Soil and vegetation seasonal changes in the grazing Andean Mountain grasslands     

MU?OZ María ángeles  FAZ ángel 《山地科学学报》2014,11(5):1123-1137

Andean grasslands ecosystems are fragile environments with rigorous climatologic conditions and low and variable food for the grazing. The Apolobamba area is located in the Bolivian Andean Mountains. Its high grasslands provide a natural habitat for wild and domestic camelids such as vicuna（Vicugna vicugna） and alpaca（Lama pacos）. The botanical diversity plays an essential role in maintaining vital ecosystem functions. The objectives of this research were to determine the seasonal changes in soil properties, to study the vegetation changes during the wet and dry seasons and the influence of soil properties and camelid densities on the vegetation in the Apolobamba grasslands. Four zones with different vicuna populations were selected to be studied. The following soil parameters were determined： total organic carbon, total nitrogen, available phosphorous, cation exchange capacity, exchangeable cations, pH and texture. The vegetation season changes were studied through botanical identification, above-ground biomass, plant cover and species richness. Results showed that some soil properties such as C/N ratio, CEC, silt and clay percentages kept stable against the seasonal changes. Generally, soil nutrients were relatively higher during the dry season in the surface and subsurface. The results did not point out the predominant vegetation growth during the wet season. The seasonal vegetation growth depended on each species. Thegood soil fertility corresponded to the highest plant cover. Soil fertility presented no influence on the above-ground biomass of the collected species. The negative influence of camelid grazing on soil properties could not be assessed. However, overgrazing could affect some plant species. Therefore, protection is needed in order to preserve the biodiversity in the Andean mountain grasslands.  相似文献   

Mushroom production as an alternative for rural development in a forested mountainous area     

José A. BONET  José R. GONZáLEZ-OLABARRIA  Juan MARTíNEZ DE ARAGóN 《山地科学学报》2014,11(2):535-543

Wild mushrooms are recognized as important non-wood forest products in mountainous ecosystems, but their real potential for generating rural economies has not been fully evaluated due to the difficulties in obtaining reliable productivity data, minimizing their true potential as contributor to rural economies. Mushroom yield models based on large data series from Pinus forest ecosystems in the region of Catalonia(Spain), combined with data from the Spanish National Forest Inventory allow us to estimate the potential mushroom productivity by forest ecosystems. The results of 24,500 tons/yr of mushrooms of which 16,300 tons are classified as edible and 7,900 tons are commonly marketed demonstrate the importance of mushroom productions in Catalonian pine forests, mostly located in mountainous areas where the development of agricultural activities is limited. Economic mushroom value is estimated at 48 million € for the edible mushroom and 32 million € for those corresponding to marketable yields, confirming the potential of this non-wood forest product. These production results and corresponding economic values provide a basis for the incorporation of wild mushrooms as significant non-wood forest products in the development of forest policies in mountainous areas.  相似文献   

Effects of substratum type on fish assemblages in shallow areas of a tropical estuary     

José Amorim Reis‐Filho  Alexandre Clistenes de Alcântara Santos 《Marine Ecology》2014,35(4):456-470

While there is already a comprehensive understanding of the effects of environmental variables, such as dissolved oxygen, temperature and salinity, on the structure, biomass and metabolism of aquatic biota in estuarine habitats, the effect of sedimentation, a harmful underlying factor, remains unclear. The aim of this study was to assess the differences in fish assemblages along the freshwater to salt water gradient of a large tropical estuary, and to evaluate the effects on them of habitat disturbance associated with shallow water sedimentation in the intertidal areas. Fish and environmental variables were recorded in the upper, middle and lower salinity zones of the estuary at ebb tide in both the dry and wet seasons. Sediment samples associated with different levels of habitat disturbance were analysed using granulometry, and their organic content and dissolved oxygen levels were quantified. Water temperature, salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen levels were also measured. Habitat disturbance was found to be correlated with the density, biomass and richness of fish assemblages. A total of 77 species were recorded, forming two distinct fish assemblages, with the Eleotridae family dominating in the upper zone, and Gerreidae, Gobiidae and Tetraodontidae the most common in the middle and lower estuary. Changes in the structure of fish assemblages, including reductions in density, biomass and richness, were associated with disturbance to natural features, where muddy sediment was replaced by sandy sediment and the quantity of organic matter fell. Atherinella brasiliensis was the species which showed a preference for the disturbed areas in the middle and lower zones, while Dormitator maculatus showed a preference for them in the upper estuary. They may be taken as indicators of habitat disturbance due to shallow sedimentation.  相似文献   

Land use dynamics in Brazilian La Plata Basin and anthropogenic climate change     

Ana Carolina F. de Vasconcelos  Sandro L. Schlindwein  Marcos A. Lana  Alfredo C. Fantini  Michelle Bonatti  Luiz R. D’Agostini  Sergio R. Martins 《Climatic change》2014,127(1):73-81

