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Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity
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The most unique feature of Earth is the existence of life, and the most extraordinary feature of life is its diversity. Approximately 9 million types of plants,...
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Diversity loss, Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Impacts, Ecosystems
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Probabilistic cost estimates for climate change mitigation
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For more than a decade, the target of keeping global warming below 2 6C has been a key focus of the international climate debate1. In response, the scientific c...
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Terrestrial water fluxes dominated by transpiration
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Renewable fresh water over continents has input from precipitation and losses to the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration. Global-scale estimates of...
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A large source of low-volatility secondary organic aerosol
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Forests emit large quantities of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to the atmosphere. Their condensable oxidation products can form secondary organic aerosol, a...
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Ecosystem Services, Transpiration, Land cover, Climate Change, Cloud nucleation, Forests, Biosphere–atmosphere feedbacks, Water, Ecological Flows, Cloud feedb...
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Carbon loss from an unprecedented Arctic tundra wildfire
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Arctic tundra soils store large amounts of carbon (C) in organic soil layers hundreds to thousands of years old that insulate, and in some cases maintain, perma...
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Fire frequency, Climate Impacts, Temperature, Forest fire, Terrestrial ecosystems, Climate Change, Landscape scale, Arctic fire, Tundra, Permafrost, Carbon stoc...
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Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms
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Extreme weather, sea-level rise and degraded coastal ecosystems are placing people and property at greater risk of damage from coastal hazards 1–5. The likeli...
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Coastal erosion, Ecosystem Services, Climate Impacts, Predicted change, Extreme risk, Climate Adaptation, Models, Climate Change, Sea level, Extreme scenarios, ...
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Delayed phenology and reduced fitness associated with climate change in a wild hibernator
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The most commonly reported ecological effects of climate change are shifts in phenologies, in particular of warmer spring temperatures leading to earlier timing...
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Climate Change, Fitness, Snow cover, Hibernation, Phenotype, Mammals, Spring phenology, Ground squirrel, Phenotypic plasticity, Squirrels, Phenology
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Forests fuel fish growth in freshwater deltas
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Aquatic ecosystems are fuelled by biogeochemical inputs from surrounding lands and within- lake primary production. Disturbances that change these inputs may af...
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Genealogy of nature conservation: a political perspective
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Modern nature conservation is a product of post-Enlightenment modernity; I explore the heterogeneity of its conceptual and ideological background. The 19th cent...
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Observed increase in local cooling effect of deforestation at higher latitudes
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Deforestation in mid- to high latitudes is hypothesized to have the potential to cool the Earth’s surface by altering biophysical processes1–3. In climate m...
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The Next Dust Bowl
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Drought is the most pressing problem caused by climate change. It receives too little attention, says Joseph Romm.
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The rebound effect is overplayed
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Increasing energy efficiency brings emissions savings. Claims that it backfires are a distraction, say Kenneth Gillingham and colleagues.
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Comment: The end of cheap coal
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New forecasts suggest that coal reserves will run out faster than many believe. Energy policies relying on cheap coal have no future, say Richard Heinberg and D...
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Coal burning power plants, Carbon sink, Consumption, Climate Change, Carbon flux, Mining, CO2, Demand, Coal Mining, Minelands, Carbon policy
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Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate
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It has been proposed that changes in global climate have been responsible for episodes of widespread violence and even the collapse of civilizations 1,2. Yet pr...
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Human priorities, Human decision making, Human civilization, Climate and society, Climate Change, La Nina, El Nino, Climate Impacts, Conflict, ENSO, Human Dimen...
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A reality check on the shale revolution
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The production of shale gas and oil in the United States is overhyped and the costs are underestimated, says J. David Hughes.
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Fracking, Shale
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Ecohydrologic separation of water between trees and streams in a Mediterranean climate
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Water movement in upland humid watersheds from the soil surface to the stream is often described using the concept of translatory flow (1,2), which assumes that...
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Streamflow, Transpiration, Climate Change, Soil water, Water stable isotopes, Storms, Watersheds, Trees, Terrestrial precipitation, Streams, Soil moisture, Prec...
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Activation of old carbon by erosion of coastal and subsea permafrost in Arctic Siberia
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The future trajectory of greenhouse gas concentrations depends on interactions between climate and the biogeosphere1,2. Thawing of Arctic permafrost could relea...
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Coastal erosion, Carbon sink, Temperature, Land atmosphere coupling, Carbon cycle, Climate Change, Biogeosphere, Carbon flux, Greenhouse gases, Biosphere–atmo...
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Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?
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Palaeontologists characterize mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short interval, as has ha...
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Natural and anthropogenic variations in methane sources during the past two millennia
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Methane is an important greenhouse gas that is emitted from multiple natural and anthropogenic sources. Atmospheric methane concentrations have varied on a numb...
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Comment: Time to Model all Life on Earth
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To help transform our understanding of the biosphere, ecologists — like climate scientists — should simulate whole ecosystems, argue Drew Purves and colleag...
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Conservation organizations, Biodiversity, Biosphere, Climate Change, Biogeosphere, Conservation groups, Models, Conservation priority, Adaptation by organizatio...
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