scholarly journals Ecotypic changes of alpine birds to climate change

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria del Mar Delgado ◽  
Chiara Bettega ◽  
Jochen Martens ◽  
Martin Päckert
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Tarsus Length ◽  
Closely Related Species ◽  
Pertinent Question ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Environmental Variations ◽  
Gloger’S Rule ◽  
Increasing Temperature

Abstract In endotherm animals, several traits are related to climate. For example, Bergmann’s rule predicts a decrease in body size within species and across closely related species with increasing temperature, whereas Gloger’s rule states that birds and mammals should be darker in humid and warm environments compared to colder and drier areas. However, it is still not clear whether ecotypic responses to variation in the local environment can also apply to morphological and colouration changes through time in response to climate change. We present a 100-year-long time series on morphological and melanin-based colours of snowfinch (325 Montifringilla, 92 Pyrgilauda and 30 Onychostruthus) museum specimens. Here we show that the tarsus length of the species has decreased and the saturation of the melanin-based colour has increased, which was correlated with the increase of temperature and precipitations. As ecotypic variations are tightly linked to individual behavioural and physiological responses to environmental variations, differently sized and coloured individuals are expected to be differently penalized by global changes. This study opens the pertinent question about whether ecotypic responses can enhance population persistence in the context of global change.

Climate Change and Drought: Impact of Food Insecurity on Gender Based Vulnerability in District Tharparkar

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manzoor Hussain Memon ◽  
Naveed Aamir ◽  
Nadeem Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Water Scarcity ◽  
Work Load ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Arid Ecosystems ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
The People ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Arid Desert

Climate change has now become a reality that has intensified the sufferings of people living in arid ecosystems. Decrease in rainfall, rise in temperature and increase in the frequency of extreme events are some of the changes observed in the semi-arid desert of district Tharparkar. For thousands of years, people of Tharparkar are coping with drought and aridity of the land by using indigenous knowledge. However, global changes in the climatic pattern and deterioration of social and economic conditions have pushed the inhabitants of this arid region into extreme vulnerable situation. This paper investigates the link between climate-induced natural disasters, particularly drought, from the perspective of changing climate patterns which have resulted in food insecurity and water scarcity. The paper analyses the rainfall pattern in the last 38 years—dividing it into two periods i.e. from 1975-1994 and 1995-2014. The findings of the paper have challenged the prevailing notions about aridity and rainfall patterns in Tharparkar district. The research found that there is an increase in average annual precipitation in the district with erratic patterns. Thus, the nature of drought in the district has changed from its historic pattern of less or no rainfall to more but erratic rainfall that is more threatening to livelihoods of the people that in turn have multiplier effect on water and food insecurity. In particularly, women are more vulnerable in the absence of social security and lack of basic necessities for their survival amidst drought. For instance, traditionally the burden of managing water resources falls on women, which leads to an increased work load during the time of drought and also water scarcity. JEL Classification: Q54, Q56, Q25, I30 Keywords: Climate, Environment and Development, Drought, Water, Poverty

scholarly journals Contribution of Supportive Local Communities to Sustainable Event Tourism

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7853
Author(s):  
Xiubai Li ◽  
Jinok Susanna Kim ◽  
Timothy J. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Local Development ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Local Resident ◽  
Public Agency ◽  
Cultural Festivals ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Puppet Show ◽  
Supportive Community

The importance of community attitude and participation for the success and sustainability of cultural festivals has been steadily increasing in recent years. The Chuncheon Puppet Festival (CPF) is an international festival that has been held every year since 1989 in Chuncheon, Korea. The festival has several distinctive characteristics as a sustainable event because: (a) it maintains its single genre of puppet performances based on modern cultural art; (b) it is well-established as the festival for the local residents of Chuncheon City and is planned by local community residents and local small companies, not by government agencies or global large entrepreneurs; (c) it helps children to have an interesting cultural experience in the local environment; and (d) it is regularly hosted in August, an off-season for festivals in Korea that was chosen by residents as it is a school holiday season. However, there is still room for improvement to secure its place as a successful sustainable festival. The following might be considered: (i) increased exchange of human resources among the festival executive members, community groups, and the public staff in Chuncheon City; (ii) local residents should maintain full control of the festival; and (iii) a local cultural trust should be established by cultural art professionals, local resident organizations, puppet show professionals, and public agency staff. The CPF is a typical example of a successful sustainable festival with proactive and supportive community participation and a large number of volunteers that help to increase local competitiveness and sustainable local development. This case report delivers insightful lessons and messages to guide what needs to be preconditioned for local cultural festivals to be sustainable and successful for a long time in many destinations, where they can contribute as efficient catalysts for regional tourism development.

