Identification of Years with Extreme Vegetation State in Central Europe Based on Remote Sensing and Meteorological Data

Background and Purpose: Determination of an extreme year from the aspect of the vegetation activity using only meteorological data might be ambiguous and not adequate. Furthermore, in some ecosystems, e.g. forests, the response is not instantly visible, but the effects of the meteorological anomaly can be seen in the following year. The aim of the present paper is to select and characterize typical and anomalous years using satellite-based remote sensing data and meteorological observations during the recent years of 2000-2014 for Central Europe, based on the response of the vegetation. Materials and Methods: In the present study vegetation characteristics were described using remotely sensed official products of the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), namely NDVI, EVI, FPAR, LAI, GPP, and NPP, with 8-day temporal and 500 meter spatial resolution for the period of 2000-2014. The corresponding mean temperature and precipitation data (on the same grid) were derived from the Open Database for Climate Change Related Impact Studies in Central Europe (FORESEE) daily meteorological dataset. Land cover specific anomalies of the meteorological and vegetation characteristics were created and averaged on a country-scale, where the distinction between the main land cover types was based on the synergetic use of MODIS land cover and Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) Land Cover 2012 datasets. Results: It has been demonstrated that the anomaly detection based solely on basic meteorological variables is ambiguous since the strength of the anomaly depends on the selected integration time period. In contrast, the effect-based approach exploiting the available, state-of-the-art remote sensing based vegetation indices is a promising tool for the characterization of the anomalous behaviour of the different land cover types. The selection of extreme years was performed in an explicit way using percentile analysis on pixel level. Conclusions: Plant status in terms of both positive and negative anomalies shows strong land cover dependency in Central Europe. This is most likely due to the differences in heat and drought resistance of the vegetation, and species composition. The selection of country-specific extreme years can serve as a basis for forthcoming research

Long-term effects of environmental change and species diversity on tree radial growth in a mixed European forest

Norway spruce (Picea abies), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), silver fir (Abies alba) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) typically co-occur in European forests, but show contrasting response to climate and environmental change. Sustainable forest management therefore depends on species- and regional-specific information. Here, we use tree-ring width measurements of 334 beech, 280 fir, 144 spruce and 63 pine trees from 75 inventory plots in Slovakia to assess the predominant climatic factors that control radial stem growth of Europe’s economically most important forest species. All four species exhibit significant shifts in stem growth over the past 100 years. Ring width patterns were, however, not significantly affected by tree species diversity and site elevation. The resistance, resilience and recovery of all species to the extreme summer droughts between 1950 and 2003 suggest that spruce is the species most unsuitable for the predicted warmer and drier future. Silver fir may benefit from warmer conditions, although we cannot conclude that it will not suffer from predicted increased frequency of climate extremes. Forest management in this locality should aim to avoid significant loss of forest cover by replacing Norway spruce monocultures with mixed stands of silver fir and European beech

Fine-scale variation in projected climate change presents opportunities for biodiversity conservation in Europe

Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, although projected changes show remarkable geographical and temporal variability. Understanding this variability allows for the identification of regions where the present-day conservation objectives may be at risk or where opportunities for biodiversity conservation emerge. We use a multi-model ensemble of regional climate models to identify areas with significantly high and low climate stability persistent throughout the 21st century in Europe. We then confront our predictions with the land coverage of three prominent biodiversity conservation initiatives at two scales. The continental-scale assessment shows that areas with the least stable future climate in Europe are likely to occur at low and high latitudes, with the Iberian Peninsula and the Boreal zones identified as prominent areas of low climatic stability. A follow-up regional scale investigation shows that robust climatic refugia exist even within the highly exposed southern and northern macro-regions. About 23-31 % of assessed biodiversity conservation sites in Europe coincide with areas of high future climate stability, we contend that these sites should be prioritised in the formulation of future conservation priorities as the stability of future climate is one of the key factors determining their conservation prospects. Although such focus on climate refugia cannot halt the ongoing biodiversity loss, along with measures such as resilience-based stewardship, it may improve the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation under climate change

Storm event impact on organic matter flux, composition and reactivity in Taskinas Creek, VA

Carbon export from the land to the ocean are an important part of the global carbon cycle, linking terrestrial watersheds and the global carbon cycle. Burial of terrestrial organic carbon represents a long term sink for atmospheric CO2. Approximately 0.4 Pg Cy-1 is delivered to the global ocean from rivers, equally divided between POC and DOC. However, the amount of carbon entering the ocean is a small portion of the total amount entering rivers from the terrestrial environment, suggesting a large amount of processing in inland waters and estuaries. Most monitoring efforts have focused the processing of organic matter on baseflow conditions. However, recent studies have shown that POC and DOC exported during storm events, a small time period during a hydrologic year, can account for the majority of the annual carbon exported from small watersheds. This dissertation identifies the impact different magnitudes of storm events have on the source, composition and reactivity of organic carbon released to downstream waters from the terrestrial environment at Taskinas Creek, Virginia. The proximity of the Creek to the York River estuary, the changes in water table at the site, along with the small size of the watershed allowing opportunity to examine the connectivity between the watershed processes and delivery of organic matter made the site ideal for identifying how hydrology and environment alter POM and DOM export and reactivity. The sources, composition and flux of DOM and POM were measured during four storm events of different magnitudes to determine how events impacted the sources and fluxes of organic matter and the % reactive DOC exported. Events of different magnitudes with varying sources of DOC and POC had similar % reactive DOC that was not predicted using excitation emission spectroscopy. The events resulted in DOC fluxes 1.5-490 fold higher than baseflow. POC fluxes for storm were 6.7-55 times higher than DOC fluxes. Although the % reactive DOC did not increase during storm event conditions, coupled with the overall flux, storm events represent a considerable pulse of % reactive DOC to downstream waters, well above baseflow levels. When considered with increases in storm intensity due to climate change, storm event fluxes of reactive OM may have broad impacts on estuaries and the global carbon cycle through changes in carbon storage

