Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

Quantification of global forest change has been lacking despite the recognized importance of forest ecosystem services. In this study, Earth observation satellite data were used to map global forest loss (2.3 million square kilometers) and gain (0.8 million square kilometers) from 2000 to 2012 at a spatial resolution of 30 meters. The tropics were the only climate domain to exhibit a trend, with forest loss increasing by 2101 square kilometers per year. Brazil's well-documented reduction in deforestation was offset by increasing forest loss in Indonesia, Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Zambia, Angola, and elsewhere. Intensive forestry practiced within subtropical forests resulted in the highest rates of forest change globally. Boreal forest loss due largely to fire and forestry was second to that in the tropics in absolute and proportional terms. These results depict a globally consistent and locally relevant record of forest change.

High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change

Dengue is a systemic viral infection transmitted between humans by Aedes mosquitoes. For some patients, dengue is a life-threatening illness. There are currently no licensed vaccines or specific therapeutics, and substantial vector control efforts have not stopped its rapid emergence and global spread. The contemporary worldwide distribution of the risk of dengue virus infection and its public health burden are poorly known. Here we undertake an exhaustive assembly of known records of dengue occurrence worldwide, and use a formal modelling framework to map the global distribution of dengue risk. We then pair the resulting risk map with detailed longitudinal information from dengue cohort studies and population surfaces to infer the public health burden of dengue in 2010. We predict dengue to be ubiquitous throughout the tropics, with local spatial variations in risk influenced strongly by rainfall, temperature and the degree of urbanization. Using cartographic approaches, we estimate there to be 390 million (95% credible interval 284-528) dengue infections per year, of which 96 million (67-136) manifest apparently (any level of disease severity). This infection total is more than three times the dengue burden estimate of the World Health Organization. Stratification of our estimates by country allows comparison with national dengue reporting, after taking into account the probability of an apparent infection being formally reported. The most notable differences are discussed. These new risk maps and infection estimates provide novel insights into the global, regional and national public health burden imposed by dengue. We anticipate that they will provide a starting point for a wider discussion about the global impact of this disease and will help to guide improvements in disease control strategies using vaccine, drug and vector control methods, and in their economic evaluation.

/pdf/the-global-distribution-and-burden-of-dengue-4d1crnic4u.pdf

The global distribution and burden of dengue

Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone

Cause, conseguenze e strategie di mitigazione Proponiamo il primo di una serie di articoli in cui affronteremo l’attuale problema dei mutamenti climatici. Presentiamo il documento redatto, votato e pubblicato dall’Ipcc - Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - che illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.

/pdf/climate-change-2007-the-physical-science-basis-1x93ttz9jt.pdf

Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

Recent advances in remote sensing of biophysical variables

The influence of burn severity on post-fire vegetation recovery and albedo change during early succession in North American boreal forests

Forest characteristics, structure, and dynamics within the North American boreal region are heavily influenced by wildfire intensity, severity, and frequency. Increasing temperatures are likely to result in drier conditions and longer fire seasons, potentially leading to more intense and frequent fires. However, an increase in deciduous forest cover is also predicted across the region, potentially decreasing flammability. In this study, we use an individual tree-based forest model to test bottom-up (i.e. fuels) vs top-down (i.e. climate) controls on fire activity and project future forest and wildfire dynamics. The University of Virginia Forest Model Enhanced is an individual tree-based forest model that has been successfully updated and validated within the North American boreal zone. We updated the model to better characterize fire ignition and behavior in relation to litter and fire weather conditions, allowing for further interactions between vegetation, soils, fire, and climate. Model output following updates showed good agreement with combustion observations at individual sites within boreal Alaska and western Canada. We then applied the updated model at sites within interior Alaska and the Northwest Territories to simulate wildfire and forest response to climate change under moderate (RCP 4.5) and extreme (RCP 8.5) scenarios. Results suggest that changing climate will act to decrease biomass and increase deciduous fraction in many regions of boreal North America. These changes are accompanied by decreases in fire probability and average fire intensity, despite fuel drying, indicating a negative feedback of fuel loading on wildfire. These simulations demonstrate the importance of dynamic fuels and dynamic vegetation in predicting future forest and wildfire conditions. The vegetation and wildfire changes predicted here have implications for large-scale changes in vegetation composition, biomass, and wildfire severity across boreal North America, potentially resulting in further feedbacks to regional and even global climate and carbon cycling.

Bottom-up drivers of future fire regimes in western boreal North America

Climate-land surface interactions have been mainly investigated either in terms of short-term modification of fluxes of matter, momentum, and energy, which primarily affect the atmosphere, or in the long-term, biogeographical impacts of climatic conditions on the type of vegetation that occupies a site. Logically, there must be time and space scales at which these short-term and biogeographical climate-land surface interactions are both relevant. It is proposed that it is these intermediate scales, at which physiological and biogeographical processes cannot easily be separated, which are most relevant in the study of climate change, and that new analytical and modeling approaches are needed which include both. Moreover, periods of rapid climate change and periods of increasing anthropogenic impacts on the land surface can be expected to induce a wide range of transient vegetation dynamics. The timescale of interest here excludes equilibria and demands a consideration of the outcomes of processes that have a wide variety of temporal frequencies. A recent workshop brought together ecologists and climatologists with interests in observing, modeling, and predicting the dynamics of land-atmosphere processes at the inteannual to decadal timescale. The result was a proposal to exploit recently developed archives of remotely sensed data and others such as paleobotanical and paleoclimatological records in order to advance beyond the polarized concept of land-atmosphere processes which comes from a consideration only of short and long time periods, while ignoring their interactions. The new demands of this agenda for observational and analytical methods are considered.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000JD900177

Interannual Atmosphere‐Biosphere Variation: Implications for observation and modeling

The extent, density, and configuration of the built environment—such as buildings, roads, parking lots, and other materials constructed for human use—have an impact on a wide range of biogeochemical and hydrological processes. These built areas, which are impervious to water infiltration, modify hydrology through the combined influence of increased peak flows, reduced base flows, flashier stream hydrographs (decreased lag times between storm events and peak discharge), and changes in bank and streambed erosion [Nilsson et al., 2003]. Additionally, increasing impervious cover has long been known to amplify point source pollution discharges into streams, including chemical runoff from parking lots and roads [Schuelen 1994].

Two maps of the built environment, expressed in terms of impervious surface area, have been derived for areas that encompass the 168,000-square-kilometer Chesapeake Bay watershed (Figure l), a region that has been highly altered by human land use [Goetz et al., 2004; Jantz et al., 2005]. One map was developed for the region at fine (30-square-meter) spatial resolution, and the other covers the extent of the conterminous United States at one-square-kilometer resolution [Elvidge et al., 2004].A finer-resolution regional map was used to assess the quality of the national map, demonstrating the utility the latter map for a range of applications related to monitoring land transformation and assessing watershed impacts.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2006EO150001

Scott J. Goetz

Papers

Recent advances in remote sensing of biophysical variables

The influence of burn severity on post-fire vegetation recovery and albedo change during early succession in North American boreal forests

Bottom-up drivers of future fire regimes in western boreal North America

Interannual Atmosphere‐Biosphere Variation: Implications for observation and modeling

Satellite maps show Chesapeake Bay urban development