Find research datasets worth reusing

Forest inventory data from Finland and Sweden for: Demographic performance of European tree species at their hot and cold climatic edges, plus ancillary climate data

1. Species range limits are thought to result from a decline in demographic performance at range edges. However, recent studies reporting contradictory patterns in species demographic performance at their edges cast doubt on our ability to predict climate change demographic impacts. To understand these inconsistent demographic responses at the edges, we need to shift the focus from geographic to climatic edges and analyse how species responses vary with climatic constraints at the edge and species' ecological strategy. 2. Here we parameterised integral projection models with climate and competition effects for 27 tree species using forest inventory data from over 90,000 plots across Europe. Our models estimate size-dependent climatic responses and evaluate their effects on two life trajectory metrics: lifespan and passage time - the time to grow to a large size. Then we predicted growth, survival, lifespan, and passage time at the hot and dry or cold and wet edges and compared them to their values at the species climatic centre to derive indices of demographic response at the edge. Using these indices, we investigated whether differences in species demographic response between hot and cold edges could be explained by their position along the climate gradient and functional traits related to their climate stress tolerance. 3. We found that at cold and wet edges of European tree species, growth and passage time were constrained, whereas at their hot and dry edges, survival and lifespan were constrained. Demographic constraints at the edge were stronger for species occurring in extreme conditions, i.e. in hot edges of hot-distributed species and cold edges of cold-distributed species. Species leaf nitrogen content was strongly linked to their demographic responses at the edge. In contrast, we found only weak links with wood density, leaf size, and xylem vulnerability to embolism. 4. Synthesis. Our study presents a more complicated picture than previously thought with demographic responses that differ between hot and cold edges. Predictions of climate change impacts should be refined to include edge and species characteristics.

Data from: Modelling the potential impacts of climate change on the distribution of ichthyoplankton in the Yangtze Estuary, China

<a name="_Hlk10553342">Aim: </a>Species distribution models (SDMs) are an effective tool to explore the potential distribution of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine organisms; however, SDMs have been seldom used to model ichthyoplankton distributions and thus our understanding of how larval stages of fishes will respond to climate change is still limited. Here, we developed SDMs to explore potential impacts of climate change on habitat suitability of ichthyoplankton. Location: Yangtze Estuary, China Methods: Using long-term ichthyoplankton survey data and a large set of marine predictor variables, we developed ensemble SDMs for five abundant ichthyoplankton species in the Yangtze Estuary (Coilia mystus, Hypoatherina valenciennei, Larimichthys polyactis, Salanx ariakensis, and Chelidonichthys spinosus). Then, we projected their habitat suitability under present and future climate conditions. Results: The ensemble SDMs had good predictive performance and were successful in estimating the known distributions of the five species. Model projections highlighted two contrasting patterns of response to future climates: while C. mystus will likely expand its range, the ranges of the other four species will likely contract and shift northward. Main conclusions: <a name="_Hlk15635552">According to our SDM projections, the five ichthyoplankton species that we tested in the Yangtze Estuary are likely to respond differently to future climate changes. These projected different responses seemingly reflect the differential functional attributes and life history strategies of these species. </a>To the extent that climate change emerges as a critical driver of the future distribution of these species, our findings provide an important roadmap for designing future conservation strategies for ichthyoplankton in this region.

Data from: Shade trees preserve avian insectivore biodiversity on coffee farms in a warming climate

Includes a dataset of avian insectivore occurance data from 77 avian insectivores from 1970 to 2018 used in "Shade trees preserve avian insectivore biodiversity on coffee farms in a warming climate" downloaded from GBIF. Also included are full Maxent models and raster projections for the best selected model for each species for all climate scenarios, as well as a file on which threshold was selected for each species. Also included is all R code used to generate the results, coffee farm locations where bird richness was estimated, and iButton temperature files.

