Holocene changes in African vegetation: tradeoff between climate and water availability

Although past climate change is well documented in West Africa through instrumental records, modeling activities, and paleo-data, little is known about regional-scale ecosystem vulnerability and long-term impacts of climate on plant distribution and biodiversity. Here we use paleohydrological and paleobotanical data to discuss the relation between available surface water, monsoon rainfall and vegetation distribution in West Africa during the Holocene. The individual patterns of plant migration or community shifts in latitude are explained by differences among tolerance limits of species to rainfall amount and seasonality. Using the probability density function methodology, we show here that the widespread development of lakes, wetlands and rivers at the time of the "Green Sahara" played an additional role in forming a network of topographically defined water availability, allowing for tropical plants to migrate north from 15 to 24° N (reached ca. 9 cal ka BP). The analysis of the spatio–temporal changes in biodiversity, through both pollen occurrence and richness, shows that the core of the tropical rainbelt associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone was centered at 15–20° N during the early Holocene wet period, with comparatively drier/more seasonal climate conditions south of 15° N

Emissions of major gaseous and particulate species during experimental burns of southern African biomass

Characteristic vegetation and biofuels in major ecosystems of southern Africa were sampled during summer and autumn 2000 and burned under semicontrolled conditions. Elemental compositions of fuels and ash and emissions of CO2, CO, CH3COOH, HCOOH, NOX, NH3, HONO, HNO3, HCl, total volatile inorganic Cl and Br, SO2and particulate C, N, and major ions were measured. Modified combustion efficiencies (MCEs, median = 0.94) were similar to those of ambient fires. Elemental emissions factors (EFel) for CH3COOH were inversely correlated with MCEs; EFels for heading and mixed grass fires were higher than those for backing fires of comparable MCEs. NOX, NH3, HONO, and particulate N accounted for a median of 22% of emitted N; HNO3emissions were insignificant. Grass fires with the highest EFels for NH3corresponded to MCEs in the range of 0.93; grass fires with higher and low MCEs exhibited lower EFels. NH3emissions for most fuels were poorly correlated with fuel N. Most Cl and Br in fuel was emitted during combustion (median for each = 73%). Inorganic gases and particulate ions accounted for medians of 53% and 30% of emitted Cl and Br, respectively. About half of volatile inorganic Cl was HCl indicating significant emissions of other gaseous inorganic Cl species. Most fuel S (median = 76%) was emitted during combustion; SO2and particulate SO42−accounted for about half the flux. Mobilization of P by fire (median emission = 82%) implies large nutrient losses from burned regions and potentially important exogenous sources of fertilization for downwind ecosystems

Gravitation, electromagnetism and the cosmological constant in purely affine gravity

The Eddington Lagrangian in the purely affine formulation of general relativity generates the Einstein equations with the cosmological constant. The Ferraris-Kijowski purely affine Lagrangian for the electromagnetic field, which has the form of the Maxwell Lagrangian with the metric tensor replaced by the symmetrized Ricci tensor, is dynamically equivalent to the Einstein-Maxwell Lagrangian in the metric formulation. We show that the sum of the two affine Lagrangians is dynamically inequivalent to the sum of the analogous Lagrangians in the metric-affine/metric formulation. We also show that such a construction is valid only for weak electromagnetic fields. Therefore the purely affine formulation that combines gravitation, electromagnetism and the cosmological constant cannot be a simple sum of terms corresponding to separate fields. Consequently, this formulation of electromagnetism seems to be unphysical, unlike the purely metric and metric-affine pictures, unless the electromagnetic field couples to the cosmological constant.Comment: 14 pages, extended and combined with gr-qc/0701176; published versio

On the Singularity Structure and Stability of Plane Waves

We describe various aspects of plane wave backgrounds. In particular, we make explicit a simple criterion for singularity by establishing a relation between Brinkmann metric entries and diffeomorphism-invariant curvature information. We also address the stability of plane wave backgrounds by analyzing the fluctuations of generic scalar modes. We focus our attention on cases where after fixing the light-cone gauge the resulting world sheet fields appear to have negative "mass terms". We nevertheless argue that these backgrounds may be stable.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur

Fire and canopy species composition in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest of Témiscamingue, Québec

Large severe fires are typically rare in the northern hardwood forests of eastern North America, with estimated return intervals as high as 1400-4500 years. We investigated the history of large severe fires in western Qu

