; three-dimensional warming of subsurface bedrock and its relation to site geology; de-glaciation accompanied by exposure of new sediment; and combined short-term effects of precipitation and temperature. Based on several case studies, we propose that the following mechanisms can significantly alter landslide magnitude and frequency, and thus hazard, under warming conditions: (1) positive feedbacks acting on mass movement processes that after an initial climatic stimulus may evolve independently of climate change; (2) threshold behavior and tipping points in geomorphic systems; (3) storage of sediment and ice involving important lag-time effects.
KW  - climate change
KW  - landslides
KW  - glaciers
KW  - permafrost
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2223
SN  - 0197-9337
VL  - 37
IS  - 1
SP  - 77
EP  - 91
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Korup, Oliver
A1  - Görüm, Tolga
A1  - Hayakawa, Yuichi
T1  - Without power? - Landslide inventories in the face of climate change
JF  - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group
N2  - Projected scenarios of climate change involve general predictions about the likely changes to the magnitude and frequency of landslides, particularly as a consequence of altered precipitation and temperature regimes. Whether such landslide response to contemporary or past climate change may be captured in differing scaling statistics of landslide size distributions and the erosion rates derived thereof remains debated. We test this notion with simple Monte Carlo and bootstrap simulations of statistical models commonly used to characterize empirical landslide size distributions. Our results show that significant changes to total volumes contained in such inventories may be masked by statistically indistinguishable scaling parameters, critically depending on, among others, the size of the largest of landslides recorded. Conversely, comparable model parameter values may obscure significant, i.e. more than twofold, changes to landslide occurrence, and thus inferred rates of hillslope denudation and sediment delivery to drainage networks. A time series of some of Earth's largest mass movements reveals clustering near and partly before the last glacial-interglacial transition and a distinct step-over from white noise to temporal clustering around this period. However, elucidating whether this is a distinct signal of first-order climate-change impact on slope stability or simply coincides with a transition from short-term statistical noise to long-term steady-state conditions remains an important research challenge.
KW  - landslide
KW  - climate change
KW  - magnitude & frequency
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2248
SN  - 0197-9337
VL  - 37
IS  - 1
SP  - 92
EP  - 99
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schewe, Jacob
A1  - Levermann, Anders
T1  - A statistically predictive model for future monsoon failure in India
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - Indian monsoon rainfall is vital for a large share of the world's population. Both reliably projecting India's future precipitation and unraveling abrupt cessations of monsoon rainfall found in paleorecords require improved understanding of its stability properties. While details of monsoon circulations and the associated rainfall are complex, full-season failure is dominated by large-scale positive feedbacks within the region. Here we find that in a comprehensive climate model, monsoon failure is possible but very rare under pre-industrial conditions, while under future warming it becomes much more frequent. We identify the fundamental intraseasonal feedbacks that are responsible for monsoon failure in the climate model, relate these to observational data, and build a statistically predictive model for such failure. This model provides a simple dynamical explanation for future changes in the frequency distribution of seasonal mean all-Indian rainfall. Forced only by global mean temperature and the strength of the Pacific Walker circulation in spring, it reproduces the trend as well as the multidecadal variability in the mean and skewness of the distribution, as found in the climate model. The approach offers an alternative perspective on large-scale monsoon variability as the result of internal instabilities modulated by pre-seasonal ambient climate conditions.
KW  - monsoon failure
KW  - climate change
KW  - coupled climate model
KW  - stochastic model
KW  - non-linear dynamics
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044023
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 7
IS  - 4
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tekken, Vera
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Climate-Driven or Human-Induced indicating severe water scarcity in the Moulouya River Basin (Morocco)
JF  - Water
N2  - Many agriculture-based economies are increasingly under stress from climate change and socio-economic pressures. The excessive exploitation of natural resources still represents the standard procedure to achieve socio-economic development. In the area of the Moulouya river basin, Morocco, natural water availability represents a key resource for all economic activities. Agriculture represents the most important sector, and frequently occurring water deficits are aggravated by climate change. On the basis of historical trends taken from CRU TS 2.1, this paper analyses the impact of climate change on the per capita water availability under inclusion of population trends. The Climatic Water Balance (CWB) shows a significant decrease for the winter period, causing adverse effects for the main agricultural season. Further, moisture losses due to increasing evapotranspiration rates indicate problems for the annual water budget and groundwater recharge. The per capita blue water availability falls below a minimum threshold of 500 m(3) per year, denoting a high regional vulnerability to increasing water scarcity assuming a no-response scenario. Regional development focusing on the water-intense sectors of agriculture and tourism appears to be at risk. Institutional capacities and policies need to address the problem, and the prompt implementation of innovative water production and efficiency measures is recommended.
KW  - North Africa
KW  - Moulouya river basin
KW  - climate change
KW  - population growth
KW  - regional development
KW  - water availability
KW  - water management
KW  - water scarcity
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3390/w4040959
SN  - 2073-4441
VL  - 4
IS  - 4
SP  - 959
EP  - 982
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  -