Data from: Translocation of an arctic seashore plant reveals signs of maladaptation to altered climatic conditions

Ongoing anthropogenic climate change alters the local climatic conditions to which species may be adapted. Information on species' climatic requirements and their intraspecific variation is necessary for predicting the effects of climate change on biodiversity. We used a climatic gradient to test whether populations of two allopatric varieties of an arctic seashore herb (Primula nutans ssp. finmarchica) show adaptation to their local climates and how a future warmer climate may affect them. Our experimental set-up combined a reciprocal translocation within the distribution range of the species with an experiment testing the performance of the sampled populations in warmer climatic conditions south of their range. We monitored survival, size, and flowering over four growing seasons as measures of performance and, thus, proxies of fitness. We found that both varieties performed better in experimental gardens towards the north. Interestingly, highest up in the north, the southern variety outperformed the northern one. Supported by weather data, this suggests that the climatic optima of both varieties have moved at least partly outside their current range. Further warming would make the current environments of both varieties even less suitable. We conclude that Primula nutans ssp. finmarchica is already suffering from adaptational lag due to climate change, and that further warming may increase this maladaptation, especially for the northern variety. The study also highlights that it is not sufficient to run only reciprocal translocation experiments. Climate change is already shifting the optimum conditions for many species and adaptation needs also to be tested outside the current range of the focal taxon in order to include both historic conditions and future conditions.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2020View details →

Data for GMD article: "Towards an improved treatment of cloud-radiation interaction in weather and climate models: exploring the potential of the Tripleclouds method for various cloud types using libRadtran 2.0.4"

Dataset for the publication by Nina Črnivec and Bernhard Mayer: "Towards an improved treatment of cloud-radiation interaction in weather and climate models: exploring the potential of the Tripleclouds method for various cloud types using libRadtran 2.0.4" submitted to Geoscientific Model Development in 2020. The repository contains data for stratocumulus, cirrus and cumulonimbus cloud case studies. It also contains MYSTIC benchmark radiation data (including atmosphering heating rate and net surface flux) for the aforementioned cloud cases. See README for additional information and description of data files.

Data From: Conservation planning in an uncertain climate: identifying projects that remain valuable and feasible across future scenarios

Conservation actors face the challenge of allocating limited resources despite uncertainty about future climate. A key goal is to minimize the potential for negative outcomes under future scenarios. Thus, we address a global conservation challenge: how to allocate conservation investments given high uncertainty about future climate conditions. To that end, we present a method for identifying projects that remain valuable and feasible across climate scenarios and apply our framework to freshwater biodiversity conservation in the South-Central USA. We combine data from a recent high-resolution hydrologic planning tool and species distribution models to estimate the conservation feasibility and biodiversity value of river reaches below 38 major reservoirs in the Red River basin.We find that only 13% of sites have high conservation priority across all future climate scenarios and that spatial patterns of conservation priority largely reflect patterns of water availability and fish biodiversity.

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →

Data from: Climate warming prolongs the time interval between leaf-out and flowering in temperate trees: effects of chilling, forcing and photoperiod

1. Leaf-out and flowering are two key phenological events of plants, denoting the respective onsets of visible vegetative growth and reproduction during the year. For each species, the schedule of vegetative growth and reproduction is crucial to the maximization of its fitness. Warming-induced advances of leaf-out and flowering have been reported frequently, however, it is unclear whether the responses of the two events are equal for any given species. 2. Using long-term phenological records in Europe, we examined simultaneously the responses of both leaf-out and flowering of four common temperate tree species to climate warming and further examined the effects of winter chilling, spring forcing and photoperiod on the responses of the two events. 3. We found that regardless whether flowering or leaf-out occurred first, the first event advanced more than the second during 1950 – 2013, resulting in a prolonged time interval between the two events. The temporal changes were also supported by a similar geographical trend that the time interval between the two events increased from cold to warm sites. Due to the warming-induced reduction in chilling, the spring forcing accumulated until the second event was increased more than the forcing accumulated until the first event, and that reduced the temperature sensitivity of the second event. In addition to the effect of chilling, the shorter photoperiod, associated with the advanced spring phenology, was also likely to substantially increase the spring forcing accumulated until the second event, which thus slowed down its advance, compared to the advance of the first event. The relative contributions of chilling and photoperiod to the increased forcing varied between species and events, with chilling mostly outweighing photoperiod. 4. Synthesis. This study provides the large-scale empirical evidence of prolonged time interval between leaf-out and flowering with climate warming. The unequal advances of the two events may alter the partition of resources between vegetative growth and reproduction and cause different changes of spring frost damage to vegetative and reproductive tissues, which may alter species fitness and further affect ecosystem structure and function.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Data from: Marine latitudinal diversity gradients, niche conservatism, and out of the tropics and Arctic: climatic sensitivity of small organisms

