The need for climate change information at the regional-to-local scale is one of the central issues within the global change debate. Such information is necessary in order to assess the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems and to develop suitable adaptation and mitigation strategies at the national level. The end-user and policy-making communities have long sought reliable reg...

Recently, land use and cover change is recognized as a one of major drivers of global change. Consequently, an updated and accurate database concerning their distribution is essential for global change research. This study investigated a land use change based on change of temporal pattern which applied to the wavelet-filtered MODIS EVI from 2000 to 2009. The temporal pattern analysis was able t...

A recent article by Sol Benatar calls on the global health community to reassess its approach to twin crises of global poverty and climate change. I build on his article by challenging mainstream narratives that claim satisfactory progress in efforts to reduce poverty and improve health for all, and arguing that any eradication of poverty that is consistent with environmental sustainability wil...

We propose that past abrupt climate changes were probably a result of rapid and extensive variations in sea-ice cover. We explain why this seems a perhaps more likely explanation than a purely thermohaline circulation mechanism. We emphasize that because of the significant influence of sea ice on the climate system, it seems that high priority should be given to developing ways for reconstructi...

As liberal democracies, what can the United States, Europe, and Japan be expected to embrace as “democratic” solutions to global environmental problems such as climate change? It is our argument that contradictions in liberal democratic politics lead these states to advocate solutions that are nature-ascommodity oriented and that idealize the notion of “managed nature.” In the case of climate c...

Water management is facing major challenges due to increasing uncertainties caused by climate and global change and by fast changing socio-economic boundary conditions. More attention has to be devoted to understanding and managing the transition from current management regimes to more adaptive regimes that take into account environmental, technological, economic, institutional and cultural cha...

Based on the analysis of published data, 72 avian species (49 residents and 23 summer breeders) were found to expand northward in China during the past 30 years. The expansion distance of those birds varied from 11 kilometers to 1788 kilometers. The mean value of the expansion distance was 413.30 kilometers. The northward movement of birds was relevant to increasing temperature, NDVI and land-u...

Current patterns of global change can strongly affect biodiversity at global, regional and local scales. At global scales, habitat destruction and the introduction of exotic species are contributing to declines in species diversity. At regional and local scales, evidence for declines in diversity is mixed, and recent work suggests that diversity might commonly be increasing. In spite of these t...