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Globe-LFMC 2.0, an updated version of Globe-LFMC, is a comprehensive dataset of over 280,000 Live Fuel Moisture Content (LFMC) measurements. These measurements were gathered through field campaigns conducted in 15 countries spanning 47 years. In contrast to its prior version, Globe-LFMC 2.0 incorporates over 120,000 additional data entries, introduces more than 800 new sampling sites, and comprises LFMC values obtained from samples collected until the calendar year 2023. Each entry within the dataset provides essential information, including date, geographical coordinates, plant species, functional type, and, where available, topographical details. Moreover, the dataset encompasses insights into the sampling and weighing procedures, as well as information about land cover type and meteorological conditions at the time and location of each sampling event. Globe-LFMC 2.0 can facilitate advanced LFMC research, supporting studies on wildfire behaviour, physiological traits, ecological dynamics, and land surface modelling, whether remote sensing-based or otherwise. This dataset represents a valuable resource for researchers exploring the diverse LFMC aspects, contributing to the broader field of environmental and ecological research.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle, and where wildfire problems are most pronounced. Here we report that the WUI in the United States grew rapidly from 1990 to 2010 in terms of both number of new houses (from 30.8 to 43.4 million; 41% growth) and land area (from 581,000 to 770,000 km2; 33% growth), making it the fastest-growing land use type in the conterminous United States. The vast majority of new WUI areas were the result of new housing (97%), not related to an increase in wildland vegetation. Within the perimeter of recent wildfires (1990-2015), there were 286,000 houses in 2010, compared with 177,000 in 1990. Furthermore, WUI growth often results in more wildfire ignitions, putting more lives and houses at risk. Wildfire problems will not abate if recent housing growth trends continue.

Surplus wastewater accumulates in winter and requires a discharging solution. In our study we examined the effects of using treated wastewater (TWW) as supplemental pasture irrigation in winter. To test the effect of TWW irrigation on the vegetation and soil, 10 grazing prevention exclosures were established at Ramat‐Hanadiv Park, Israel, with half of them irrigated with TWW. Soil and vegetation were sampled during 2 years of irrigation and 1 year after cessation of irrigation. Vegetation composition, species richness, and productivity were sampled at the peak of the growing season and various indices of herbage quality were measured. Our results show that irrigation with wastewater increased herbage production by an average of 38% and total pasture protein production by 9% relative to the control subplots. Conversely, TWW irrigation decreased plant protein content while increasing herbage fibre content and lowering its digestibility. Over a period of 2 years, species richness decreased in the irrigated subplots. Most of the soil indices examined were not affected by irrigation, but in the irrigation subplots, sodium values and the sodium adsorption‐ratio were higher than in areas without irrigation. Additional resources in winter enabled the plants to grow rapidly and increased interplant competition. Changes in vegetation composition were revealed through functional group reshuffling and species richness decline. The results of our study show that wastewater irrigation causes an increase in productivity but a decrease in forage quality. At the pastoral system level, the significant increase in productivity leads to increased availability of protein and herbage for animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildlife mortality due to collisions with vehicles (roadkill) is one of the predominant negative effects exerted by roads on many wildlife species. Reducing roadkill is therefore a major component of wildlife conservation. Roadkill is affected by various factors, including road attributes and traffic volume. It is theorized that the effect of traffic volume on roadkill probability should be unimodal. However, empirical evidence for this theory is lacking. Using a large‐scale roadkill database of 18 wildlife species in Israel, encompassing 2846 km of roads over 10 years, we explored the effects of traffic volume and road attributes (e.g., road lighting, verge vegetation) on roadkill probability with a multivariate generalized linear mixed model. A unimodal effect of traffic volume was identified for the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), whereas 5 species demonstrated a novel quadratic U‐shaped effect (e.g., golden jackal [Canis aureus]). Four species showed a negative linear effect (e.g., wild boar [Sus scrofa]). We also identified varying effects of road attributes on roadkill. For instance, road lighting and roadside trees decreased roadkill for several species, whereas bus stops and concrete guardrails led to increased roadkill. The theorized unimodal effect of traffic volume may only apply to large, agile species, and the U‐shaped effect could be related to intraspecies variability in traffic avoidance behavior. In general, we found that both high‐traffic and low‐traffic roads can pose a high mortality risk for wildlife. It is therefore important to monitor roadkill on low‐traffic roads and adapt road attributes to mitigate roadkill. Road design for effective roadkill mitigation includes reducing the use of concrete guardrails and median barriers where possible and avoiding dense bushes in verge landscaping. These measures are complemented by employing wildlife detection systems, driver warnings, and seasonal speed reduction measures on low‐traffic roads identified as roadkill hotspots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Large-scale patterns linking energy availability, biological productivity and diversity form a central focus of ecology. Despite evidence that the activity and abundance of animals may be limited by climatic variables associated with regional biological productivity (e.g. mean annual precipitation and annual actual evapotranspiration), it is unclear whether plant-granivore interactions are themselves influenced by these climatic factors across broad spatial extents. We evaluated whether climatic conditions that are known to alter the abundance and activity of granivorous animals also affect rates of seed removal. Location: Eleven sites across temperate North America. Methods: We used a common protocol to assess the removal of the same seed species (Avena sativa) over a 2-day period. Model selection via the Akaike information criterion was used to determine a set of candidate binomial generalized linear mixed models that evaluated the relationship between local climatic data and post-dispersal seed predation. Results: Annual actual evapotranspiration was the single best predictor of the proportion of seeds removed. Annual actual evapotranspiration and mean annual precipitation were both positively related to mean seed removal and were included in four and three of the top five models, respectively. Annual temperature range was also positively related to seed removal and was an explanatory variable in three of the top four models. Main conclusions: Our work provides the first evidence that energy and precipitation, which are known to affect consumer abundance and activity, also translate to strong, predictable patterns of seed predation across a continent. More generally, these findings suggest that future changes in temperature and precipitation could have widespread consequences for plant species composition in grasslands, through impacts on plant recruitment.

