In this article we test the notion that adaptation to climate change in grazed rangelands requires little more effort than current approaches to risk management because the inherent climate variability that characterizes rangelands provides a management environment that is preadapted to climate change.
The role of fire and climate in determining savanna and forest distributions requires comprehensive theoretical reevaluation. Empirical studies show that climate constrains maximum tree cover and that fire feedbacks can reduce tree cover substantially, but neither the stability nor the dynamics of these systems are well understood.
The 2012 wildfire season isn’t over yet, but already this year is shaping up to be the one of the worst on record in the American West.
Climate change is a poorly understood, emerging threat to many amphibian species. One of the ways climate change is likely to affect amphibians is through increased recruitment failure associated with more frequent climatic extremes.
Physiological tolerance of environmental conditions can influence species-level responses to climate change. Here, we used species-specific thermal tolerances to predict the community responses of ant species to experimental forest-floor warming at the northern and southern boundaries of temperate hardwood forests in eastern North America.
Future disruptions to fire activity will threaten ecosystems and human well-being throughout the world, yet there are few fire projections at global scales and almost none from a broad range of global climate models (GCMs).
We examined potential impacts of climate change over the next century on eight mammal species of conservation concern in western Washington State, under four warming scenarios.
During the 21st century, climate-driven changes in fire regimes will be a key agent of change in forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW).
Global climate change has the potential to affect future wildfire activity, particularly in south-western USA ponderosa pine forests that have been substantially altered by land-use practices and aggressive fire suppression.
Global environmental change scenarios have typically provided projections of land use and land cover for a relatively small number of regions or using a relatively coarse resolution spatial grid, and for only a few major sectors. The coarseness of global projections, in both spatial and thematic dimensions, often limits their direct utility at scales useful for environmental management.