Multi vegetation model evaluation of the Green Sahara climate regime

During the Quaternary, the Sahara desert was periodically colonized by vegetation, likely because of orbitally induced rainfall increases. However, the estimated hydrological change is not reproduced in climate model simulations, undermining confidence in projections of future rainfall. We evaluated the relationship between the qualitative information on past vegetation coverage and climate for the mid-Holocene using three different dynamic vegetation models. Compared with two available vegetation reconstructions, the models require 500–800 mm of rainfall over 20°–25°N, which is significantly larger than inferred from pollen but largely in agreement with more recent leaf wax biomarker reconstructions. The magnitude of the response also suggests that required rainfall regime of the early to middle Holocene is far from being correctly represented in general circulation models. However, intermodel differences related to moisture stress parameterizations, biases in simulated present-day vegetation, and uncertainties about paleosoil distributions introduce uncertainties, and these are also relevant to Earth system model simulations of African humid periods

Global burned area and biomass burning emissions from small fires

[1] In several biomes, including croplands, wooded savannas, and tropical forests, many small fires occur each year that are well below the detection limit of the current generation of global burned area products derived from moderate resolution surface reflectance imagery. Although these fires often generate thermal anomalies that can be detected by satellites, their contributions to burned area and carbon fluxes have not been systematically quantified across different regions and continents. Here we developed a preliminary method for combining 1-km thermal anomalies (active fires) and 500 m burned area observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to estimate the influence of these fires. In our approach, we calculated the number of active fires inside and outside of 500 m burn scars derived from reflectance data. We estimated small fire burned area by computing the difference normalized burn ratio (dNBR) for these two sets of active fires and then combining these observations with other information. In a final step, we used the Global Fire Emissions Database version 3 (GFED3) biogeochemical model to estimate the impact of these fires on biomass burning emissions. We found that the spatial distribution of active fires and 500 m burned areas were in close agreement in ecosystems that experience large fires, including savannas across southern Africa and Australia and boreal forests in North America and Eurasia. In other areas, however, we observed many active fires outside of burned area perimeters. Fire radiative power was lower for this class of active fires. Small fires substantially increased burned area in several continental-scale regions, including Equatorial Asia (157%), Central America (143%), and Southeast Asia (90%) during 2001–2010. Globally, accounting for small fires increased total burned area by approximately by 35%, from 345 Mha/yr to 464 Mha/yr. A formal quantification of uncertainties was not possible, but sensitivity analyses of key model parameters caused estimates of global burned area increases from small fires to vary between 24% and 54%. Biomass burning carbon emissions increased by 35% at a global scale when small fires were included in GFED3, from 1.9 Pg C/yr to 2.5 Pg C/yr. The contribution of tropical forest fires to year-to-year variability in carbon fluxes increased because small fires amplified emissions from Central America, South America and Southeast Asia—regions where drought stress and burned area varied considerably from year to year in response to El Nino-Southern Oscillation and other climate modes

Boreal coniferous forest density leads to significant variations in soil physical and geochemical properties

At the northernmost extent of the managed forest in Quebec, Canada, the boreal forest is currently undergoing an ecological transition between two forest ecosystems. Open lichen woodlands (LW) are spreading southward at the expense of more productive closed-canopy black spruce–moss forests (MF). The objective of this study was to investigate whether soil properties could distinguish MF from LW in the transition zone where both ecosystem types coexist. This study brings out clear evidence that differences in vegetation cover can lead to significant variations in soil physical and geochemical properties.Here, we showed that soil carbon, exchangeable cations, and iron and aluminium crystallinity vary between boreal closed-canopy forests and open lichen woodlands, likely attributed to variations in soil microclimatic conditions. All the soils studied were typical podzolic soil profiles evolved from glacial till deposits that shared a similar texture of the C layer. However, soil humus and the B layer varied in thickness and chemistry between the two forest ecosystems at the pedon scale. Multivariate analyses of variance were used to evaluate how soil properties could help distinguish the two types at the site scale. MF humus (FH horizons horizons composing the O layer) showed significantly higher concentrations of organic carbon and nitrogen and of the main exchangeable base cations (Ca, Mg) than LW soils. The B horizon of LW sites held higher concentrations of total Al and Fe oxides and particularly greater concentrations of inorganic amorphous Fe oxides than MF mineral soils, while showing a thinner B layer. Overall, our results show that MF store three times more organic carbon in their soils (B+FH horizons, roots apart) than LW. We suggest that variations in soil properties between MF and LW are linked to a cascade of events involving the impacts of natural disturbances such as wildfires on forest regeneration that determines the vegetation structure (stand density) and composition (ground cover type) and their subsequent consequences on soil environmental parameters (moisture, radiation rate, redox conditions, etc.). Our data underline significant differences in soil biogeochemistry under different forest ecosystems and reveal the importance of interactions in the soil–vegetation–climate system for the determination of soil composition