The La Plata Basin (LPB) is one of the most important regions for agriculture and livestock production in South America, playing a central role in the world food production and food security. Within its borders is also located the whole Brazilian Pantanal region. Identifying the most important land use sectors in LPB as well as the changes observed in the past years is fundamental to recognize which areas of the basin might be more vulnerable to climate change in order to design adaptation strategies. A general characterization of land use and livestock production of Brazilian LPB was done by using the System of Automatic Retrieving (SIDRA) of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) platform as the major source of data. It was observed expressive increases in land areas used for temporary crops, such as soybean, sugarcane, and maize, as well as increases in poultry and swine production. These important changes in agricultural land use and livestock production are currently associated to non-climatic drivers, but this dynamic might be strongly affected by the consequences of climate change and variability, with negative socio-economic impacts for the whole region.  相似文献   

Turbulent flux observations and modelling over a shallow lake and a wet grassland in the Nam Co basin,Tibetan Plateau   总被引：2，自引：1，他引：1  

Tobias?BiermannEmail author  Wolfgang?Babel  Weiqiang?Ma  Xuelong?Chen  Elisabeth?Thiem  Yaoming?Ma  Thomas?Foken 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2014,116(1-2):301-316

The Tibetan Plateau plays an important role in the global water cycle and is strongly influenced by climate change. While energy and matter fluxes have been more intensely studied over land surfaces, a large proportion of lakes have either been neglected or parameterised with simple bulk approaches. Therefore, turbulent fluxes were measured over wet grassland and a shallow lake with a single eddy-covariance complex at the shoreline in the Nam Co basin in summer 2009. Footprint analysis was used to split observations according to the underlying surface, and two sophisticated surface models were utilised to derive gap-free time series. Results were then compared with observations and simulations from a nearby eddy-covariance station over dry grassland, yielding pronounced differences. Observations and footprint integrated simulations compared well, even for situations with flux contributions including grassland and lake. The accessibility problem for EC measurements on lakes can be overcome by combining standard meteorological measurements at the shoreline with model simulations, only requiring representative estimates of lake surface temperature.  相似文献   

Temperature response to future urbanization and climate change   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Daniel Argüeso  Jason P. Evans  Lluís Fita  Kathryn J. Bormann 《Climate Dynamics》2014,42(7-8):2183-2199

This study examines the impact of future urban expansion on local near-surface temperature for Sydney (Australia) using a future climate scenario (A2). The Weather Research and Forecasting model was used to simulate the present (1990–2009) and future (2040–2059) climates of the region at 2-km spatial resolution. The standard land use of the model was replaced with a more accurate dataset that covers the Sydney area. The future simulation incorporates the projected changes in the urban area of Sydney to account for the expected urban expansion. A comparison between areas with projected land use changes and their surroundings was conducted to evaluate how urbanization and global warming will act together and to ascertain their combined effect on the local climate. The analysis of the temperature changes revealed that future urbanization will strongly affect minimum temperature, whereas little impact was detected for maximum temperature. The minimum temperature changes will be noticeable throughout the year. However, during winter and spring these differences will be particularly large and the increases could be double the increase due to global warming alone at 2050. Results indicated that the changes were mostly due to increased heat capacity of urban structures and reduced evaporation in the city environment.  相似文献   

Witnessing North Atlantic westerlies variability from ships’ logbooks (1685–2008)     

David Barriopedro  David Gallego  M. Carmen Alvarez-Castro  Ricardo García-Herrera  Dennis Wheeler  Cristina Peña-Ortiz  Susana M. Barbosa 《Climate Dynamics》2014,43(3-4):939-955

A monthly index based on the persistence of the westerly winds over the English Chanel is constructed for 1685–2008 using daily data from ships’ logbooks and comprehensive marine meteorological datasets. The so-called Westerly Index (WI) provides the longest instrumental record of atmospheric circulation currently available. Anomalous WI values are associated with spatially coherent climatic signals in temperature and precipitation over large areas of Europe, which are stronger for precipitation than for temperature and in winter and summer than in transitional seasons. Overall, the WI series accord with the known European climatic history, and reveal that the frequency of the westerlies in the eastern Atlantic during the twentieth century and the Late Maunder Minimum was not exceptional in the context of the last three centuries. It is shown that the WI provides additional and complementary information to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) indices. The analysis of WI series during the industrial era indicates an overall good agreement with the winter and high-summer NAO, with the exception of several multidecadal periods of weakened correlation. These decoupled periods between the frequency and the intensity of the zonal flow are interpreted on the basis of several sources of non-stationarity affecting the centres of the variability of the North Atlantic and their teleconnections. Comparisons with NAO reconstructions and long instrumental indices extending back to the seventeenth century suggest that similar situations have occurred in the past, which call for caution when reconstructing the past atmospheric circulation from climatic proxies. The robustness and extension of its climatic signal, the length of the series and its instrumental nature make the WI an excellent benchmark for proxy calibration in Europe and Greenland.  相似文献   

