Search results for "EES"
showing 10 items of 2276 documents
2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility
2011
Climate variations influenced the agricultural productivity, health risk, and conflict level of preindustrial societies. Discrimination between environmental and anthropogenic impacts on past civilizations, however, remains difficult because of the paucity of high-resolution paleoclimatic evidence. We present tree ring-based reconstructions of central European summer precipitation and temperature variability over the past 2500 years. Recent warming is unprecedented, but modern hydroclimatic variations may have at times been exceeded in magnitude and duration. Wet and warm summers occurred during periods of Roman and medieval prosperity. Increased climate variability from similar to 250 to 6…
Charcoal-painted images from the French Neolithic Villevenard hypogea: an experimental protocol for radiocarbon dating of conserved and in situ carbo…
2020
A conserved painting removed from a Neolithic collective grave in Marne, France, provided an opportunity for radiocarbon dating to place Les Ronces Hypogeum 21 (Villevenard) into the chronology of that region. Chemical analysis with direct analysis in real time (DART) mass spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) of samples from the painting revealed the presence of two kinds of wax (beeswax and paraffin or microcrystalline wax) that likely were added during the conservation, a drying oil like linseed oil, as well as markers of pine resin that may arise from turpentine or colophony. A new pretreatment protocol of chlorofor…
Landscape and wood-fuel in Akrotiri (Thera, Greece) during the Bronze Age
2017
Abstract Wood charcoal macroremains originating from the archaeological site of Akrotiri, Thera (Greece) have been analyzed. The results obtained suggest the existence of thermophilous vegetation on the island from the Early Cycladic period right up to the catastrophic eruption of the volcano in the Late Cycladic I period. The comparative evaluation of the results gained from this study and the previous ones indicates that during the Early Cycladic period an open Pinus type brutia/halepensis (Cyprus/Aleppo pine) forest prevailed on the island, accompanied by maquis vegetation. From the Middle Cycladic period and onwards a shift towards open maquis vegetation is observed. At the same time, s…
The revolution of crossdating in marine palaeoecology and palaeoclimatology.
2019
Over the past century, the dendrochronology technique of crossdating has been widely used to generate a global network of tree-ring chronologies that serves as a leading indicator of environmental variability and change. Only recently, however, has this same approach been applied to growth increments in calcified structures of bivalves, fish and corals in the world's oceans. As in trees, these crossdated marine chronologies are well replicated, annually resolved and absolutely dated, providing uninterrupted multi-decadal to millennial histories of ocean palaeoclimatic and palaeoecological processes. Moreover, they span an extensive geographical range, multiple trophic levels, habitats and f…
Modelling forest decline using SMOS soil moisture and vegetation optical depth
2018
Global change is increasing the risk of forest decline worldwide, impacting carbon and water cycles. Hence, there is an urgent need for predicting forest decline occurrence. To that purpose, this study links forest decline events in Catalonia, detected by the DEBOSCAT forest monitoring program, with information from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. Firstly, this study reviews the role of the SMOS soil moisture in a previous forest decline episode occurred in 2012, where the authors concluded that dry soils increased the probability of observing decline in broadleaved forests. Secondly, the present study detects that forest decline in 2012 and 2016 was linked to very dr…
Patterns of drought tolerance in major European temperate forest trees: climatic drivers and levels of variability
2013
The future performance of native tree species under climate change conditions is frequently discussed, since increasingly severe and more frequent drought events are expected to become a major risk for forest ecosystems. To improve our understanding of the drought tolerance of the three common European temperate forest tree species Norway spruce, silver fir and common beech, we tested the influence of climate and tree-specific traits on the inter and intrasite variability in drought responses of these species. Basal area increment data from a large tree-ring network in Southern Germany and Alpine Austria along a climatic cline from warm-dry to cool-wet conditions were used to calculate indi…
Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests
2019
Forecasting the growth of tree species to future environmental changes requires a better understanding of its determinants. Tree growth is known to respond to global-change drivers such as climate change or atmospheric deposition, as well as to local land-use drivers such as forest management. Yet, large geographical scale studies examining interactive growth responses to multiple global-change drivers are relatively scarce and rarely consider management effects. Here, we assessed the interactive effects of three global-change drivers (temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition) on individual tree growth of three study species (Quercus robur/petraea, Fagus sylvatica and Fraxinus exc…
Do small protected habitat patches within boreal production forests provide value for biodiversity conservation? : A systematic review protocol
2019
Background Forest harvesting is the main driver of habitat degradation and biodiversity loss in forests of the boreal zone. To mitigate harmful effects, small-scale habitats with high biodiversity values have been protected within production forests. These include woodland key habitats, and other small-scale habitat patches protected by voluntary conservation action. This article describes a protocol for a systematic review to synthesize the value of small habitat patches left within production landscapes for biodiversity. The topic for this systematic review arose from a discussion with the Finnish forestry sector and was further defined in a stakeholder workshop. Research question: Do sma…
Tropical Andean forests are highly susceptible to nutrient inputs--rapid effects of experimental N and P addition to an Ecuadorian montane forest.
2012
Tropical regions are facing increasing atmospheric inputs of nutrients, which will have unknown consequences for the structure and functioning of these systems. Here, we show that Neotropical montane rainforests respond rapidly to moderate additions of N (50 kg ha -1 yr -1) and P (10 kg ha -1 yr -1). Monitoring of nutrient fluxes demonstrated that the majority of added nutrients remained in the system, in either soil or vegetation. N and P additions led to not only an increase in foliar N and P concentrations, but also altered soil microbial biomass, standing fine root biomass, stem growth, and litterfall. The different effects suggest that trees are primarily limited by P, whereas some pro…
A Complex Gene Network Mediated by Ethylene Signal Transduction TFs Defines the Flower Induction and Differentiation in Olea europaea L.
2021
The olive tree (Olea europaea L.) is a typical Mediterranean crop, important for olive and oil production. The high tendency to bear fruits in an uneven manner, defined as irregular or alternate bearing, results in a significant economic impact for the high losses in olives and oil production. Buds from heavy loaded (‘ON’) and unloaded (‘OFF’) branches of a unique olive tree were collected in July and the next March to compare the transcriptomic profiles and get deep insight into the molecular mechanisms regulating floral induction and differentiation. A wide set of DEGs related to ethylene TFs and to hormonal, sugar, and phenylpropanoid pathways was identified in buds collected from ‘OFF’ …