Input database related uncertainty of Biome-BGCMuSo agro-environmental model outputs

Gridded model assessments require at least one climatic and one soil database for carrying out the simulations. There are several parallel soil and climate database development projects that provide sufficient, albeit considerably different, observation based input data for crop model based impact studies. The input database related uncertainty of the Biome-BGCMuSo agro-environmental model outputs was investigated using three and four different gridded climatic and soil databases, respectively covering an area of nearly 100.000 km2 with 1104 grid cells. Spatial, temporal, climate and soil database selection related variances were calculated and compared for four model outputs obtained from 30-year-long simulations. The choice of the input database introduced model output variability that was comparable to the variability the year-to-year change of the weather or the spatial heterogeneity of the soil causes. Input database selection could be a decisive factor in carbon sequestration related studies as the soil carbon stock change estimates may either suggest that the simulated ecosystem is a carbon sink or to the contrary a carbon source on the long run. Careful evaluation of the input database quality seems to be an inevitable and highly relevant step towards more realistic plant production and carbon balance simulations

European beech stem diameter grows better in mixed than in mono-specific stands at the edge of its distribution in mountain forests

Recent studies show that several tree species are spreading to higher latitudes and elevations due to climate change. European beech, presently dominating from the colline to the subalpine vegetation belt, is already present in upper montane subalpine forests and has a high potential to further advance to higher elevations in European mountain forests, where the temperature is predicted to further increase in the near future. Although essential for adaptive silviculture, it remains unknown whether the upward shift of beech could be assisted when it is mixed with Norway spruce or silver fir compared with mono-specific stands, as the species interactions under such conditions are hardly known. In this study, we posed the general hypotheses that the growth depending on age of European beech in mountain forests was similar in mono-specific and mixed-species stands and remained stable over time and space in the last two centuries. The scrutiny of these hypotheses was based on increment coring of 1240 dominant beech trees in 45 plots in mono-specific stands of beech and in 46 mixed mountain forests. We found that (i) on average, mean tree diameter increased linearly with age. The age trend was linear in both forest types, but the slope of the age–growth relationship was higher in mono-specific than in mixed mountain forests. (ii) Beech growth in mono-specific stands was stronger reduced with increasing elevation than that in mixed-species stands. (iii) Beech growth in mono-specific stands was on average higher than beech growth in mixed stands. However, at elevations > 1200 m, growth of beech in mixed stands was higher than that in mono-specific stands. Differences in the growth patterns among elevation zones are less pronounced now than in the past, in both mono-specific and mixed stands. As the higher and longer persisting growth rates extend the flexibility of suitable ages or size for tree harvest and removal, the longer-lasting growth may be of special relevance for multi-aged silviculture concepts. On top of their function for structure and habitat improvement, the remaining old trees may grow more in mass and value than assumed so far.The authors would like to acknowledge networking support by the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action CLIMO (Climate-Smart Forestry in Mountain Regions—CA15226) financially supported by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020. This publication is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 778322. Thanks are also due to the European Union for funding the project ‘Mixed species forest management. Lowering risk, increasing resilience (REFORM)’ (# 2816ERA02S under the framework of Sumforest ERA-Net). Further, we would like to thank the Bayerische Staatsforsten (BaySF) for providing the observational plots and to the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry for permanent support of the Project W 07 ‘Long-term experimental plots for forest growth and yield research’ (#7831-26625-2017). We also thank the Forest Research Institute, ERTI Sárvár, Hungary, for assistance and for providing observational plots. Furthermore, our work was partially supported by the SRDA via Project No. APVV-16-0325 and APVV-15-0265, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland, the Project “EVA4.0” No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803 funded by OP RDE and the Project J4-1765 funded by the Slovenian Research Agency and also by the Bulgarian National Science Fund (BNSF) and the Project No. DCOST 01/3/19.10.2018

BioVeL : a virtual laboratory for data analysis and modelling in biodiversity science and ecology

Background: Making forecasts about biodiversity and giving support to policy relies increasingly on large collections of data held electronically, and on substantial computational capability and capacity to analyse, model, simulate and predict using such data. However, the physically distributed nature of data resources and of expertise in advanced analytical tools creates many challenges for the modern scientist. Across the wider biological sciences, presenting such capabilities on the Internet (as "Web services") and using scientific workflow systems to compose them for particular tasks is a practical way to carry out robust "in silico" science. However, use of this approach in biodiversity science and ecology has thus far been quite limited. Results: BioVeL is a virtual laboratory for data analysis and modelling in biodiversity science and ecology, freely accessible via the Internet. BioVeL includes functions for accessing and analysing data through curated Web services; for performing complex in silico analysis through exposure of R programs, workflows, and batch processing functions; for on- line collaboration through sharing of workflows and workflow runs; for experiment documentation through reproducibility and repeatability; and for computational support via seamless connections to supporting computing infrastructures. We developed and improved more than 60 Web services with significant potential in many different kinds of data analysis and modelling tasks. We composed reusable workflows using these Web services, also incorporating R programs. Deploying these tools into an easy-to-use and accessible 'virtual laboratory', free via the Internet, we applied the workflows in several diverse case studies. We opened the virtual laboratory for public use and through a programme of external engagement we actively encouraged scientists and third party application and tool developers to try out the services and contribute to the activity. Conclusions: Our work shows we can deliver an operational, scalable and flexible Internet-based virtual laboratory to meet new demands for data processing and analysis in biodiversity science and ecology. In particular, we have successfully integrated existing and popular tools and practices from different scientific disciplines to be used in biodiversity and ecological research.Peer reviewe