Combined influence of PDO and ENSO on northern Andean glaciers: a case study on the Cotopaxi ice-covered volcano,Ecuador     

Bijeesh Kozhikkodan Veettil  Éder Leandro Bayer Maier  Ulisses Franz Bremer  Sergio Florencio de Souza 《Climate Dynamics》2014,43(12):3439-3448

This paper describes the application of remote sensing in monitoring the fluctuations in one of the mountain glaciers in the Ecuadorean Andes during the past few decades using ASTER, EO-1 ALI, Landsat MSS, TM and ETM + images. Satellite images were used to calculate the snow line altitudes (SLAs) during the period 1979–2013. Cotopaxi ice covered volcano was studied as representative of Ecuadorian glaciers in the eastern cordillera. Precipitation and air temperature data from various gauging stations within the range of 30 km from the study site and monthly discharge and water level data from a gauging station were also utilized in this study. Anomalies in precipitation and temperature were found to be slightly different in the Cotopaxi region compared to nearby Antizana in the same cordillera and Chimborazo region in the western cordillera. An attempt to correlate the El Niño—southern oscillation phenomenon with the glacier fluctuations in Ecuadorian Andes was done successfully. Cold and warm regimes of Pacific Decadal Oscillation is also considered. The calculated glacier fluctuations obtained were similar to that performed on the nearby Antizana 15 in the eastern cordillera during 1995–2002. Precipitation and temperature anomalies were similar with Antizana 15. It is evident from the research that SLAs were highly fluctuated between the period of occurrence of El Niño and La Niña events. It is also seen that the glacier fluctuations show a negative mass balance trend in during the warm regime of Pacific Decadal Oscillation during the past three decades. Glaciated areas were advanced during the La Nina events in the cold regime of PDO during 1998–2002.  相似文献   

Assessment of uncertainties in the response of the African monsoon precipitation to land use change simulated by a regional model     

Samson Hagos  L. Ruby Leung  Yongkang Xue  Aaron Boone  Fernando de Sales  Naresh Neupane  Maoyi Huang  Jin-Ho Yoon 《Climate Dynamics》2014,43(9-10):2765-2775

Land use and land cover (LULC) over Africa have changed substantially over the last 60 years and this change has been proposed to affect monsoon circulation and precipitation. This study examines the uncertainties of model simulated response in the African monsoon system and Sahel precipitation due to LULC change using a set of regional model simulations with different combinations of land surface and cumulus parameterization schemes. Although the magnitude of the response covers a broad range of values, most of the simulations show a decline in Sahel precipitation due to the expansion of pasture and croplands at the expense of trees and shrubs and an increase in surface air temperature. The relationship between the model responses to LULC change and the climatologists of the control simulations is also examined. Simulations that are climatologically too dry or too wet compared to observations and reanalyses have weak response to land use change because they are in moisture or energy limited regimes respectively. The ones that lie in between have stronger response to the LULC changes, showing a more significant role in land–atmosphere interactions. Much of the change in precipitation is related to changes in circulation, particularly to the response of the intensity and latitudinal position of the African Easterly Jet, which varies with the changes in meridional surface temperature gradients. The study highlights the need for measurements of the surface fluxes across the meridional cross-section of the Sahel to evaluate models and thereby allowing human impacts such as land use change on the monsoon to be projected more realistically.  相似文献   

Projecting twenty-first century regional sea-level changes   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

A. B. A. Slangen  M. Carson  C. A. Katsman  R. S. W. van de Wal  A. Köhl  L. L. A. Vermeersen  D. Stammer 《Climatic change》2014,124(1-2):317-332

We present regional sea-level projections and associated uncertainty estimates for the end of the 21 ^st century. We show regional projections of sea-level change resulting from changing ocean circulation, increased heat uptake and atmospheric pressure in CMIP5 climate models. These are combined with model- and observation-based regional contributions of land ice, groundwater depletion and glacial isostatic adjustment, including gravitational effects due to mass redistribution. A moderate and a warmer climate change scenario are considered, yielding a global mean sea-level rise of 0.54 ±0.19 m and 0.71 ±0.28 m respectively (mean ±1σ). Regionally however, changes reach up to 30 % higher in coastal regions along the North Atlantic Ocean and along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and up to 20 % higher in the subtropical and equatorial regions, confirming patterns found in previous studies. Only 50 % of the global mean value is projected for the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic Ocean and off the western Antarctic coast. Uncertainty estimates for each component demonstrate that the land ice contribution dominates the total uncertainty.  相似文献