Holocene natural rhythms of vegetation and present potential ecology in the Western Chinese Loess Plateau

Zou, Songbing; Guodong, Cheng; Hu, Xiao; Xu, Baorong; Feng, Zhenzhen

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2008.09.009

Cited by 21 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…This is so because their biological responses are strongly controlled by water availability [12]. Climate change models applied to deserts have mostly used average temperature [13][14][15] and-less commonly-average precipitation [16,17] to explore future distributions of species. This approach is problematic because the frequency of climatic extremes is also projected to change [4], and because deserts' inherent variability in precipitation render average values uninformative of actual patterns [18,19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

Salguero‐Gómez

Siewert

Casper

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

115

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Desert species respond strongly to infrequent, intense pulses of precipitation. Consequently, indigenous flora has developed a rich repertoire of life-history strategies to deal with fluctuations in resource availability. Examinations of how future climate change will affect the biota often forecast negative impacts, but these-usually correlative-approaches overlook precipitation variation because they are based on averages. Here, we provide an overview of how variable precipitation affects perennial and annual desert plants, and then implement an innovative, mechanistic approach to examine the effects of precipitation on populations of two desert plant species. This approach couples robust climatic projections, including variable precipitation, with stochastic, stage-structured models constructed from long-term demographic datasets of the short-lived Cryptantha flava in the Colorado Plateau Desert (USA) and the annual Carrichtera annua in the Negev Desert (Israel). Our results highlight these populations' potential to buffer future stochastic precipitation. Population growth rates in both species increased under future conditions: wetter, longer growing seasons for Cryptantha and drier years for Carrichtera. We determined that such changes are primarily due to survival and size changes for Cryptantha and the role of seed bank for Carrichtera. Our work suggests that desert plants, and thus the resources they provide, might be more resilient to climate change than previously thought.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

Salguero‐Gómez

Siewert

Casper

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

115

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“…Some studies have demonstrated that the concentration of long chain n-alkanes (C 27 , C 29 and C 31 ) coincides well with pollen information in the same sequence [42,43,15]. Thus, long chain n-alkanes could reflect temperature and precipitation change, assuming that the vegetation cover is sensitive to climatic change and plays an active role in the climate system via feedback mechanisms [15].…”

Section: Environmental Significance Of N-alkane Variationmentioning

confidence: 90%

Effect of the Little Ice Age on Climate and Vegetation Recorded by n-Alkanes and Glycerol Dialkyl Glycerol Tetraether Proxies

Machado¹,

Froehnerb²

2015

J Earth Sci Clim Change

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Keywords: Climatic changes; Little ice age; n-Alkane distributions; GDGT proxies IntroductionThe period which was subjected to much colder winters followed by warmer periods is known as the little ice age (LIA). It documented as being between about 1300 and 1870 (Mann, 2002). However, climate change could vary geographically [1]. The period is divided into two phases; the first was around 1300 until the late 1400s and the second warmer period was in in the 1500s [2]. The period between 1600 and 1850 marks its height and was characterized by changes in the hydrological cycle and perturbation of the ecosystem [2-4].Even although there much evidence for the LIA, the causes and mechanism are still under debate. The only certainty is that it was a global event. Most studies have focused on the northern hemisphere [3][4][5], and there are few studies demonstrating the occurrence of the event in the southern hemisphere. For instance, in South America [6,7], advance in glaciers in the Andes was demonstrated [8], as well as aridity in the lowlands of Argentina [9] and Venezuela [8], and there is evidence from mountain glaciers suggesting increasing glaciation in Patagonia [10]. In Brazil, some studies have demonstrated change in vegetation composition during the LIA and sea level regression in northeastern and southeastern Brazil [11][12][13].At present, paleoclimate can be reconstructed due the widespread occurrence of biomarkers multi-proxy data derived from them. The spatial and temporal character of such putative climate epochs revived the discussion and understanding of and mechanism for the LIA, as well as of the implications for climate change in the future.Typically, n-alkanes are derived from different sources (algae, photosynthetic bacteria and higher plants [14]. Different distribution patterns of n-alkanes in sediments provides information about different climatic environments and hence is widely used to understand the evolution of vegetation and reconstruct environmental changes [14,15]. The magnitude of the anthropogenic impact on the climate and the environment was recently measured from biomarker distributions [4,14]. Yet, some biomarkers can be more specific in their information than n-alkanes. For example, increasing attention has been driven to glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) compounds, polar basic constituents of the cell membrane and comprising a polar head group bonded to a non-polar hydrocarbon [16]. The structures of GDGTs are temperature dependent. When temperature increases, cyclopentane moieties are formed within the isoprenoid chain [17]. With more cyclopentane rings, the membrane is kept in a liquid crystalline state and, as a consequence, proton permeation is reduced.According to Weijers et al. [18] there are some environmental controls on the distributions of GDGTs, so two indices were proposed for quantifying the degree of methylation (MBT) and cyclization (CBT), both being effective in palaeoenvironmental studies to reconstruct mean annual air temperature (MAAT). Since branche...

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“…Küchler, 1964; Brohman & Bryant, 2004; Liu et al. , 2009; Zou et al. , 2009), and/or within disciplines not related to phytosociology, including forestry and wildlife ecology (e.g.…”

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confidence: 99%

The power of potential natural vegetation (and of spatial‐temporal scale): a response to Carrión & Fernández (2009)

Farris

Filibeck

Marignani

et al. 2010

Journal of Biogeography

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A commentary by Carrión & Fernández (Journal of Biogeography, 2009, 36, 2202–2203) compared Holocene pollen records with models of potential natural vegetation (PNV) proposed in the phytosociological literature and concluded that the predicted PNV resulted from anthropogenic disturbance. However, the authors misinterpreted PNV, leading to two serious flaws in their assumptions: (1) PNV is not defined as a pre‐anthropic or climax plant community; and (2) PNV is not a concept restricted to the phytosociological method. Therefore we criticize the conclusions expressed in the commentary, and we stress the need for an interdisciplinary approach based on multi‐temporal and multi‐spatial scales to achieve a modern framework for the study of plant communities.

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Holocene natural rhythms of vegetation and present potential ecology in the Western Chinese Loess Plateau

Cited by 21 publications

References 22 publications

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

Effect of the Little Ice Age on Climate and Vegetation Recorded by n-Alkanes and Glycerol Dialkyl Glycerol Tetraether Proxies

The power of potential natural vegetation (and of spatial‐temporal scale): a response to Carrión & Fernández (2009)

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