scholarly journals Long-term effects of cultural filtering on megafauna species distributions across China

2019 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 486-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuqing N. Teng ◽  
Chi Xu ◽  
Licheng Teng ◽  
Jens-Christian Svenning
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Brown Bear ◽  
Black Bear ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Asiatic Black Bear ◽  
Sociocultural Processes ◽  
The Impact

Human activities currently play a dominant role in shaping and eroding Earth’s biodiversity, but the historical dynamics leading to this situation are poorly understood and contentious. Importantly, these dynamics are often studied and discussed without an emphasis on cultural evolution, despite its potential importance for past and present biodiversity dynamics. Here, we investigate whether cultural filtering, defined as the impact of cultural evolution on species presence, has driven the range dynamics of five historically widespread megafauna taxa (Asiatic elephant, rhinoceroses, tiger, Asiatic black bear, and brown bear) across China over the past 2 millennia. Data on megafauna and sociocultural history were compiled from Chinese administrative records. While faunal dynamics in China are often linked to climate change at these time scales, our results reveal cultural filtering as the dominant driver of range contractions in all five taxa. This finding suggests that the millennia-long spread of agricultural land and agricultural intensification, often accompanied by expansion of the Han culture, has been responsible for the extirpation of these megafauna species from much of China. Our results suggest that cultural filtering is important for understanding society’s role in the assembly of contemporary communities from historical regional species pools. Our study provides direct evidence that cultural evolution since ancient times has overshadowed climate change in shaping broadscale megafauna biodiversity patterns, reflecting the strong and increasing importance of sociocultural processes in the biosphere.

LAND RECLAMATION OF AGRICULTURAL LAND IN THE REPUBLIC OF SAKHA (YAKUTIA) IN THE CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

2021 ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
M. I. LOSKIN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Land Reclamation ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Water Pipelines ◽  
Group Water ◽  
Agricultural Water Supply ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Impact

The current state of agricultural land reclamation in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), its role in agricultural production of the republic, taking into account the impact of climate change on irrigation facilities, is considered. It has been established that at present in the sphere of public administration in the field of land reclamation in the republic there are estuary irrigation systems, drainage systems and agricultural water supply facilities, as well as group water pipelines for water supply of rural settlements and irrigation of agricultural land.

Precipitation trends and ruptures effect on catchment hydrology and water resources availability for agricultural lands under climate change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youness Hrour ◽  
Zahra Thomas ◽  
Ophélie Fovet ◽  
Pauline Rousseau-Gueutin ◽  
Pascal Pichelin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Groundwater Recharge ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Catchment Hydrology ◽  
Agricultural Adaptation ◽  
Stream Discharge ◽  
Precipitation Indices ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Precipitation Trends

<p>Water resources depletion under climate change is a major concern over the world. Mediterranean countries are deeply affected by changes in precipitation intensity, duration and frequency. Such changes lead to decrease in the averaged stream discharge and groundwater recharge consequently decreasing water resources availability. Our research focused on a case study performed in the Loukkos catchment, draining an area of 3730 km², located in the north of Morocco. Trend analysis of 8 to 62 years of precipitations was conducted based on statistical tests at about ten stations over the catchment. 20 to 70 years of temperature and discharge data were also analyzed. The time series were investigated using several non-parametric tests in order to characterize trends, to track down changes and their effect on agricultural land changes at the catchment scale. The present study highlights the impact of climate and catchment hydrology on agricultural practices and water resources used for irrigation. Analysis of precipitation indices showed that the temporal distribution of precipitation in the study area has changed since the 1970s. This change results from a reduction in precipitation, a shift in the hydrological year and a reduction in the number of wet days per year. Severe drought periods appear after the climatic rupture, which occurred around 1971. An increase in the intensity and frequency of droughts, in addition to an increase in the annual and seasonal average temperature (more than 1°C) were observed. Such changes contributed to agricultural practice modifications, with development of irrigated agriculture and later sowing period to adapt to the delay in the onset of the rains. For the future, the use of IPCC/CMIP5 climate projections for the Mediterranean region will help to evaluate how the precipitation indices will evolve. The impact of irrigation on stream discharge and groundwater recharge needs to be considered through agro-hydrological modeling including agricultural trajectory. Such tools will help to strengthen agricultural adaptation strategies and promote resilient farming practices.</p><p>Keywords: Precipitation trends, agricultural land use, water use for irrigation, agricultural adaptation strategies.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals A multi-site techniques intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1075-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Van Malderen ◽  
H. Brenot ◽  
E. Pottiaux ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
C. Hermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
International Gnss Service ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. At one hand, networks of ground-based instruments allowing to retrieve homogeneous Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) datasets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ yr, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 yr (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged in order to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2). The present study aims at setting up a techniques intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in-situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess the applicability of either dataset for water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites worldwide at which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. We found that the mean biases of the different techniques w.r.t. the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV, but the small bias is accompanied by large Root Mean Square (RMS) values, especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of the presence of clouds on the techniques IWV agreement. Also, the influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is investigated, e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences, etc. Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. We could only detect a clear dependency of the RMS, for all considered instruments, on latitude or mean IWV: the RMS of the IWV observations w.r.t. the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

