and vegetation data researchers can track when and where arid lands begin to green and for the first time anticipate
and his team combined that information with in depth use of environmental satellite data using a series of images of vegetation growth and rainfall taken over days and weeks.
To track the greening of leaves the researchers relied on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on board NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.
and weekly vegetation data from satellite images and entering the data into migration models the researchers were amazed at how well they could predict
Vegetation has played a key role in the global carbon cycle for millions of years in contrast to many technical and very expensive geoengineering techniques explains Becker.
which have established proof of principal of the technology in the laboratory growth rooms and glasshouses.
and high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) data to map the vegetation and to quantify carbon stocks throughout the Republic of Panama.
Importantly it can be used across a wide range of vegetation types worldwide. The new system described in Carbon Balance
Lidar uses reflected laser light to image vegetation canopy structure in 3-D. The scientists calibrated the Lidar measurements taken at one-meter resolution throughout nearly one million acres (390000 hectares) to the carbon
but it is low resolution both spatially and in terms of the structural information about the vegetation described Carnegie author Joseph Mascaro.
The researchers then were able to scale up the plot and Lidar data with freely available satellite data on topography rainfall and vegetation to model carbon stocks at the national level.
That feedback from the vegetation prevented fire frequency from increasing much more than it already was said Kelly.
However it has also been suggested that species characteristics are less important as determinants of plant establishment success than other factors such as seed availability or environmental characteristics like dense vegetation.
In a comprehensive field experiment the scientists sowed more than 90 different native and exotic plant species into 16 grasslands with different vegetation densities in the Canton of Bern.
and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites. Unexpectedly the scientists also found that female survival rates increased after wind turbines were installed.
and proximity to streams with riparian vegetation may contribute to maintaining both crop production and good water quality.
low-elevation sitespredicted increases in temperature and drought in the coming century may make it more difficult for conifers such as ponderosa pine to regenerate after major forest fires on dry low-elevation sites in some cases leading to conversion
While mature trees can use their roots to tap water deeper in the soil competition with dense understory vegetation can make it difficult for seedlings to survive.
and the other researchers will evaluate whether to coppice the plants at the end of 1 or 2 years.
which Arctic vegetation survives. The Arctic's extremely cold wet conditions prevent dead plants and animals from decomposing so each year another layer gets added to the reservoirs of organic carbon sequestered just beneath the topsoil.
Variations in the timing of spring thaw and the length of the growing season have a major impact on vegetation productivity
and forestry bioenergy production and vegetation fires doubled over the course of the past century.
and forestry bioenergy production construction of buildings and infrastructures soil degradation or human induced vegetation fires--and thus not available to other ecosystem processes.
According to the fossil record rainforests prospered under these hothouse conditions. Diversity increased. Because larger areas of forest generally sustain higher diversity than smaller areas do higher diversity during warming events could be explained by the expansion of tropical forests into temperate areas.
if diseases played a significant factor in vegetation change. The study explores how large-scale pathogen outbreaks were much more infrequent in the past
However in the north of the Peninsula where the climate and vegetation are more similar to those of Central europe their centre of distribution it is much more difficult to find them.
In factduring the Holocene the vegetation evolved differently in the Mediterranean compared with the rest of Europe.
In the Mediterranean the intensity of human activity linked to great aridity led to the substitution of the deciduous vegetation by the typical xerophytic vegetation.
The researchers also described their diet on the basis of their droppings and characterised their roosts the structure of the vegetation on their hunting grounds and the presence of potential preys.
Published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) their study--Bundling ecosystem services in the Panama canal Watershed--examines precipitation topography vegetation
The transformation is effected via a process called torrefaction a sort of extreme sauna for timber and vegetation.
What will happen to the area's vegetation? New Berkeley Lab research offers a way to envision a warmer future.
Along the way the vegetation will relinquish more trapped carbon than most current climate models predict.
This vegetation stores vast amounts of carbon keeping it out of the atmosphere where it can contribute to climate change.
Most Earth system models don't predict this which means they overestimate the amount of carbon that high-latitude vegetation will store in the future he adds.
He also investigated how this shift will transport the carbon stored in the vegetation that grows in the gridcell's climate.