Climate change and conflict in the Sahel: the acacia gum tree as a tool for environmental peacebuilding

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Ousseyni Kalilou
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Gum Arabic ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Natural Soil ◽  
Resource Governance ◽  
Acacia Gum ◽  
Promising Source ◽  
Acacia Tree

Abstract Environmental stress contributes to food insecurity, poverty, forced migration and violent conflict in the Sahel, with climate change aggravating the situation. The production of gum arabic from the acacia tree increasingly aligns with the community stakeholders’ efforts to promote climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience. Based on expert interviews and field observations in Niger, and a reading of relevant documents, I found that gum arabic production is valuable for conflict mitigation because it helps tackle the root causes of violent conflicts. The acacia gum tree is a natural soil fixer and multinational companies have coveted the resin from the tree, which is a rising commodity and a promising source of revenue for the local inhabitants. As different communities work together and cooperate with outside actors (government agencies, international partners, NGOs and businesses), the opportunities to build social cohesion around the tree increase. By facilitating ecological improvement, social inclusion and poverty alleviation, the promotion of gum arabic production, despite other issues such as bad natural resource governance, is a critical environmental peacebuilding strategy. Hence, suitable funding of massive afforestation with the acacia tree fits with community-based natural climate solutions to global humanitarian issues by protecting and restoring the local environment.

scholarly journals Phenological Analysis of Sub-Alpine Forest on Jeju Island, South Korea, Using Data Fusion of Landsat and MODIS Products

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 286
Author(s):  
Sang-Jin Park ◽  
Seung-Gyu Jeong ◽  
Yong Park ◽  
Sang-hyuk Kim ◽  
Dong-kun Lee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Data Fusion ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ◽  
Fusion Model ◽  
Fusion Algorithm ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Modis Imagery ◽  
Increasing Temperature

Climate change poses a disproportionate risk to alpine ecosystems. Effective monitoring of forest phenological responses to climate change is critical for predicting and managing threats to alpine populations. Remote sensing can be used to monitor forest communities in dynamic landscapes for responses to climate change at the species level. Spatiotemporal fusion technology using remote sensing images is an effective way of detecting gradual phenological changes over time and seasonal responses to climate change. The spatial and temporal adaptive reflectance fusion model (STARFM) is a widely used data fusion algorithm for Landsat and MODIS imagery. This study aims to identify forest phenological characteristics and changes at the species–community level by fusing spatiotemporal data from Landsat and MODIS imagery. We fused 18 images from March to November for 2000, 2010, and 2019. (The resulting STARFM-fused images exhibited accuracies of RMSE = 0.0402 and R2 = 0.795. We found that the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value increased with time, which suggests that increasing temperature due to climate change has affected the start of the growth season in the study region. From this study, we found that increasing temperature affects the phenology of these regions, and forest management strategies like monitoring phenology using remote sensing technique should evaluate the effects of climate change.

scholarly journals Climate Change and Internet of Things Technologies—Sustainable Premises of Extending the Culture of the Amurg Cultivar in Transylvania—A Use Case for Târnave Vineyard

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8170
Author(s):  
Veronica Sanda Chedea ◽  
Ana-Maria Drăgulinescu  ◽  
Liliana Lucia Tomoiagă  ◽  
Cristina Bălăceanu ◽  
Maria Lucia Iliescu 
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
White Wine ◽  
Time Investment ◽  
Protected Designation Of Origin ◽  
Average Annual Temperature ◽  
Insect Infestations ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Red Grape

Known for its dry and semi-dry white wine, the Târnave vineyard located in central Transylvania is challenged by the current climate change, which has resulted in an increase of the period of active vegetation by approximately 15–20 days, the average annual temperature by 1–1.5 °C and also the amount of useful temperatures (useful thermal balance for the grapevine). Furthermore, the frost periods have been reduced. Transylvania is an important Romanian region for grapevine cultivation. In this context, one can use the climatic changes to expand their wine assortment by cultivating an autochthonous grapevine variety called Amurg. Amurg is a red grape cultivar homologated at SCDVV Blaj, which also homologated 7 cultivars and 11 clones. Because viticulture depends on the stability of meteorological and hydrological parameters of the growing area, its foundations are challenged by climate change. Grapevine production is a long time investment, taking at least five years before the freshly planted vines produce the desired quality berries. We propose the implementation of a climate change-based precision viticulture turn-key solution for environmental monitoring in the Târnave vineyard. This solution aims to evaluate the grapevine’s micro-climate to extend the sustainable cultivation of the Amurg red grapes cultivar in Transylvania with the final goal of obtaining Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) rosé and red wines from this region. Worldwide, the changing conditions from the existing climate (a 30-year average), used in the past hundred years to dictate local standards, such as new and erratic trends of temperature and humidity regimes, late spring freezes, early fall frosts, storms, heatwaves, droughts, area wildfires, and insect infestations, would create dynamic problems for all farmers to thrive. These conditions will make it challenging to predict shifts in each of the components of seasonal weather conditions. Our proposed system also aims to give a solution that can be adapted to other vineyards as well.