<ul> <li>Aim</li> </ul> The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is a consequence of evolutionary and ecological mechanisms acting over long history, and thus is best investigated with organisms that have rich fossil records. However, combined neontological-paleontological investigations are mostly limited to large, shelled invertebrates, which keeps our mechanistic understanding of LDGs in its infancy. This paper aims to describe the modern meiobenthic ostracod LDG and to explore the possible controlling factors and the evolutionary mechanisms of this large-scale biodiversity pattern. <ul> <li>Location</li> </ul> Present-day Western North Atlantic <ul> <li>Taxon</li> </ul> Ostracoda <ul> <li>Methods</li> </ul> We compiled census data from ostracods living in shallow marine environments of the western North Atlantic Ocean. Using these data, we documented the marine LDG with multiple metrics of alpha, beta (nestedness and turnover), and gamma diversity, and we tested whether macroecological patterns could be governed by different environmental factors, including temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH and primary productivity. We also explored the geologic age distribution of ostracod genera to investigate the evolutionary mechanisms underpinning the LDG. <ul> <li>Results</li> </ul> Our results show that temperature and climatic niche conservatism are important in setting LDGs of these small, poorly-dispersing organisms. We also found evidence for some dispersal-driven spatial dynamics in the ostracod LDG. Compared to patterns observed in marine bivalves, however, dispersal dynamics were weaker and they were bi-directional, rather than following the "out-of-the-tropics" model. <ul> <li>Main Conclusions</li> </ul> Our detailed analyses revealed that meiobenthic organisms, which comprise two-thirds of marine diversity, do not always follow the same rules as larger, better-studied organisms. Our findings suggest that the under-studied majority of biodiversity may be more sensitive to climate than are well-studied, large organisms. This implies that the impacts of ongoing Anthropocene climatic change on marine ecosystems may be much more serious than presently thought.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Data from: Climate limitation at the cold edge – contrasting perspectives from species distribution modelling and a transplant experiment

The role of climate in determining range margins is often studied using species distribution models (SDMs), which are easily applied but have well-known limitations, e.g. due to their correlative nature and colonization and extinction time lags. Transplant experiments can give more direct information on environmental effects, but often cover small spatial and temporal scales. We simultaneously applied an SDM using high-resolution spatial predictors and an integral projection (demographic) model based on a transplant experiment at 58 sites to examine the effects of microclimate, light and soil conditions on the distribution and performance of a forest herb, Lathyrus vernus, at its cold range margin in central Sweden. In the SDM, occurrences were strongly associated with warmer climates. In contrast, only weak effects of climate were detected in the transplant experiment, whereas effects of soil conditions and light dominated. The higher contribution of climate in the SDM is likely a result from its correlation with soil quality, forest type, and potentially historic land use, which were unaccounted for in the model. Predicted habitat suitability and population growth rate, yielded by the two approaches, were not correlated across the transplant sites. We argue that the ranking of site habitat suitability is probably more reliable in the transplant experiment than in the SDM because predictors in the former better describe understory conditions, but that ranking might vary among years, e.g. due to differences in climate. Our results suggest that L. vernus is limited by soil and light rather than directly by climate at its northern range edge, where conifers dominate forests and create suboptimal conditions of soil and canopy-penetrating light. A general implication of our study is that to better understand how climate change influences range dynamics, we should not only strive to improve existing approaches but also to use multiple approaches in concert.