In addition Earth system models predict carbon loss by placing vegetation at a given point and then changing various climate properties above it.
How burning plants tell seeds to rise from the ashesin the spring following a forest fire trees that survived the blaze explode in new growth
The U s. park service actively suppressed forest fires until they realized that the practice left the soil of mature forests lacking important minerals and chemicals.
and shrubs burn during a forest fire and remain in the soil after the fire ensuring the forest will regenerate.
All aspects of the environment-soil rocks weather vegetation water etc. -vary from place to place over the Earth.
They also controlled the vegetation directly around these reservoirs at this hinterland settlement says Brewer.
and they managed the vegetation by these water sources that were used for six months when there was virtually no rainfall.
Researchers are using UAVSAR's vegetation and cloud penetrating capabilities to search for unrecorded archaeological features in an attempt to preserve sensitive sites from encroaching civilization.
Funding was provided by the Carnegie Museum of Natural history's Powdermill Nature Reserve in Rector Pa. a Botany-In-Action Fellowship from the Phipps Botanical garden and Conservatory in Pittsburgh an Ivey Mcmanus Predoctoral Fellowship
At levels typically left after forest harvesting where 40 percent of the ground is covered by logging debris we found that debris inhibited the growth of competing herbaceous vegetation
Harrington and his colleagues expanded on previous research on logging debris effects by increasing the number of seedlings studied extending the study period to four years and looking at the responses of additional variables like vegetation abundance
In addition to having a vegetation control effect the retained woody debris helped promote Douglas-fir seedling growth by reducing evaporation;
However where the use of herbicides to control competing vegetation was combined with logging debris seedling growth rates were observed the highest in the study especially where debris cover was 80 percent.
The Sonoran Desert and Sky Islands ecoregion lies at the northern edge of the North american monsoon where vegetation ranges from saguaro-studded subtropical desert in the lowlands to high-altitude boreal forests.
Those droughts had major environmental and social effects Griffin said pointing out that the late-16th-century megadrought caused landscape-scale vegetation changes a 17th-century drought has been implicated in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680
Different vegetation models currently simulate remarkable variability in forest sensitivity to climate change. And while these new results suggest that tropical forests may be quite resilient to warming it is important also to remember that other factors not included in this study such as fire
and ice in the northern latitudes has diminished in recent years the temperature over the northern land mass has increased at different rates during the four seasons causing a reduction in temperature and vegetation seasonality in this area.
In other words the temperature and vegetation at northern latitudes increasingly resembles those found several degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 30 years ago.
The NASA-funded study based on newly improved ground and satellite data sets examines critically the relationship between changes in temperature and vegetation productivity in northern latitudes.
This created during the past 30 years large patches of vigorously productive vegetation totaling more than a third of the northern landscape--over 9 million km2
which is roughly about the area of the USA--resembling the vegetation that occurs further to the south says Dr. Compton Tucker Senior Scientist NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt Maryland.
Today just 30 years later it equals that of lands above 57 degrees north--a reduction in vegetation seasonality of about seven degrees south in latitude says co-author Prof.
and vegetation seasonality of about four to seven degrees of latitude during the past 30 years says co-author Eugenie Euskirchen Research Professor University of Alaska Fairbanks. The reduction of vegetation seasonality resulting in increased greenness
and vegetation productivity in some parts of the North as the ramifications of amplified greenhouse effect--including permafrost thawing frequent forest fires outbreak of pest infestations
Any significant alterations to temperature and vegetation seasonality are likely to impact life not only in the north but elsewhere in ways that we do not yet know.
#Bats not bothered by forest fires, study findsa survey of bat activity in burned and unburned areas after a major wildfire in the southern Sierra nevada mountains found no evidence of detrimental effects on bats one year after the fire.
These harsh coastal biomes are characterized by thick vegetation--particularly clusters of salt-loving mangrove trees
On the one hand the rising temperatures make vegetation grow more vigorously and therefore more carbon dioxide is taken up
and sand plain vegetation. What makes forcepflies special is the fact that little is known about their biology
A typical BECCS system converts woody biomass grass and other vegetation into electricity chemical products or fuels such as ethanol.
