High rates of climate change are currently exceeding many plant species' capacity to keep up with climate, leading mismatches between climatic conditions and preferences the species present in a community. This disequilibrium community composition could diminish, however, when critical thresholds exceeded, due population declines or losses among more mismatched species. Here, we assessed effect...

The influence of environmental factors on forage quality of temperate and tropical grasses has been reviewed by several authors, who summarized how light, temperature, drought and soil nutrients influence chemical composition, and digestibility of forages grown in contrasting areas of the world. The effects of season of the year on forage growth, grazing behavior and animal performance have als...

To assess if tree age may modulate the main climatic drivers of radial growth, two relict Pinus nigra subsp. salzmannii populations (María, most xeric site; Mágina, least xeric site) were sampled in southern Spain near the limits of the species range. Tree-ring width residual chronologies for two age groups (mature trees, age ≤ 100 years (minimum 40 years); old trees, age > 100 years) were buil...

The Cupressaceae clade has the broadest diversity in habitat and morphology of any conifer family. This clade is characterized by highly divergent physiological strategies, with deciduous swamp-adapted genera-like Taxodium at one extreme, and evergreen desert genera-like Cupressus at the other. The size disparity within the Cupressaceae is equally impressive, with members ranging from 5-m-tall ...

In the future, periods of strongly increased temperature in concert with drought (heat waves) will have potentially detrimental effects on trees and forests in Central Europe. Norway spruce might be at risk in the future climate of Central Europe. However, Douglas-fir is often discussed as an alternative for the drought and heat sensitive Norway spruce, because some provenances are considered t...

Water stress in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) causes considerable losses in yield, and therefore, potato is often considered to be a drought sensitive crop. Identification of water deficit tolerant potato genotypes is an adaptation strategy to mitigate the climatic changes that are occurring in the Cundiboyacense region in Colombia. Previous studies have evaluated potato plants under water stre...

Tree-ring samples from Chinese Pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) that were collected in the Taihe Mountains on the western Loess Plateau, China, were used to analyze the effects of climate and drought on radial growth and to reconstruct the mean April-June Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) during the period 1730-2012 AD. Precipitation positively affected tree growth prim...

We present a simple method of probabilistic risk analysis for ecosystems. The only requirements are time series—modelled or measured—of environment and ecosystem variables. Risk is defined as the product of hazard probability and ecosystem vulnerability. Vulnerability is the expected difference in ecosystem performance between years with and without hazardous conditions. We show an application ...

Little is known about how climatic variability affects fragmented forests and their abrupt edges. We contrasted effects of the 1997 El Niño drought between fragmented and continuous forests in central Amazonia, using long-term data on tree mortality. For 23 permanent 1-ha plots, annualized mortality rates of trees 10 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) were compared among a ‘baseline’ interval o...