Temporal variations in land-atmosphere water vapor exchange are more pronounced in seasonal environments, especially grass-dominated savannas (known as campo sujo Cerrado) of the southern and eastern Amazon Basin. Recent work in campo sujo indicates that rates of canopy conductance (gc) were directly and indirectly affected by a variety of meteorological variables, which limited our understanding of how seasonal variation in meteorology affected rates of gc. Thus, our overall objective here is to determine how individual meteorological variables affect seasonal variations in gc.

Human activities have exerted a powerful influence on the biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) and drive changes that can be a challenge to predict given the influence of multiple environmental stressors. This study focused on understanding how land management and climate change have together influenced terrestrial N storage and watershed inorganic N export across boreal and sub‐arctic landscapes in northern Sweden.

Climate change and land use management practices are major drivers of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems. To understand and predict resulting changes in community structures, individual-based and spatially explicit population models are a useful tool but require detailed data sets for each species. More generic approaches are thus needed. Here we present a trait-based functional type approach to model savanna birds. The aim of our model is to explore the response of different bird functional types to modifications in habitat structure.

AIM: Global environmental changes challenge traditional conservation approaches based on the selection of static protected areas due to their limited ability to deal with the dynamic nature of driving forces relevant to biodiversity. The Natura 2000 network (N2000) constitutes a major milestone in biodiversity conservation in Europe, but the degree to which this static network will be able to reach its long‐term conservation objectives raises concern.

Many boreal waters are currently becoming browner with effects on biodiversity, fish production, biogeochemical processes and drinking water quality. The question arises whether and at which speed this browning will continue under future climate change. To answer the question we predicted the absorbance (a₄₂₀) in 6347 lakes and streams of the boreal region under future climate change. For the prediction we modified a numerical model for a₄₂₀ spatial variation which we tested on a temporal scale by simulating a₄₂₀ inter-annual variation in 48 out of the 6347 Swedish waters.

Bats are considered important bioindicators and deliver key ecosystem services to humans. However, it is not clear how the individual and combined effects of climate change and land-use change will affect their conservation in the future. We used a spatial conservation prioritization framework to determine future shifts in the priority areas for the conservation of 169 bat species under projected climate and land-use change scenarios across Africa. Specifically, we modelled species distribution models under four different climate change scenarios at the 2050 horizon.

Declining crop and livestock production due to a degrading land resource base and changing climate among other biophysical and socio-economic constraints, is increasingly forcing rural households in Zimbabwe and other parts of Southern Africa to rely on common natural resource pools (CNRPs) to supplement their household food and income.

Most anthropogenic activities impacted on water quality and quantity, and further impacted on ecosystem services (ESs) in watershed are related to land use and climate changes those may cause losses of ecosystem functions. Effective information regarding ESs and their optimal priority conservation planning responded to land use and climate changes provide useful support for diverse stakeholders in ESs planning, management and policies.

The response of West African climate zones to anthropogenic climate change during the late 21st century is investigated using the revised Thornthwaite climate classification applied to ensembles of CMIP5, CORDEX, and higher-resolution RegCM4 experiments (HIRES). The ensembles reproduce fairly well the observed climate zones, although with some notable discrepancies. CORDEX and HIRES provide realistic fine-scale information which enhances that from the coarser-scale CMIP5, especially in the Gulf of Guinea encompassing marked landcover and topography gradients.

Regional analysis of large wildfire potential given climate change scenarios is crucial to understanding areas most at risk in the future, yet wildfire models are not often developed and tested at this spatial scale. We fit three historical climate suitability models for large wildfires (i.e. ≥ 400 ha) in Colorado and Wyoming using topography and decadal climate averages corresponding to wildfire occurrence at the same temporal scale. The historical models classified points of known large wildfire occurrence with high accuracies.

The need to maintain or increase livestock mobility in arid Africa has been widely embraced by ecologists, social scientists, and more recently regional governments. These movements are seen to sustain livestock production under a highly variable and changing climate. At the same time, livestock mobility is threatened by the expansion of agriculture onto rangelands.

Recent preoccupations regarding possible negative effects of pollution, inappropriate land management, climate change, desertification, erosion, compaction or over-exploitation on soils has led to initiatives for the survey of soils. One of them, EcoFINDERS, launched a pan-European survey in order to define normal operating ranges for soil biodiversity and quality, through the use of several methodologies.