But when vegetation is processed at a BECCS facility the CO2 emissions are captured and prevented from reentering the environment.
To make the process carbon negative researchers have proposed a BECCS co-fired power plant that runs on a mixture of fossil fuel (such as coal) and vegetation (wood grass or straw for example.
A percentage of the CO2 emissions would come from burnt vegetation. Therefore capturing and storing those emissions would be a net-negative process.
Heating vegetation slowly without oxygen--a process called pyrolysis--produces carbon-rich chunks of biochar that can be placed in the soil as fertilizer.
and other objects is being used in the K-State Agronomy Department to determine the level of photosynthetic activity of vegetation in many different situations.
Rapid shifts in ecosystems particularly through vegetation die offs could be among the most striking impacts of increased drought
if land currently covered in non-forest vegetation was converted into deciduous forest. This equates to more than a doubling of forest in Poland Czech republic Denmark Northern Ukraine Northern Germany and France.
%The large leaf area and low aerodynamic resistance of these types of trees lends itself to enhanced evapotranspiration compared to other vegetation cooling the surrounding air and leading to cooler surface temperatures.
#Vegetation changes in cradle of humanity: Study raises questions about impact on human evolutionwhat came first:
A new analysis of the past 12 million years'of vegetation change in the cradle of humanity is challenging long-held beliefs about the world in
The research combines sediment core studies of the waxy molecules from plant leaves with pollen analysis yielding data of unprecedented scope and detail on what types of vegetation dominated the landscape surrounding the African
While earlier studies on vegetation change through this period relied on the analysis of individual sites throughout the Rift valley--offering narrow snapshots--Feakins took a look at the whole picture by using a sediment core taken in the Gulf of Aden where winds funnel
This has affected not only vegetation but also certain indigenous species in India China and Mongolia. To counteract this the study also considers a large number of cases in which the species plays an important role in environmental conservation.
and in controlling exotic vegetation plagues that could put ecosystems at risk. We wanted to perform a global review taking into account very different regions of the world from the Himalayan peaks to tropical areas
and penetrate into the top few meters of vegetation providing daily measurements of the forest canopy structure
and icing can also cause vegetation damage and reduce survival of soil microbiota says Hansen.
and greenhouse gas impacts of different crops including corn poplar alfalfa and old field vegetation.
and other vegetation that survive pine beetle invasions along waterways increase their uptake of nitrate a common disturbance-related pollutant.
They leave behind smaller trees and other understory vegetation which compensate for the loss of larger pine trees by taking up additional nitrate from the system.
Beetle-kill conditions are a good benchmark for the protection of sub-canopy vegetation to preserve water quality during forest management activities.
But this study shows just how important the survival of smaller trees and understory vegetation can be to stream water quality.
Understory vegetation left intact after beetle outbreaks gains an ecological advantage in terms of survival and growth since small trees no longer have to compete with large trees
beetle-killed areas another indication of how understory vegetation compensates for environmental conditions in beetle kill areas.
only if roughly half of the vegetation survives overstory mortality from beetle kill events which is what occurs normally in such areas said Lewis. Other study co-authors included Leigh Cooper Thomas Detmer
On the other hand food for wildlife was associated positively with both berry production and biological diversity in ground vegetation.
since about 1930--during the Smokey Bear era--aggressive forest-fire suppression has had a far greater influence on shifts in dominant tree species than minor differences in temperature.
Many ecological phenomena combine to direct vegetation trends over time with climate and disturbance playing prominent roles said Nowacki who received his Ph d under Abrams.
--and current vegetation conditions in the eastern United states. Early tree surveys chronicle the westward progression of European land acquisition with some dating back to the 1600s along the East Coast.
--the researchers expected vegetation changes consistent with warming. In most cases however European disturbance overrode regional climate change Abrams said.
Overall he concluded the results of the study suggest that altered disturbance regimes rather than climate had the greatest influence on vegetation composition and dynamics in the eastern United states over multiple centuries.
and marshy vegetation Johnston explained. However historical and aerial photos from 1927 and 1940 showed solid forests meaning little evidence of beaver activity.