scholarly journals The widespread collapse of an invasive species: Argentine ants ( Linepithema humile ) in New Zealand

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Cooling ◽  
Stephen Hartley ◽  
Dalice A. Sim ◽  
Philip J. Lester
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Invasive Species ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Argentine Ant ◽  
Environmental Costs ◽  
Argentine Ants ◽  
Ant Communities ◽  
Mean Survival Time ◽  
Colony Collapse ◽  
Increasing Temperature

Synergies between invasive species and climate change are widely considered to be a major biodiversity threat. However, invasive species are also hypothesized to be susceptible to population collapse, as we demonstrate for a globally important invasive species in New Zealand. We observed Argentine ant populations to have collapsed in 40 per cent of surveyed sites. Populations had a mean survival time of 14.1 years (95% CI = 12.9–15.3 years). Resident ant communities had recovered or partly recovered after their collapse. Our models suggest that climate change will delay colony collapse, as increasing temperature and decreasing rainfall significantly increased their longevity, but only by a few years. Economic and environmental costs of invasive species may be small if populations collapse on their own accord.

A “Natural” Proposal for Addressing Climate Change

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
Radiant Heat ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Considerable Time ◽  
Long Time

One of the fundamental challenges of climate change is that we contribute to it increment by increment, and experience it increment by increment after a considerable time lag. As a consequence, it is very difficult to see what we are doing to ourselves, to future generations, and to the living planet as a whole. There are monumental ethical issues involved, but they are obscured by the incremental nature of the process and the long time frame before reaching the concentration of greenhouse gases and the ensuing accumulation of radiant heat—and consequent climate change—that ensues.

scholarly journals Scaled biotic disruption during early Eocene global warming events

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 4679-4688 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Gibbs ◽  
P. R. Bown ◽  
B. H. Murphy ◽  
A. Sluijs ◽  
K. M. Edgar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Cycle ◽  
Threshold Value ◽  
Early Eocene ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Thermal Maximum ◽  
Carbon Release ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract. Late Paleocene and early Eocene hyperthermals are transient warming events associated with massive perturbations of the global carbon cycle, and are considered partial analogues for current anthropogenic climate change. Because the magnitude of carbon release varied between the events, they are natural experiments ideal for exploring the relationship between carbon cycle perturbations, climate change and biotic response. Here we quantify marine biotic variability through three million years of the early Eocene that include five hyperthermals, utilizing a method that allows us to integrate the records of different plankton groups through scenarios ranging from background to major extinction events. Our long time-series calcareous nannoplankton record indicates a scaling of biotic disruption to climate change associated with the amount of carbon released during the various hyperthermals. Critically, only the three largest hyperthermals, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2) and the I1 event, show above-background variance, suggesting that the magnitude of carbon input and associated climate change needs to surpass a threshold value to cause significant biotic disruption.

scholarly journals Comparison of the spatial patterns of schistosomiasis in Zimbabwe at two points in time, spaced twenty-nine years apart: is climate variability of importance?

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrik B. Pedersen ◽  
Dimitrios-Alexios Karagiannis-Voules ◽  
Nicholas Midzi ◽  
Tkafira Mduluza ◽  
Samson Mukaratirwa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Predictive Accuracy ◽  
Weather Data ◽  
Geostatistical Model ◽  
Prevalence Data ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Potential Risk Factors ◽  
The Impact

Temperature, precipitation and humidity are known to be important factors for the development of schistosome parasites as well as their intermediate snail hosts. Climate therefore plays an important role in determining the geographical distribution of schistosomiasis and it is expected that climate change will alter distribution and transmission patterns. Reliable predictions of distribution changes and likely transmission scenarios are key to efficient schistosomiasis intervention-planning. However, it is often difficult to assess the direction and magnitude of the impact on schistosomiasis induced by climate change, as well as the temporal transferability and predictive accuracy of the models, as prevalence data is often only available from one point in time. We evaluated potential climate-induced changes on the geographical distribution of schistosomiasis in Zimbabwe using prevalence data from two points in time, 29 years apart; to our knowledge, this is the first study investigating this over such a long time period. We applied historical weather data and matched prevalence data of two schistosome species (<em>Schistosoma haematobium</em> and <em>S. mansoni</em>). For each time period studied, a Bayesian geostatistical model was fitted to a range of climatic, environmental and other potential risk factors to identify significant predictors that could help us to obtain spatially explicit schistosomiasis risk estimates for Zimbabwe. The observed general downward trend in schistosomiasis prevalence for Zimbabwe from 1981 and the period preceding a survey and control campaign in 2010 parallels a shift towards a drier and warmer climate. However, a statistically significant relationship between climate change and the change in prevalence could not be established.

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