scholarly journals Role of badger setts in life of other carnivores

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia V. Sidorchuk ◽  
Michail V. Maslov ◽  
Vyacheslav V. Rozhnov
Keyword(s):  
Interspecific Interactions ◽  
Russian Far East ◽  
Far East ◽  
Brown Bear ◽  
Black Bear ◽  
Camera Traps ◽  
Nyctereutes Procyonoides ◽  
Lynx Lynx ◽  
Raccoon Dog ◽  
Asiatic Black Bear

A study of interspecific interactions of European (Meles meles) and Asian (M. leucurus) badgers with other carnivores at badger setts was carried out in Darwin Reserve (European part  of Russia) and in Ussuriisk Reserve (Russian Far East) in 2006-2011. We used camera traps for the registration of visits of carnivore mammals to the badger setts. Overall, 11 species were recorded. In both reserves, badger setts attract carnivore species during the whole year. Some predators visit badger setts regularly. The visitors can be divided into two groups: species searching shelter, or searching prey. The first group includes raccoon dog Nyctereutes procyonoides and red fox Vulpes vulpes. Raccoon dog was the most frequent visitor in both study areas (34 visits in Darwin reserve and 73 in Ussuriisk reserve). The second group includes lynx Lynx lynx and wolf Canis lupus in Darwin reserve and Asiatic black bear Ursus thibetanus, brown bear U. arctos, yellow-throated marten Martes flavigula aterrima and lynx Lynx lynx in Ussuriisk reserve. Smaller predators are also included into the second group because they can find prey at badger setts too: leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis euptilura, sable Martes zibellina and Siberian weasel Mustela sibirica in Ussuriisk reserve and European pine marten Martes martes in Darwin reserve. No cases of  aggressive interactions between the badgers and the visitors were recorded. But we noted two cases of change of sett owners and one case when raccoon dog removed dead badger cubs from the sett.

scholarly journals Impact of urbanization on climate change and geographical analysis of physical land use land cover variation using RS-GIS.

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-152
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Mining Area ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Climatic Pattern

<p>This study focuses on the impact of climate change on rainfall-runoff pattern, and to assess the surface runoff and groundwater recharge potential from the intensified rainfall for the effective management of surface and groundwater resources in Tirunelveli city. The rainfall contribution is consistent, dependent, maximum and intensified during the month of November followed by October and December. The intensified rainfall in these months causes a temperature decrease and the climate becomes more and more colder than ever. The indices SPI and DI clear show that there is a change in climatic pattern. Landuse Landcover (LULC) analysis shows that the residential area and mining area is on the increasing trend, Village area is slightly increasing, agricultural area and dense scrub area is on the decreasing trend. The present capacity of the storage tanks available in Tirunelveli city is less than the maximum runoff generated during the month of November. The increase in residential area in LULC reflects the direct linear relation with the population increase of the city. The impact of urbanization leads to LULC change with the loss of agricultural land and water bodies.</p>

scholarly journals Impact of Regional Climate Change on the Infrastructure and Operability of Railway Transport

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-195
Author(s):  
Evgeniia A. Kostianaia ◽  
Andrey G. Kostianoy ◽  
Mikhail A. Scheglov ◽  
Aleksey I. Karelov ◽  
Alexander S. Vasileisky
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
The Sea Of Japan ◽  
Storm Events ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
The Impact ◽  
And Sea Level

Abstract This article considers various aspects of the impact of climate change on the railway infrastructure and operations. A brief international overview and the importance of this issue for Russia are given. Temperature effects, permafrost thawing, strong winds, floods and sea level rise, long-term effects, and adaptation measures are discussed. In conclusion, the authors give several recommendations on further research in this area, and highlight that special attention should be given to the areas in the Russian Federation which already face or might soon experience damage from storm events or flooding and sea level rise, namely Kaliningrad Region on the Baltic Sea, the area between Tuapse and Adler in Krasnodar Region on the Black Sea, and on Sakhalin Island from the side of the Sea of Japan.

