Search results for "EARTH SYSTEM"
showing 10 items of 109 documents
Effects of climate change and land use intensification on regional biological soil crust cover and composition in southern Africa
2022
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) form a regular and relevant feature in drylands, as they stabilize the soil, fix nutrients, and influence water cycling. However, biocrust forming organisms have been shown to be dramatically vulnerable to climate and land use change occurring in these regions. In this study, we used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data of biocrust-dominated pixels (NDVIbiocrust) obtained from hyperspectral and LANDSAT-7 data to analyse biocrust development over time and to forecast future NDVIbiocrust development under different climate change and livestock density scenarios in southern Africa. We validated these results by analysing the occurrence and compo…
Current Wildland Fire Patterns and Challenges in Europe: A Synthesis of National Perspectives
2021
Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-scale wildland fire statistics across European countries, there is still a crucial need to collect and summarize in-depth local analysis and understanding of the wildland fire condition and associated challenges across Europe. This article aims to provide a general overview of the current wildland fire patterns and challenges as perceived by natio…
A physiology-based Earth observation model indicates stagnation in the global gross primary production during recent decades
2020
Abstract Earth observation‐based estimates of global gross primary production (GPP) are essential for understanding the response of the terrestrial biosphere to climatic change and other anthropogenic forcing. In this study, we attempt an ecosystem‐level physiological approach of estimating GPP using an asymptotic light response function (LRF) between GPP and incoming photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) that better represents the response observed at high spatiotemporal resolutions than the conventional light use efficiency approach. Modelled GPP is thereafter constrained with meteorological and hydrological variables. The variability in field‐observed GPP, net primary productivity an…
Managing the Historical Agricultural Landscape in the Sicilian Anthropocene Context. The Landscape of the Valley of the Temples as a Time Capsule
2021
The debate over whether we are entering the Anthropocene Epoch focuses on the unequal consumption of the Earth system’s resources at the expense of nature’s regenerative abilities. To find a new point of balance with nature, it is useful to look back in time to understand how the so-called “Great Acceleration”—the surge in the consumption of the planet’s resources—hastened the arrival of the Anthropocene. Some particular places—for various reasons—survived the Great Acceleration and, as time capsules, have preserved more or less intact some landscape features that have disappeared elsewhere. How can we enhance these living archives that have come down to us? Through the analysis of the case…
Chlorophyll a fluorescence illuminates a path connecting plant molecular biology to Earth-system science
2021
Remote sensing methods enable detection of solar-induced chlorophyll a fluorescence. However, to unleash the full potential of this signal, intensive cross-disciplinary work is required to harmonize biophysical and ecophysiological studies. For decades, the dynamic nature of chlorophyll a fluorescence (ChlaF) has provided insight into the biophysics and ecophysiology of the light reactions of photosynthesis from the subcellular to leaf scales. Recent advances in remote sensing methods enable detection of ChlaF induced by sunlight across a range of larger scales, from using instruments mounted on towers above plant canopies to Earth-orbiting satellites. This signal is referred to as solar-in…
Inferring causation from time series in earth system sciences
2019
The heart of the scientific enterprise is a rational effort to understand the causes behind the phenomena we observe. In large-scale complex dynamical systems such as the Earth system, real experiments are rarely feasible. However, a rapidly increasing amount of observational and simulated data opens up the use of novel data-driven causal methods beyond the commonly adopted correlation techniques. Here, we give an overview of causal inference frameworks and identify promising generic application cases common in Earth system sciences and beyond. We discuss challenges and initiate the benchmark platform causeme.net to close the gap between method users and developers.
Constraining Uncertainty in Projected Gross Primary Production With Machine Learning
2020
The terrestrial biosphere is currently slowing down global warming by absorbing about 30% of human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The largest flux of the terrestrial carbon uptake is gross primary production (GPP) defined as the production of carbohydrates by photosynthesis. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration is expected to increase GPP (“CO2 fertilization effect”). However, Earth system models (ESMs) exhibit a large range in simulated GPP projections. In this study, we combine an existing emergent constraint on CO2 fertilization with a machine learning approach to constrain the spatial variations of multimodel GPP projections. In a first step, we use observed changes in the CO2 sea…
Dust-stack 2009 of combined sediment record ELSA
2009
The last glacial cycle in Central Europe is dominated by processes of aeolian dust transport and accumulation. These dust deposits are preserved in soils and lake sediments and provide detailed information about the climate variability during cold and dry periods. Especially the transitions from warm into cold periods are characterized by turbulent climate conditions. The main problems of terrestrial paleoclimate reconstructions are the completeness of the core material and a sampling resolution. To detect single dust storms we use a particle detection method, which allows high resolution, sub-annual analyses of sediment structures in undisturbed samples. The ELSA (Eifel Laminated Sediment …
Dust-stack 2013 of combined sediment record ELSA
2013
During the last twelve years the ELSA Project (Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive) at Mainz University has drilled a total of about 52 cores from 27 maar lakes and filled-in maar basins in the Eifel/Germany. Dating has been completed for the Holocene cores using 6 different methods (210Pb and 137Cs activities, palynostratigraphy, event markers, varve counting, 14C). In general, the different methods consistently complement one another within error margins. Event correlation was used for relating typical lithological changes with historically known events such as the two major Holocene flood events at 1342 AD and ca 800 BC. Dating of MIS2?MIS3 core sections is based on greyscale tuning, radioc…
Stable isotopes covering 96-7 ka BP from stalagmite CM (Santo Tomas Cave, Cuba)
2020
We present a new speleothem trace element and stable isotope record, which extends previous paleoclimate evidence from Cuban speleothems to the last 96 ka. Stable isotope samples were micromilled at a resolution of 0.10-0.33mm, and measured using an IRMS equipped with a Gasbench. Line scans of Element/Calcium ratios of the speleothem were measured by laser ablation ICPMS and were reduced to the resolution of the stable isotope records.