opencc-ncDec 2020View details →

Data and GrADS scripts for "Effect of atmospheric circulation on surface air temperature trends in years 1979-2018" (forthcoming in Climate Dynamics)

Data and GrADS scripts associated with "Effect of atmospheric circulation on surface air temperature trends in years 1979-2018", forthcoming in Climate Dynamics. The README file, the scripts and the GrADS data descriptor files are in the file "circulation.zip". Unpacking this with "unzip circulation.zip" creates the directory "circulation" together with the individual files. The three netcdf data files (T_anomalies_ERA5_1979-2018.nc, T_anomalies_circ_1979-2018.nc and T_trends_CMIP5_42mod_1979-2018.nc) must be downloaded to the same "circulation" directory for the GrADS scripts to work. See the README file within "circulation.zip" for further information.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Data from: Wild bees as winners and losers: relative impacts of landscape composition, quality, and climate

Wild bees, like many other taxa, are threatened by land use and climate change, which in turn jeopardizes pollination of crops and wild plants. Understanding how land-use and climate factors interact is critical to predicting and managing pollinator populations and ensuring adequate pollination services, but most studies have evaluated either land-use or climate effects, not both. Further, bee species are incredibly variable, spanning an array of behavioral, physiological and life history traits that can increase or decrease resilience to land use or climate change. Thus, there are likely bee species that benefit, while others suffer, from changing climate and land use, but few studies have documented taxon-specific trends. To address these critical knowledge gaps, we analyzed a long-term dataset of wild bee occurrences from Maryland, Delaware, and Washington DC, USA, examining how different bee genera and functional groups respond to landscape composition, quality, and climate factors. Despite a large body of literature documenting land-use effects on wild bees, in this study, climate factors emerged as the main drivers of wild-bee abundance and richness. For wild-bee communities in spring and summer/fall, temperature and precipitation were more important predictors than landscape composition, landscape quality, or topography. However, relationships varied substantially between wild-bee genera and functional groups. In the Northeast USA, past trends and future predictions show a changing climate with warmer winters, more intense precipitation in winter and spring, and longer growing seasons with higher maximum temperatures. In almost all of our analyses, these conditions were associated with lower abundance of wild bees. Wild-bee richness results were more mixed, including neutral and positive relationships with predicted temperature and precipitation patterns. Thus, in this region and undoubtedly more broadly, changing climate poses a significant threat to wild-bee communities.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2020View details →

Code and data for: Exposure to climate change drives stability or collapse of desert mammal and bird communities

The following code and data are used to generate the results for the publication "Exposure to climate change drives stability or collapse of desert mammal and bird communities". Climate_Data.zip contains the monthly minimum and maximum temperatures, vegetation data, and soil thickness data to generate microclimates. NicheMapR_code_and_files.zip contains the script and data necessary to generate the microhabitats. Endoscape.zip contains the data and script necessary to run the heat flux models. Resurvey_data.zip contains the jags data to run the occupancy models for small mammals and birds. The read_me file contains the descriptions of all data and script necessary to reproduce the data from the publication.

opencc-zeroJan 2021View details →

Data from: Climate connectivity of the bobcat in the Great Lakes region

The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River are imposing barriers for wildlife and the additive effect of urban and agricultural development that dominates the lower Great Lakes region likely further reduces functional connectivity for many terrestrial species. As the climate warms species will need to track climate across these barriers. It is important, therefore, to investigate land cover and bioclimatic hypotheses that may explain the northward expansion of species through the Great Lakes. We investigated the functional connectivity of a vagile generalist, the bobcat, as a representative generalist forest species common to the region. We genotyped tissue samples collected across the region at 14 microsatellite loci and compared different landscape hypotheses that might explain the observed gene flow or functional connectivity. We found that the Great Lakes and the additive influence of forest stands with either low or high canopy cover and deep lake-effect snow have disrupted gene flow, whereas intermediate forest cover has facilitated gene flow. Functional connectivity in southern Ontario is relatively low and was limited in part by the low amount of forest cover. Pathways across the Great Lakes were through the Niagara region and through the Lower Peninsula of Michigan over the Straits of Mackinac and the St. Mary's River. These pathways are important routes for bobcat range expansion north of the Great Lakes and are also likely pathways that many other mobile habitat generalists must navigate to track the changing climate. The extent to which species can navigate these routes will be important for determining the future biodiversity of areas north of the Great Lakes.

