Search results for "Climate-Change"
showing 10 items of 59 documents
Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change
2021
High Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous livelihoods are tightly linked and exposed to climate change, yet assessing their sensitivity requires a long-term perspective. Here, we assess the vulnerability of the North Water polynya, a unique seaice ecosystem that sustains the world’s northernmost Inuit communities and several keystone Arctic species. We reconstruct mid-to-late Holocene changes in sea ice, marine primary production, and little auk colony dynamics through multi-proxy analysis of marine and lake sediment cores. Our results suggest a productive ecosystem by 4400–4200 cal yrs b2k coincident with the arrival of the first humans in Greenland. Climate forcing during the late Holocene, l…
A European Multi Lake Survey dataset of environmental variables, phytoplankton pigments and cyanotoxins
2018
Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-change induced stressors, like poor transparency, increased water temperature and enhanced stratification. Consistency in data collection and analysis methods is necessary to achieve fully comparable datasets and for statistical validity, avoiding issues linked to disparate data sources. The Europea…
The Association of Ambient Temperature and Violent Crime
2017
It is controversial if global warming will result into increased crime and conflict rate, and no causal neurobiological mechanisms have been proposed for the putative association between ambient temperature and aggressive behavior. This study shows that during 1996–2013, ambient temperature explained 10% of variance in the violent crime rate in Finland, corresponding to a 1.7% increase/degree centigrade. Ambient temperature also correlated with a one month delay in circannual changes in peripheral serotonin transporter density among both offenders and healthy control subjects, which itself correlated strongly with the monthly violent crime rate. This suggests that rise in temperature modula…
Translocation as a novel approach to study effects of a new breeding habitat on reproductive output in wild birds
2011
Environmental conditions under which species reproduce have major consequences on breeding success and subsequent fitness. Therefore breeding habitat choice is ultimately important. Studies rarely address the potential fitness pay-offs of alternative natural breeding habitats by experimental translocation. Here we present a new tool to study fitness consequences of free living birds in different habitats. We translocated a migratory passerine, the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), to a novel site, where pairs were subjected to a short stay (2-4 days) in a nest box-equipped aviary before being released. We show that it is technically possible to retain birds in the new area for breeding,…
Comparative study of the environmental footprints of marinas on European Islands
2021
AbstractPorts have been key elements in Europe's economic development. This situation is even more relevant on islands, which are highly dependent on the maritime sector. Consequently, over the years, ports with diverse functionalities have been established both in mainland Europe and on its outlying islands. This article discusses the environmental impact of leisure marinas on European islands, especially as they are closely linked to economic development through tourism. The aim is to study the environmental impact of these infrastructures by determining the carbon and water footprints of marinas on European islands in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The results obtained enable the au…
Abrupt Alnus population decline at the end of the first millennium CE in Europe - The event ecology, possible causes and implications
2019
The study, based on the examination of 70 published and unpublished pollen profiles from Poland and supplementary data from the surrounding regions, shows that an abrupt, episodic Alnus population decline at the end of the first millennium CE was a much more widespread event than has been previously reported, spanning large areas of the temperate and boreal zones in Europe. The data from Poland suggest that the decline was roughly synchronous and most likely occurred between the 9th and 10th centuries, with strong indications for the 10th century. The pollen data indicate that human impacts were not a major factor in the event. Instead, we hypothesize that one or a series of abrupt climatic…
Connecting the data landscape of long-term ecological studies: the SPI-Birds data hub
2021
The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and eco-logical processes in the wild. Furthermore, their number and global distribution provides a unique opportunity to assess the generality of patterns and to address broad-scale global issues (e.g. climate change).
Altered epiphyte community and sea urchin diet in Posidonia oceanica meadows in the vicinity of volcanic CO2 vents
2017
Ocean acidification (OA) predicted for 2100 is expected to shift seagrass epiphyte communities towards the dominance of more tolerant non-calcifying taxa. However, little is known about the indirect effects of such changes on food provision to key seagrass consumers. We found that epiphyte communities of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica in two naturally acidified sites (i.e. north and south sides of a volcanic CO2 vent) and in a control site away from the vent at the Ischia Island (NW Mediterranean Sea) significantly differed in composition and abundance. Such differences involved a higher abundance of non-calcareous crustose brown algae and a decline of calcifying polychaetes in both acidif…
A database for the monitoring of thermal anomalies over the Amazon forest and adjacent intertropical oceans
2015
AbstractAdvances in information technologies and accessibility to climate and satellite data in recent years have favored the development of web-based tools with user-friendly interfaces in order to facilitate the dissemination of geo/biophysical products. These products are useful for the analysis of the impact of global warming over different biomes. In particular, the study of the Amazon forest responses to drought have recently received attention by the scientific community due to the occurrence of two extreme droughts and sustained warming over the last decade. Thermal Amazoni@ is a web-based platform for the visualization and download of surface thermal anomalies products over the Ama…
Bioclimatic atlas of the terrestrial Arctic
2023
AbstractThe Arctic is the region on Earth that is warming at the fastest rate. In addition to rising means of temperature-related variables, Arctic ecosystems are affected by increasingly frequent extreme weather events causing disturbance to Arctic ecosystems. Here, we introduce a new dataset of bioclimatic indices relevant for investigating the changes of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems. The dataset, called ARCLIM, consists of several climate and event-type indices for the northern high-latitude land areas > 45°N. The indices are calculated from the hourly ERA5-Land reanalysis data for 1950–2021 in a spatial grid of 0.1 degree (~9 km) resolution. The indices are provided in three subsets…