Institution
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
Facility•Birmensdorf, Switzerland•
About: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research is a facility organization based out in Birmensdorf, Switzerland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Climate change & Soil water. The organization has 1256 authors who have published 3222 publications receiving 161639 citations. The organization is also known as: WSL.
Topics: Climate change, Soil water, Geology, Biodiversity, Environmental science
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
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TL;DR: In this paper, the long-term changes from initially dry to pluvial to recent dry conditions are similar to PDSI trends reported from N America, and they suggest that they are related to longterm temperature changes, potentially teleconnected with ENSO variability and forced by solar irradiance changes.
Abstract: [1] Cedrus atlantica ring width data are used to reconstruct long-term changes in the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) over the past 953 years in Morocco, NW Africa. The reconstruction captures the dry conditions since the 1980s well and places this extreme period within a millennium-long context. PDSI values were above average for most of the 1450-1980 period, which let recent drought appear exceptional. However, our results also indicate that this pluvial episode of the past millennium was preceded by generally drier conditions back to 1049. Comparison of PDSI estimates with large-scale pressure field reconstructions revealed steady synoptic patterns for drought conditions over the past 350 years. The long-term changes from initially dry to pluvial to recent dry conditions are similar to PDSI trends reported from N America, and we suggest that they are related to long-term temperature changes, potentially teleconnected with ENSO variability and forced by solar irradiance changes.
351 citations
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01 Jan 2004TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used tree-ring data to represent the history of very large-scale temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere over the last three to six centuries, using the maximum latewood density (MXD) as a growth parameter.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with dendroclimatic research aimed at representing the history of very large-scale temperature changes. It describes recent analyses of the data from a widespread network of tree-ring chronologies, made up of ring width and densitometric measurement data spanning three to six centuries. The network was built over many years from trees selected to maximise their sensitivity to changing temperature. This strategy was adopted so that temperature reconstructions might be achieved at both regional and very large spatial scales. The focus here is on the use of one growth parameter: maximum latewood density (MXD). The detailed nature of the temperature sensitivity of MXD across the whole network has been explored and the dominant common influence of mean April–September temperature on MXD variability is demonstrated. Different approaches to reconstructing past temperature for this season include the production of detailed year-by-year gridded maps and wider regional integrations in the form of subcontinental and quasi-hemispheric-scale histories of temperature variability spanning some six centuries. These ‘hemispheric’ summer series can be compared with other reconstructions of temperature changes for the Northern Hemisphere over the last millennium. The tree-ring-based temperature reconstructions show the clear cooling effect of large explosive volcanic eruptions. They also exhibit greater century-timescale variability than is apparent in the other hemispheric series and suggest that the late 15th and the 16th centuries were cooler than indicated by some other data. However, in many tree-ring chronologies, we do not observe the expected rate of ring density increases that would be compatible with observed late 20th century warming. This changing climate sensitivity may be the result of other environmental factors that have, since the 1950s, increasingly acted to reduce tree-ring density below the level expected on the basis of summer temperature changes. This prevents us from claiming unprecedented hemispheric warming during recent decades on the basis of these tree-ring density data alone. Here we show very preliminary results of an investigation of the links between recent changes in MXD and ozone (the latter assumed to be associated with the incidence of UV radiation at the ground). D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
351 citations
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01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: The range of objectives to which biomonitoring is applied has grown steadily from water quality and atmospheric pollution to heavy metal accumulation, climate change, and to environmental issues involving management of natural resources such as the effects of fragmentation and habitat alteration, effects of development on biodiversity as well as assessing conservation practices for rare or endangered species as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Widespread changes in natural and managed environments in the last century have been associated with rapid development of technology with the capacity for massive destruction of natural environments. This has been accompanied by large-scale natural disasters such as floods and droughts and by large-scale technical failures such as Chernobyl, impacting greatly on human existence and welfare. It is the impact on social conditions that has led to increasing interest in maintaining environmental quality and ensuring that human activities do not threaten the ecosystem on which we depend. The threats to human health by water and air pollution led to early research on bioindicators in order to map and monitor the effects of pollution on selected organisms. However the range of objectives to which biomonitoring is applied has grown steadily from water quality and atmospheric pollution to heavy metal accumulation, climate change, and to environmental issues involving management of natural resources such as the effects of fragmentation and habitat alteration, effects of development on biodiversity as well as assessing conservation practices for rare or endangered species.
349 citations
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TL;DR: A review of the literature on snow manipulation experiments can be found in this article, where the authors classify the studies according to the climate scenarios they simulate and response variables they measure, and discuss the methods applied to manipulate snow cover, and analyse and generalize the response in phenology, productivity and community composition by means of a meta-analysis.