opencc-by-4.0Jan 2021View details →

Output data from: From land productivity trends to land degradation assessment in Mozambique: Effects of climate, human activities and stakeholder definitions

This repository includes output data from the following article: Montfort, F., Bégué, A., Leroux, L., Blanc, L., Gond, V., Cambule, A.H., Remane, I.A.D., Grinand, C., 2020. From land productivity trends to land degradation assessment in Mozambique: Effects of climate, human activities and stakeholder definitions. Land Degrad Dev.; 32: 49– 65. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.3704">https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.3704</a> This study aimed at characterizing and mapping the underlying factors (human or climatic) in land productivity changes over the 2000-2016 period, in order to assess land degradation in Mozambique. The methodology is based on remote sensing methodology. Land productivity change were first analyzed using MODIS NDVI time-series (2000–2016), and a two-step framework was then used to understand the main factors of these productivity changes, using climate times series (CHIRPS data for rainfall and CRU data for temperature), Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) maps (Laurel project LULCC map), and ground knowledge. This repository includes raster data of annual land productivity change over the 2000-2016 period, annual land productivity climate factors, potential land productivity decrease factors and potential productivity increase factors. Data are available as GeoTIFF raster files at 250 m resolution in the UTM 37S projection (EPSG: 32737).

opencc-zeroJan 2021View details →

Data from: Climate change-driven regime shifts in a planktonic food web

Predicting how food webs will respond to global environmental change is difficult because of the complex interplay between the abiotic forcing and biotic interactions. Mechanistic models of species interactions in seasonal environments can help understand the effects of global change in different ecosystems. Seasonally ice-covered lakes are warming faster than many other ecosystems and undergoing pronounced food web changes, making the need to forecast those changes especially urgent. Using a seasonally forced food web model with a generalist zooplankton grazer and competing cold-adapted winter and warm-adapted summer phytoplankton, we show that with declining ice cover, the food web moves through different dynamic regimes, from annual to biennial cycles, with decreasing and then disappearing winter phytoplankton blooms and a shift of maximum biomass to summer season. Interestingly, when predator-prey interactions were not included, a declining ice cover did not cause regime shifts, suggesting that both are needed for regime transitions. A cluster analysis of long-term data from Lake Baikal, Siberia supports model results, revealing a change from regularly occurring winter blooms of endemic diatoms to less-frequent winter bloom years with decreasing ice cover. Together, the results show that even gradual environmental change, such as declining ice cover duration, may cause discontinuous or abrupt transitions between dynamic regimes in food webs.

opencc-by-4.0Jan 2021View details →

Oceanographic habitat location data to support range shift analyses for the manuscript: "Climate-driven range shifts are rapid yet variable among recreationally important coastal-pelagic fishes"

This data file contains the latitudinal location of suitable oceanographic habitat for a suite of coastal-pelagic fishes off eastern Australia at monthly time-steps between 1998 and 2018. Please refer to the manuscript "Climate-driven range shifts are rapid yet variable among recreationally important coastal-pelagic fishes" for a full description of the methodologies applied to derive these data.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Herbivory and eutrophication mediate grassland plant nutrient responses across a global climatic gradient