Over the course of two years the researchers characterized the vegetation growing in each field calculated
and other types of vegetation the new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
Among the grasslands studied the team found monoculture grasses supported fewer birds and fewer bird species than grasslands with a mix of grass types and other kinds of vegetation like wildflowers...
According to their calculations the forest fragmentation results in up to a fifth more carbon dioxide being emitted by the vegetation.
It is forgotten a process in the global carbon circulation of the vegetation Huth states. This aspect has been included not directly in the calculations of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
and Walter Dodds university distinguished professor of biology are researching grassland streams and the expansion of nearby woody vegetation such as trees and shrubs.
They have found that burn intervals may predict the rate of woody vegetation expansion along streams.
and the historical presence of woody vegetation. Their analysis revealed an important finding: Burn intervals predicted the rate of woody vegetation expansion.
Burning every one to two years slowed the growth of trees and shrubs Veach said.
Dodds and Veach also found that bison do not significantly affect woody vegetation expansion along streams.
Woody vegetation also may be expanding in grasslands because of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere Dodds said.
and precipitation are the main factors influencing the local adaptation of sheep by their indirect effects on the amount of grasses and vegetation available.
For example in the face of globally changing climates that may favor more woody vegetation at the expense of grasses the finding are useful for identifying particular breeds
i e. have increased feed efficiency on novel vegetation communities. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Molecular biology and Evolution (Oxford university Press.
The scientists were careful to find a gradient of temperature change where potentially confounding factors were held constant including vegetation composition disturbance history geology and soil type and moisture.
Subsequent infilling was caused by vegetation growth channel narrowing increased sinuosity and vertical accumulation of sediments.
and filling but not of arroyo incision channel narrowing or floodplain vegetation development. Friedman and colleagues conclude that the occurrence of upstream progression within large basins like the Rio Puerco makes precise synchrony across basins impossible.
Even relatively modest increases in vegetation on farms can support diverse lineages of birds. Story Source:
GEDI will be a tremendous new resource for studying Earth's vegetation said Piers Sellers deputy director of Goddard's Sciences and Exploration Directorate.
Its immediate predecessors are Goddard's Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESAT) and airborne Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor known as LVIS
#Climate change to increase forest fire danger in Europeclimate change is expected to bring increased temperatures and longer droughts--conditions that will make forests more susceptible to fires.
By 2090 the area burned by forest fires in the European union could increase by 200%because of climate change according to a new study published in the journal Regional Environmental Change.
Improved firefighting response could provide additional protection against forest fires. The study was the first to examine adaptation to forest fire danger on a pan-European scale.
IIASA researchers together with colleagues from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) worked with national forest representatives in EU countries
and the EU Expert Group on Forest fires to understand fire prevention options and their impacts.
While there are many potential options for forest fire management the researchers focused on two adaptation strategies identified together with the expert stakeholders:
There is still a big debate on the effectiveness of prescribed burning as a forest fire management tool.
The researchers note that in Europe over 95%of all forest fires are caused by humans including negligence
In more populous areas the chance of occurrence of forest fires rises dramatically says IIASA researcher Andrey Krasovskii a study co-author.
When they do emerge salamanders can be spotted not only on forest floors but also up in trees and on other vegetation oftentimes climbing as high as 8 feet up.
Given their infrequent appearances aboveground it has never been clear to biologists why salamanders take time to climb vegetation.
Researchers at the University of Missouri recently conducted a study testing a longstanding hypothesis that salamanders might climb vegetation for food.
The diet of the salamanders captured on the ground was the same as the diet of salamanders captured sitting high up on vegetation.
The main component of smog ozone at ground level can cause leaf damage that stifles plant growth injuring and killing vegetation.
That is until the early 2000s when the underwater grasses also called submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) rapidly recolonized nearly the entire region.
According to the researchers runoff from mountain ranges is vulnerable to temperature hikes that lengthen growing seasons and result in more vegetation growth at high elevations.
