Scales of climate impacts

Abstract

Climates, ecosystems, and societies interact over a tremendous range of temporal and spatial scales. Scholarly work on climate impacts has tended to emphasize ~fferent questions, variables, and modes of explanation depending on the primary scale of interest. Much of the current debate on cause and effect, vulnerability, marginality, and the like stems from uncritical or unconscious efforts to transfer experience, eonciusions, and insights across scales. This paper sketches a perspective from which the relative temporal and spatial dimensions of climatic, ecological, and social processes can be more clearly perceived, and their potential interactions more critically evaluated. Quantitative estimates of a variety of charaeterisLic scales are derived and compared, leading to specific recommendations for the design of climate impact studies.

The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology: The Robert H. MacArthur Award Lecture

“…Global climate change, and changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases, will have major effects on the vegetational patterns at local and regional scales (MacArthur 1972, Clark 1985; in turn, changes that occur at very fine scales, such as alterations in rates of stomatal opening and closing, ultimately will have impacts at much broader scales (Jarvis and McNaughton 1986). General circulation models (GCMs), which form the basis of climate prediction, operate on scales of hundreds of kilometres on a side, treating as homogeneous all of the ecological detail within (Hansen et al 1987, Schneider 1989).…”

Climate Variability and Ecosystem Response

“…E a r l i e r i n t h e growing season p r e c i p i t a t i o n i s n o t a s important a p r e d i c t o r because s t o r e d s o i l -w a t e r i s g e n e r a l l y a v a i l a b l e and t h e p l a n t ' s water demand i s not a s g r e a t . Ratios of corn yield (Kalamazoo: Lenawee counties) vs. precipitation for the periods of a) April-May, b) May-June, c) JuneJuly, and d) July-August, 1945-1985 That our correlations are not stronger could be due to a number of factors. First, precipitation data are from a single county station while yield estimates are from the entire county.…”

“…Seasonal dmamics of abovegoumd p h a~s~~e t i @ a l l y -a c t i v e biomass @an be infemed &am sabllib-based absemations, such as the normalized-&Eerence vegehtion index (NDVT) (&ward et d, 1985, Justice et al, 1985. showed that i n b r a n n d variabifity in the of a combination of spriw temperatures and n events results in marked year-to-year variation in estabEshent of blue grama with long-tern consequences stnrctwe (Coffin and Lauemoth 1990).…”

Risk, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change: An Interdisciplinary Approach

“…The literature reports an increasingly urgent need for developing interdisciplinary approaches (FERREIRA, 2000;2004;BRAGA et al, 2006;EVANS et al, 2009;MORAN, 2009;BUARQUE et al, 2014), which consider multiscale analysis to understand and offer methods to integrate, analyze and monitor the changing processes in ecological and social systems (CLARK, 1985;TURNER II et al, 1990;ROTMANS and ROTHMAN, 2003;MEA, 2003;VANWEY et al, 2009;MORAN, 2011) and to incorporate appropriate concepts and methods to understand and measure the vulnerability and adaptability of populations facing situations caused by climate change (ALVES, 2009;MORAN, 2009;MARANDOLA Jr. and D'ANTONA, 2014).…”