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Historical legacies accumulate to shape future biodiversity in an era of rapid global change
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Main conclusions : The failure to give adequate consideration to widespread cumulative time-lags often masks the full extent of biodiversity changes that have already been triggered. Effects that are particularly relevant for human livelihoods (e.g. changes in the provision of ecosystem services) may emerge with the most pronounced delay. Accordingly, the consideration of appropriate temporal scales should become a key topic in future work at the science–policy interface.
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Three decades of multi-dimensional change in global leaf phenology
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We show that the phenology of vegetation activity changed severely (by more than 2 standard deviations in one or more dimensions of phe- nological change) on 54% of the global land surface between 1981 and 2012. Our analysis confirms previously detected changes in the boreal and northern temperate regions6–8. The adverse consequences of these northern phenological shifts for land-surface–climate feedbacks1 , ecosystems4 and species3 are well known. Our study reveals equally severe phenological changes in the southern hemisphere, where consequences for the energy budget and the likelihood of phenological mismatches are unknown. Our analysis provides a sensitive and direct measurement of ecosystem functioning, making it useful both for monitoring change and for testing the reliability of early warning signals of change14.
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Planetary boundaries- Guidi.pdf
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Scaling up from gardens biodiversity Conservation in urban environments.pdf
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Science-2015-Schindler-953-4.pdf
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SE US megalopolis.pdf
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T_Root-Local adaption.pdf
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US lakes and reservoirs.pdf
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Too late for two degrees? Low carbon economy index 2012
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Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees of
warming by the end of the century. To give ourselves a more than 50% chance of avoiding 2 degrees will
require a six-fold improvement in our rate of decarbonisation.
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Predicting a change in the order of spring phenology in temperate forests
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The rise in spring temperatures over the past half-century has led to advances in the phenology of many nontropical plants and animals. As species and populations differ in their phenological responses to temperature, an increase in temperatures has the potential to alter timing-dependent species interactions. One species-interaction that may be affected is the competition for light in deciduous forests, where early vernal species have a narrow window of opportunity for growth before late spring species cast shade. Here we consider the Marsham phenology time series of first leafing dates of thirteen tree species and flowering dates of one ground flora species, which spans two centuries. The exceptional length of this time series permits a rare comparison of the statistical support for parameter-rich regression and mechanistic thermal sensitivity phenology models. While mechanistic models perform best in the majority of cases, both they and the regression models provide remarkably consistent insights into the relative sensitivity of each species to forcing and chilling effects. All species are sensitive to spring forcing, but we also find that vernal and
northern European species are responsive to cold temperatures in the previous autumn. Whether this sensitivity reflects a chilling requirement or a delaying of dormancy remains to be tested. We then apply the models to projected future temperature data under a fossil fuel intensive emissions scenario and predict that while some species will advance substantially others will advance by less and may even be delayed due to a rise in autumn and winter temperatures. Considering the projected responses of all fourteen species, we anticipate a change in the order of spring events, which may lead to changes in competitive advantage for light with potential implications for the composition of temperate forests.
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