Abstract: Snow cover is one of the most important factors controlling microclimate and plant growing conditions for Arctic and alpine ecosystems. Climate change is altering snowfall regimes, which in turn influences snow cover and ultimately tundra plant communities. The interest in winter climate change and the number of experiments exploring the responses of alpine and Arctic ecosystems to changes in snow cover have been growing in recent years, but their outcomes are difficult to summarize because of the large variability in manipulation approaches, extents and measured response variables. In this review, we (1) compile the ecological publications on snow manipulation experiments, (2) classify the studies according to the climate scenarios they simulate and response variables they measure, (3) discuss the methods applied to manipulate snow cover, and (4) analyse and generalize the response in phenology, productivity and community composition by means of a meta-analysis. This meta-analysis shows that flowering phenology responded strongly to changes in the timing of snowmelt. The least responsive group of species were graminoids; however, they did show a decrease in productivity and abundance with experimentally increased snow covers. The species group with the greatest phenological response to snowmelt changes were the dwarf shrubs. Their abundance also increased in most long-term snow fence experiments, whereas species richness generally declined. We conclude that snow manipulation experiments can improve our understanding of recently observed ecosystem changes, and are an important component of climate change research.
349 citations
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Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg1, University of Bayreuth2, Zürcher Fachhochschule3, University of Picardie Jules Verne4, University of Oviedo5, Wageningen University and Research Centre6, Masaryk University7, University of Nottingham8, University of Rostock9, Max Planck Society10, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul11, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill12, Santa Clara University13, Leiden University14, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic15, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology16, Sapienza University of Rome17, Natural Resources Canada18, Florida International University19, Universidade Federal do Acre20, Ghent University21, University of Göttingen22, University of the Basque Country23, Aarhus University24, Environmental Change Institute25, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory26, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts27, University of Nova Gorica28, King Juan Carlos University29, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague30, VU University Amsterdam31, University of Würzburg32, National University of Cordoba33, Wake Forest University34, National University of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco35, University of Exeter36, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue37, University of Montpellier38, University of Adelaide39, University of Chile40, IFREMER41, University of British Columbia42, Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina43, University of Münster44, University of Hamburg45, University of Wrocław46, University of Zurich47, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research48, University of Oldenburg49, University of Wyoming50, University of Waikato51, Institut national de la recherche agronomique52, Sofia University53, Royal Botanic Gardens54, University of Edinburgh55, Landcare Research56, Radboud University Nijmegen57, Spanish National Research Council58, University of Barcelona59, University of Leeds60, University of Tartu61, University of Minnesota62, University of Sydney63, University of Jena64, University of La Serena65, Peking University66, Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development67, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki68, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences69, University of Oulu70, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire71, American Museum of Natural History72, International Institute of Minnesota73, Leipzig University74
TL;DR: It is shown that global trait composition is captured by two main dimensions that are only weakly related to macro-environmental drivers, which reflect the trade-offs at the species level but are weakly associated with climate and soil conditions at the global scale.
Abstract: Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key question is to what extent community-level trait composition is globally filtered and how well it is related to global versus local environmental drivers. Here, we perform a global, plot-level analysis of trait-environment relationships, using a database with more than 1.1 million vegetation plots and 26,632 plant species with trait information. Although we found a strong filtering of 17 functional traits, similar climate and soil conditions support communities differing greatly in mean trait values. The two main community trait axes that capture half of the global trait variation (plant stature and resource acquisitiveness) reflect the trade-offs at the species level but are weakly associated with climate and soil conditions at the global scale. Similarly, within-plot trait variation does not vary systematically with macro-environment. Our results indicate that, at fine spatial grain, macro-environmental drivers are much less important for functional trait composition than has been assumed from floristic analyses restricted to co-occurrence in large grid cells. Instead, trait combinations seem to be predominantly filtered by local-scale factors such as disturbance, fine-scale soil conditions, niche partitioning and biotic interactions.
349 citations
Authors
Showing all 1333 results
Name | H-index | Papers | Citations |
---|---|---|---|
Peter H. Verburg | 107 | 464 | 34254 |
Bernhard Schmid | 103 | 460 | 46419 |
Christian Körner | 103 | 376 | 39637 |
André S. H. Prévôt | 90 | 511 | 38599 |
Fortunat Joos | 87 | 276 | 36951 |
Niklaus E. Zimmermann | 80 | 277 | 39364 |
Robert Huber | 78 | 311 | 25131 |
David Frank | 78 | 186 | 18624 |
Jan Esper | 75 | 254 | 19280 |
James W. Kirchner | 73 | 238 | 21958 |
David B. Roy | 70 | 250 | 26241 |
Emmanuel Frossard | 68 | 356 | 15281 |
Derek Eamus | 67 | 285 | 17317 |
Benjamin Poulter | 66 | 255 | 22519 |
Ulf Büntgen | 65 | 316 | 15876 |