Timber is frequently salvage-logged following high-severity stand-replacing wildfire, but the practice is controversial. One concern is that compound disturbances could result in more deleterious impacts than either disturbance individually, with mechanical operations having the potential to set back recovering native species and increase invasion by non-native species.

Terrestrial ecosystems play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and offset a large fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The terrestrial carbon sink is increasing, yet the mechanisms responsible for its enhancement, and implications for the growth rate of atmospheric CO2, remain unclear.

Analysis of observations and model projections provides large-scale emergent constraints on the extent of CO2 fertilization, with estimated increases in gross primary productivity for both high-latitude and extratropical ecosystems under elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Extensive vegetation restoration projects have been widely implemented on the Loess Plateau, China, since 1998. In addition, increasing attention has been paid to the influence of revegetation on soil water. However, the response of the soil water content (SWC) to vegetation construction and management has not been adequately studied. In this study, three types of typical artificial vegetation on level bench land were selected, including Pinus tabulaeformis Carr., Prunus sibirica L., and Hippophae rhamnoides Linn., with the natural grassland used as a control group in Wuqi County.

Many U.S. national parks are already at the extreme warm end of their historical temperature distributions. With rapidly warming conditions, park resource management will be enhanced by information on seasonality of climate that supports adjustments in the timing of activities such as treating invasive species, operating visitor facilities, and scheduling climate-related events (e.g., flower festivals and fall leaf-viewing).

Predicting the consequences of climate change for biodiversity is critical to conservation efforts. Extensive range losses have been predicted for thousands of individual species, but less is known about how climate change might impact whole clades and landscape-scale patterns of biodiversity. Here, we show that climate change scenarios imply significant changes in phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic endemism at a continental scale in Australia using the hyper-diverse clade of eucalypts.

Megaherbivores (>1000 kg) are critical for ecosystem health and function, but face population collapse and extinction globally. The future of these megaherbivore-impoverished ecosystems is difficult to predict, though many studies have demonstrated increasing representation of C3 woody plants. These studies rely on direct observational data, however, and tools for assessing decadal-scale changes in African ecology without observation are lacking.