According to the data freshwater mountain runoff is expanded highly sensitive to vegetation growth. The authors found that greater vegetation density at higher elevations in the Kings basin with the 4. 1 degrees Celsius warming projected by climate models for 2100 could boost basin evapotranspiration by as much as 28
percent with a corresponding 26 percent decrease in river flow. Further the relationships among evapotranspiration temperature and vegetation density were similar across a broader area of the Sierra nevada suggesting that the impact of climate change on evapotranspiration
and freshwater availability could be widespread. Most people have heard about the giant forests around Yosemite
Despite initial signs of host race formation whiteflies prefer natural species to cultivated crops as host plants which could facilitate pest dispersal into natural vegetation in spring.
Using laser mappingto get a better read on the vegetation and hydrology the researcher uses light detecting
Crop pests include fungi bacteria viruses insects nematodes viroids and oomycetes. The research published in the journal Global Ecology
which funded the research through the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois. Estimates derived from satellite images of vegetation
For example in Illinois a hybrid grass Miscanthus x giganteus without fertilizer or irrigation produced 10 to 16 tons of aboveground biomass per acre more than double the productivity of native prairie vegetation or corn.
students in the MAE department to do the kind of basic forest fire combustion research that can move our predictive ability from the experiential realm to scientific mathematical models and longer-range computational predictions.
Technical Meeting Tulsa OK March 17-18 2014) Because the fuel for wildland fires is mostly in the undergrowth three species of shrub
Currently under study is the effect of shrubs as undergrowth in wildland fires and how proximity and wind can influence their combustion characteristics.
It is also easier for small agile individuals to move through dense undergrowth and to climb trees.
While traveling across the country and passing through different types of environments we stopped every few hundred miles to evaluate the immediate roadside vegetation and comparing that to the plants in the natural environments 20 meters away from the road.
not only clearing of vegetation but also an influx of nutrients Rebozo said. The plants respond well to that in terms of flowering
These sheep provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of parasites weather vegetation changes and other factors on a population of wild animals.
which kill most of the vegetation. In the millennia before humans arrived these ecosystems burned at intervals of 100 to 130 years.
The high frequency of fire has instigated a persistent switch from chaparral to grass in some areas.
New research from the University of Guelph reveals that arctic mammals such as caribou can metabolize some current-use pesticides (CUPS) ingested in vegetation.
or lakes and vegetation where they are ingested by fish and mammals and in turn are consumed by other animals and humans.
They examined the vegetation-caribou-wolf food chain in the area where the presence of other organic contaminants such as legacy pesticides
and fluorinated surfactants suggested that CUPS might be found in the vegetation and animals. Caribou are among the most important subsistence animals for people living in the North
By testing vegetation the researchers found large enough concentrations of CUPS to confirm that they were entering the food chain.
In caribou eating that vegetation CUPS were also present but they did not increase (biomagnify) significantly in caribou compared to their diet.
Understanding the complex relationships among climate fire and vegetation is critical to the ability of policymakers
Disturbances like windthrow and forest fires are part of the natural dynamics of forest ecosystems and are not therefore a catastrophe for the ecosystem as such.
Damage from forest fires was estimated particularly to increase on the Iberian peninsula while bark beetle damage increased most strongly in The alps.
The new study found that small grass fires set by Martu to reveal sand monitor lizard holes created a patchy mosaic of five stages of vegetation at different post-fire ages increasing
and spend most of their time eating shoots and fruits in patches of younger vegetation.
Martu-set fires average about 10 acres--a small fraction of the size of fires ignited by lightning Codding says noting that patchy vegetation created by intentional fires reduce the likelihood of devastating large blazes.
Martu usually women set small fires in spinifex grass--the dominant vegetation--during wintertime hunts to expose burrows occupied by 2-foot-long sand monitor lizards or sand goannas
what they gain from a landscape with small patches of different ages of post-fire vegetation.
Codding says the new study looked at kangaroo populations in all five stages of post-fire spinifex grass vegetation as described by the Martu.
They also walked two predetermined 0. 6-mile lines in each hunting area counting the density of kangaroo scat in patches of vegetation in each of the different post-fire growth stages.
And they used satellite images and on-the-ground measurements of the patchiness of different stages of post-fire vegetation from November 1999 to April 2010.
This enabled researchers to look at what effect burning during a particular season had on the vegetation long-term.
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