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Megafaunal Decline and Fall
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Declines in North American megafauna
populations began before the Clovis period
and were the cause, not the result, of
vegetation changes and increased fires.
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Warming Up Food Webs
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How do predator-prey interactions influence Warming Up Food Webs ecosystem responses to climate change?
VOL 323 SCIENCE
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Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation and ForestDegradation: Global Land-Use Implications
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Recent climate talks in Bali have made progress toward action on deforestation and forest degradation
in developing countries, within the anticipated post-Kyoto emissions reduction agreements. As a result
of such action, many forests will be better protected, but some land-use change will be displaced to
other locations. The demonstration phase launched at Bali offers an opportunity to examine potential
outcomes for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Research will be needed into selection of priority
areas for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation to deliver multiple benefits,
on-the-ground methods to best ensure these benefits, and minimization of displaced land-use change
into nontarget countries and ecosystems, including through revised conservation investments
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Ecological Restoration in the Light of Ecological History
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Ecological history plays many roles in ecological restoration, most notably as a tool to identify and
characterize appropriate targets for restoration efforts. However, ecological history also reveals deep human
imprints on many ecological systems and indicates that secular climate change has kept many targets
moving at centennial to millennial time scales. Past and ongoing environmental changes ensure that many
historical restoration targets will be unsustainable in the coming decades. Ecological restoration efforts
should aim to conserve and restore historical ecosystems where viable, while simultaneously preparing to
design or steer emerging novel ecosystems to ensure maintenance of ecological goods and services.
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Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management?
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Climate change undermines a basic assumption
that historically has facilitated management of
water supplies, demands, and risks.
SCIENCE VOL 319
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A Determination of the Cloud Feedback from Climate Variations over the Past Decade
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Estimates of Earth's climate sensitivity are uncertain, largely because of uncertainty in the
long-term cloud feedback. I estimated the magnitude of the cloud feedback in response to short-term
climate variations by analyzing the top-of-atmosphere radiation budget from March 2000 to February
2010. Over this period, the short-term cloud feedback had a magnitude of 0.54 T 0.74 (2s) watts
per square meter per kelvin, meaning that it is likely positive. A small negative feedback is possible,
but one large enough to cancel the climate’s positive feedbacks is not supported by these observations.
Both long- and short-wave components of short-term cloud feedback are also likely positive.
Calculations of short-term cloud feedback in climate models yield a similar feedback. I find no
correlation in the models between the short- and long-term cloud feedbacks.
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Modeling Effects of Environmental Change on Wolf Population Dynamics, Trait Evolution, and Life History
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Environmental change has been observed to generate simultaneous responses in population dynamics,
life history, gene frequencies, and morphology in a number of species. But how common are such
eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change likely to be? Are they inevitable, or do they
require a specific type of change? Can we accurately predict eco-evolutionary responses? We
address these questions using theory and data from the study of Yellowstone wolves. We show that
environmental change is expected to generate eco-evolutionary change, that changes in the
average environment will affect wolves to a greater extent than changes in how variable it is, and
that accurate prediction of the consequences of environmental change will probably prove elusive.
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Beyond Predictions: Biodiversity Conservation in a Changing Climate
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Climate change is predicted to become a major threat to biodiversity in the 21st century,
but accurate predictions and effective solutions have proved difficult to formulate. Alarming
predictions have come from a rather narrow methodological base, but a new, integrated science
of climate-change biodiversity assessment is emerging, based on multiple sources and
approaches. Drawing on evidence from paleoecological observations, recent phenological and
microevolutionary responses, experiments, and computational models, we review the insights that
different approaches bring to anticipating and managing the biodiversity consequences of
climate change, including the extent of species’ natural resilience. We introduce a framework
that uses information from different sources to identify vulnerability and to support the design of
conservation responses. Although much of the information reviewed is on species, our framework
and conclusions are also applicable to ecosystems, habitats, ecological communities, and
genetic diversity, whether terrestrial, marine, or fresh water.
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The Hot Summer of 2010: Redrawing the Temperature Record Map of Europe
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The summer of 2010 was exceptionally warm in eastern
Europe and large parts of Russia. We provide evidence
that the anomalous 2010 warmth that caused adverse
impacts exceeded the amplitude and spatial extent of the
previous hottest summer of 2003. 'Mega-heatwaves' such
as the 2003 and 2010 events broke the 500-yr long
seasonal temperature records over approximately 50% of
Europe. According to regional multi-model experiments,
the probability of a summer experiencing 'megaheatwaves'
will increase by a factor of 5 to 10 within the
next 40 years. However, the magnitude of the 2010 event
was so extreme that despite this increase, the occurrence
of an analogue over the same region remains fairly
unlikely until the second half of the 21st century.
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Global Resilience of Tropical Forest and Savanna to Critical Transitions
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It has been suggested that tropical forest and savanna could represent alternative stable states,
implying critical transitions at tipping points in response to altered climate or other drivers.
So far, evidence for this idea has remained elusive, and integrated climate models assume smooth
vegetation responses. We analyzed data on the distribution of tree cover in Africa, Australia,
and South America to reveal strong evidence for the existence of three distinct attractors:
forest, savanna, and a treeless state. Empirical reconstruction of the basins of attraction indicates
that the resilience of the states varies in a universal way with precipitation. These results allow
the identification of regions where forest or savanna may most easily tip into an alternative
state, and they pave the way to a new generation of coupled climate models.
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