Plant stoichiometry, the relative concentration of elements, is a key regulator of ecosystem functioning and is also being altered by human activities. In this paper we sought to understand the global drivers of plant stoichiometry and compare the relative contribution of climatic vs. anthropogenic effects. We addressed this goal by measuring plant elemental (C, N, P and K) responses to eutrophication and vertebrate herbivore exclusion at eighteen sites on six continents. Across sites, climate and atmospheric N deposition emerged as strong predictors of plot‐level tissue nutrients, mediated by biomass and plant chemistry. Within sites, fertilization increased total plant nutrient pools, but results were contingent on soil fertility and the proportion of grass biomass relative to other functional types. Total plant nutrient pools diverged strongly in response to herbivore exclusion when fertilized; responses were largest in ungrazed plots at low rainfall, whereas herbivore grazing dampened the plant community nutrient responses to fertilization. Our study highlights (1) the importance of climate in determining plant nutrient concentrations mediated through effects on plant biomass, (2) that eutrophication affects grassland nutrient pools via both soil and atmospheric pathways and (3) that interactions among soils, herbivores and eutrophication drive plant nutrient responses at small scales, especially at water‐limited sites.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: Isolation by instability: historical climate change shapes population structure and genomic divergence of treefrogs in the Neotropical Cerrado savanna

Although the impact of Pleistocene glacial cycles on the diversification of the tropical biota was once dismissed, increasing evidence suggests that Pleistocene climatic fluctuations greatly affected the distribution and population divergence of tropical organisms. Landscape genomic analyses coupled with paleoclimatic distribution models provide a powerful way to understand the consequences of past climate changes on the present-day tropical biota. Using genome-wide SNP data and mitochondrial DNA, combined with projections of the species distribution across the late Quaternary until the present, we evaluate the effect of paleoclimatic shifts on the genetic structure and population differentiation of Hypsiboas lundii, a treefrog endemic to the South American Cerrado savanna. Our results show a recent and strong genetic divergence in H. lundii across the Cerrado landscape, yielding four genetic clusters that do not seem congruent with any current physical barrier to gene flow. Isolation by distance (IBD) explains some of the population differentiation, but we also find strong support for past climate changes promoting range shifts and structuring populations even in the presence of IBD. Post Pleistocene population persistence in four main areas of historical stable climate in the Cerrado seems to have played a major role establishing the present genetic structure of this treefrog. This pattern is consistent with a model of reduced gene-flow in areas with high climatic instability promoting isolation of populations, defined here as "isolation by instability", highlighting the effects of Pleistocene climatic fluctuations structuring populations in tropical savannas.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: A three decade assessment of climate-associated changes in forest composition across the north-eastern USA

1. Climate-associated changes in forest composition have been widely reported, particularly where changes in abiotic conditions have resulted in high mortality of sensitive species and have disproportionately favored certain species better adapted to these newer conditions. In the northeastern USA and southeastern Canada, few studies have examined climate-related influences associated on forest composition, and none have considered broad-scale changes over a long temporal (>25 years) period. 2. We used US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis data from 1983-2014 across four northeastern states (Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont) to assess temporal and spatial changes in the occurrence and abundance of American beech, sugar maple (Acer sacharum L.), red maple (A. rubrum L.), and birch (Betula spp.) saplings. We also tested the effects of biotic and abiotic factors on the distribution of the four studied deciduous species over the entire studied period. 3. Occurrence and abundance of American beech have increased substantially over the past three decades, whereas the occurrence and abundance of three-other deciduous species have decreased in all ecological provinces of the northeastern USA, except the Midwest Broadleaf ecological province. Consequently, a clear shift in species composition is currently underway in the beech-maple-birch (BMB) forests of the northeastern USA, with uncertain consequences for future ecosystem structure and function. 4. In the studied region and over the entire studied period, the distribution of increased occurrence and abundance of beech relative to three-other deciduous species were associated with the higher temperature and precipitation as well as higher conspecific basal area and dead tree basal area. 5. Synthesis and applications: The change from BMB forests to beech-dominated forests and beech encroachment to new forest areas across the northeast may expand in areas where higher intensity harvesting/disturbances (i.e., large-scale canopy openings) do not occur, which would be a management concern as the beech is associated with the beech-bark disease. Our results emphasize the need for management strategies such as higher intensity harvesting methods, vegetation management, and controlling browsing pressure to reduce the beech dominance.