THOMAS HICKLER results 53
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Wildfires are often a natural part of many European ecosystems, but human activities through land use, other socio‐economic factors and climate change have significantly changed how fires behave. Anthropogenic climate change is already intensifying fire‐prone weather and increasing wildfire risk across Europe with risk expected to grow sharply in coming decades. Past experience suggests that human action, such as fuel manageme...
Future Climate and Land Use Change Will Equally Impact Global Terrestrial Vertebrate DiversityNARA Subscribed
Aim Terrestrial biodiversity is impacted by both climate and land use change. Yet, future biodiversity projections have rarely considered these two drivers in combination. In this study, we aim to assess the individual and combined impact of future climate and land use change on global terrestrial vertebrate diversity under a ‘sustainability’ (SSP1‐RCP2.6) and an ‘inequality’ (SSP4‐RCP6.0) scenario. Location Global land, exclu...
Predicting Forest Tree Leaf Phenology Under Climate Change Using Satellite Monitoring and Population‐Based Genomic Trait AssociationNARA Subscribed
Leaf phenology, a critical determinant of plant fitness and ecosystem function, is undergoing rapid shifts due to global climate change, yet its complex genetic and environmental drivers remain incompletely understood. Understanding the genetic basis of phenological adaptation is crucial for forecasting forest responses to a changing climate. Here, we integrate multi‐year satellite‐derived phenology from 46 Fagus sylvatica (Eu...
Genomic evidence for the widespread presence of GH45 cellulases among soil invertebratesNARA Subscribed
Lignocellulose is a major component of vascular plant biomass. Its decomposition is crucial for the terrestrial carbon cycle. Microorganisms are considered primary decomposers, but evidence increases that some invertebrates may also decompose lignocellulose. We investigated the taxonomic distribution and evolutionary origins of GH45 hydrolases, important enzymes for the decomposition of cellulose and hemicellulose, in a collec...
Terrestrial ecosystems affect climate by reflecting solar irradiation, evaporative cooling, and carbon sequestration. Yet very little is known about how plant traits affect climate regulation processes (CRPs) in different habitat types. Here, we used linear and random forest models to relate the community‐weighted mean and variance values of 19 plant traits (summarized into eight trait axes) to the climate‐adjusted proportion...
Global biome patterns of the Middle and Late PleistoceneNARA Subscribed
Our primary aim was to assess the hypothesis that distinctive features of the patterns of vegetation change during successive Quaternary glacial–interglacial cycles reflect climatic differences arising from forcing differences. We addressed this hypothesis using 207 half‐degree resolution global biome pattern simulations, for time slices between 800 and 2 ka, made using the LPJ‐GUESS dynamic global vegetation model. Simulation...
Movement drives population dynamics of one of the most mobile ungulates on E arth: Insights from a mechanistic modelNARA Subscribed
Long‐distance movements are hypothesized to positively influence population size and stability of mobile species. We tested this hypothesis with a novel modeling approach in which moving herbivores interact with the environment created by a dynamic global vegetation model using highly mobile Mongolian gazelles in the eastern Mongolian grasslands as a case study. Gazelle population dynamics were modeled from 1901 to 2018 under...
Combined impacts of future climate‐driven vegetation changes and socioeconomic pressures on protected areas in AfricaNARA Subscribed
Africa's protected areas (PAs) are the last stronghold of the continent's unique biodiversity, but they appear increasingly threatened by climate change, substantial human population growth, and land‐use change. Conservation planning is challenged by uncertainty about how strongly and where these drivers will interact over the next few decades. We investigated the combined future impacts of climate‐driven vegetation changes in...
Land use has greatly transformed Earth's surface. While spatial reconstructions of how the extent of land cover and land‐use types have changed during the last century are available, much less information exists about changes in land‐use intensity. In particular, global reconstructions that consistently cover land‐use intensity across land‐use types and ecosystems are missing. We, therefore, lack understanding of how changes i...
Projected climatic changes lead to biome changes in areas of previously constant biomeNARA Subscribed
Aim Recent studies in southern Africa identified past biome stability as an important predictor of biodiversity. We aimed to assess the extent to which past biome stability predicts present global biodiversity patterns, and the extent to which projected climatic changes may lead to eventual biome changes in areas with constant past biome. Location Global. Taxon Spermatophyta; terrestrial vertebrates. Methods Biome constancy wa...
A research framework for projecting ecosystem change in highly diverse tropical mountain ecosystemsNARA Subscribed
Tropical mountain ecosystems are threatened by climate and land-use changes. Their diversity and complexity make projections how they respond to environmental changes challenging. A suitable way are trait-based approaches, by distinguishing between response traits that determine the resistance of species to environmental changes and effect traits that are relevant for species' interactions, biotic processes, and ecosystem func...
Forest responses to last‐millennium hydroclimate variability are governed by spatial variations in ecosystem sensitivityNARA Subscribed
Forecasts of future forest change are governed by ecosystem sensitivity to climate change, but ecosystem model projections are under‐constrained by data at multidecadal and longer timescales. Here, we quantify ecosystem sensitivity to centennial‐scale hydroclimate variability, by comparing dendroclimatic and pollen‐inferred reconstructions of drought, forest composition and biomass for the last millennium with five ecosystem m...
Large uncertainties in future biome changes in Africa call for flexible climate adaptation strategiesNARA Subscribed
Anthropogenic climate change is expected to impact ecosystem structure, biodiversity and ecosystem services in Africa profoundly. We used the adaptive Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (aDGVM), which was originally developed and tested for Africa, to quantify sources of uncertainties in simulated African potential natural vegetation towards the end of the 21st century. We forced the aDGVM with regionally downscaled high‐resoluti...
Global vegetation patterns of the past 140,000 yearsNARA Subscribed
Aim Insight into global biome responses to climatic and other environmental changes is essential to address key questions about past and future impacts of such changes. By simulating global biome patterns 140 ka to present, we aimed to address important questions about biome changes during this interval. Location Global. Taxon Spermatophyta. Methods Using the LPJ‐GUESS dynamic global vegetation model, we made 89 simulations dr...
Global ecosystems and fire: Multi‐model assessment of fire‐induced tree‐cover and carbon storage reductionNARA Subscribed
In this study, we use simulations from seven global vegetation models to provide the first multi‐model estimate of fire impacts on global tree cover and the carbon cycle under current climate and anthropogenic land use conditions, averaged for the years 2001–2012. Fire globally reduces the tree covered area and vegetation carbon storage by 10%. Regionally, the effects are much stronger, up to 20% for certain latitudinal bands,...
A comparison of macroecological and stacked species distribution models to predict future global terrestrial vertebrate richnessNARA Subscribed
Aim Predicting future changes in species richness in response to climate change is one of the key challenges in biogeography and conservation ecology. Stacked species distribution models (S‐SDMs) are a commonly used tool to predict current and future species richness. Macroecological models (MEMs), regression models with species richness as response variable, are a less computationally intensive alternative to S‐SDMs. Here, we...
TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open accessNARA Subscribed
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodivers...
A Continental-Scale Validation of Ecosystem Service ModelsNARA Subscribed