scholarly journals Impacts of climate change on groundwater flooding and ecohydrology in lowland karst

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1923-1941
Author(s):  
Patrick Morrissey ◽  
Paul Nolan ◽  
Ted McCormack ◽  
Paul Johnston ◽  
Owen Naughton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Karst Aquifer ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Wetland Ecosystems ◽  
Extreme Flooding ◽  
Karst Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Abstract. Lowland karst aquifers can generate unique wetland ecosystems which are caused by groundwater fluctuations that result in extensive groundwater–surface water interactions (i.e. flooding). However, the complex hydrogeological attributes of these systems, linked to extremely fast aquifer recharge processes and flow through well-connected conduit networks, often present difficulty in predicting how they will respond to changing climatological conditions. This study investigates the predicted impacts of climate change on a lowland karst catchment by using a semi-distributed pipe network model of the karst aquifer populated with output from the high spatial resolution (4 km) Consortium for Small-scale Modelling Climate Lokalmodell (COSMO-CLM) regional climate model simulations for Ireland. An ensemble of projections for the future Irish climate were generated by downscaling from five different global climate models (GCMs), each based on four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs; RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5) to account for the uncertainty in the estimation of future global emissions of greenhouse gases. The one-dimensional hydraulic/hydrologic karst model incorporates urban drainage software to simulate open channel and pressurised flow within the conduits, with flooding on the land surface represented by storage nodes with the same stage volume properties of the physical turlough basins. The lowland karst limestone catchment is located on the west coast of Ireland and is characterised by a well-developed conduit-dominated karst aquifer which discharges to the sea via intertidal and submarine springs. Annual above ground flooding associated with this complex karst system has led to the development of unique wetland ecosystems in the form of ephemeral lakes known as turloughs; however, extreme flooding of these features causes widespread damage and disruption in the catchment. This analysis has shown that mean, 95th and 99th percentile flood levels are expected to increase by significant proportions for all future emission scenarios. The frequency of events currently considered to be extreme is predicted to increase, indicating that more significant groundwater flooding events seem likely to become far more common. The depth and duration of flooding is of extreme importance, both from an ecological perspective in terms of wetland species distribution and for extreme flooding in terms of the disruption to homes, transport links and agricultural land inundated by flood waters. The seasonality of annual flooding is also predicted to shift later in the flooding season, which could have consequences in terms of ecology and land use in the catchment. The investigation of increasing mean sea levels, however, showed that anticipated rises would have very little impact on groundwater flooding due to the marginal impact on ebb tide outflow volumes. Overall, this study highlights the relative vulnerability of lowland karst systems to future changing climate conditions, mainly due to the extremely fast recharge which can occur in such systems. The study presents a novel and highly effective methodology for studying the impact of climate change in lowland karst systems by coupling karst hydrogeological models with the output from high-resolution climate simulations.

scholarly journals Assessing the impact of saltwater intrusion on agricultural land in Nghe An’s coastal areas in the context of climate change

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (T4) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Ve Ngoc Hoang ◽  
Thai Hong Tran
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Saltwater Intrusion ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Coastal Areas ◽  
Agricultural Lands ◽  
Land Area ◽  
Production Forests ◽  
Paddy Land ◽  
The Impact

Climate change is occurring increasingly complex and unpredictable, therefore the phenomenon of saltwater intrusion at coastal areas is also increasingly serious. The saltwater intrusion threatens the production and life of people in Nghe An’s coastal areas. Our study used MIKE11, MIKE 21 and ArcGIS software to assess the effects of saltwaters intrusion on agricultural land. The results indicate that the agricultural lands in Nghe An’s coastal areas are at high hazards of saltwater intrusion. Cua Lo town is the most affected by the saltwater intrusion, typically with land for cultivation of perennial trees (BHK), paddy land (LUC, LUK), land for production forests (RST), and land for aquaculture (TSL) are at high risk from the base (with more than 90 % of the total land area).

scholarly journals A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 2487-2512 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Van Malderen ◽  
H. Brenot ◽  
E. Pottiaux ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
C. Hermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
International Gnss Service ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. On one hand, networks of ground-based instruments able to retrieve homogeneous integrated water vapour (IWV) data sets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ years, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 years (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2). This study performs an intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess their use in water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites world-wide for which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. The mean biases of the different techniques compared to the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV. Nevertheless these small biases are accompanied by large standard deviations (SD), especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of clouds on the IWV agreement. The influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is also investigated (e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences). Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. For all considered instruments, the only dependency clearly detected is with latitude: the SD of the IWV observations with respect to the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

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