This paper presents a review of concepts related to wildfire risk assessment, including the determination of fire ignition and propagation (fire danger), the extent to which fire may spatially overlap with valued assets (exposure), and the potential losses and resilience to those losses (vulnerability). This is followed by a brief discussion of how these concepts can be integrated and connected to mitigation and adaptation efforts. We then review operational fire risk systems in place in various parts of the world. Finally, we propose an integrated fire risk system being developed under the FirEUrisk European project, as an example of how the different risk components (including danger, exposure and vulnerability) can be generated and combined into synthetic risk indices to provide a more comprehensive wildfire risk assessment, but also to consider where and on what variables reduction efforts should be stressed and to envisage policies to be better adapted to future fire regimes. Climate and socio-economic changes entail that wildfires are becoming even more a critical environmental hazard; extreme fires are observed in many areas of the world that regularly experience fire, yet fire activity is also increasing in areas where wildfires were previously rare. To mitigate the negative impacts of fire, those responsible for managing risk must leverage the information available through the risk assessment process, along with an improved understanding on how the various components of risk can be targeted to improve and optimize the many strategies for mitigation and adaptation to an increasing fire risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many regions, the frequency and extent of wildfires has increased in recent years, a trend which is expected to continue. Hence, there is a need for effective fire management strategies. Such strategies need to be based on accurate and complete data on vegetation condition and post-fire effects, collected in the field as well as by remote sensing approaches. Unfortunately, wildfire databases are often incomplete in terms of their spatial and temporal coverage, as well as the documentation of fire outcomes. The aim of this study was to devise a methodology to construct a comprehensive national wildfire database. We developed and tested this methodology for Israel, as a case study. The methodology combines data on wildfires in Israel from two sources: remote sensing and field data collected by governmental agencies, representing the period between 2015 and 2022. The resulting database contains 2276 wildfires larger than 10 ha with information (where and when available) on their occurrence date, fire duration, ignition cause, and more. The methodology presented here provides a blueprint for developing large-scale and comprehensive fire databases elsewhere, and facilitates future studies on wildfire risk by providing a robust, unified database of the fire history of Israel from 2015 onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The niche-based argument that species are filtered from environments in which they cannot sustain viable populations is the basis of the Richness-Heterogeneity Relationship (RHR). However, the multi-dimensionality of niches suggests that the RHR may take different shapes along different environmental axes, with potential confounding effects if filtering along the axes is not equally strong. Here, we explore how different structural and landscape variables drive the RHR as the accumulative outcome of environmental preferences at the species-level while considering the intercorrelation between heterogeneity levels along three niche axes. We used occurrence data of avifauna from 226 sites situated along a grassland-to-woodland gradient in a Midwestern USA study area. In each site, we quantified horizontal (habitat cover type), vertical (vegetation height structure), and spatial (habitat configuration) heterogeneity and explored the shape of the observed RHR at the landscape scale, as well as the correlations among heterogeneity levels at different axes. We then fitted species distribution models to environmental variables from the three axes separately and compared the stacked probabilities of occurrences of all species to the observed species richness. We found that predictions of richness patterns improved when more than one heterogeneity axis was included in RHR models, and that habitat suitability along different axes is not equally strong. Furthermore, a unimodal RHR along the vegetation height axis, which the species distribution models revealed to be a weak predictor for most species, may arise through intercorrelation with heterogeneity along the two other axes, along which we recorded stronger signals of environmental preference at the species level. Our results emphasize the importance of selecting relevant niche axes in studies of species richness patterns because ultimately, these patterns reflect the various environmental preferences of individual species. • The richness – heterogeneity relationship (RHR) is a product of environmental filtering. • The RHR varies across niche axes, heterogeneity measures, and hierarchical levels. • Habitat preference in a Midwestern avian community varies across three niche axes. • Habitat preference at the species-level drives the RHR at the landscape level. • Variations in habitat preference across niche axes affect the type of the RHR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) is where human settlements border or intermingle with undeveloped land, often with multiple detrimental consequences. Therefore, mapping the WUI is required in order to identify areas-at-risk. There are two main WUI mapping methods, the point-based approach and the zonal approach. Both differ in data requirements and may produce considerably different maps, yet they were never compared before. My objective was to systematically compare the point-based and the zonal-based WUI maps of California, and to test the efficacy of a new database of building locations in the context of WUI mapping. I assessed the spatial accuracy of the building database, and then compared the spatial patterns of WUI maps by estimating the effect of multiple ancillary variables on the amount of agreement between maps. I found that the building database is highly accurate and is suitable for WUI mapping. The point-based approach estimated a consistently larger WUI area across California compared to the zonal approach. The spatial correspondence between maps was low-to-moderate, and was significantly affected by building numbers and by their spatial arrangement. The discrepancy between WUI maps suggests that they are not directly comparable within and across landscapes, and that each WUI map should serve a distinct practical purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The initiation and spread of wildfires depend, among others, on the live fuel moisture content (LFMC) in plants. Whereas the intrinsic and environmental drivers of LFMC in individual plants are fairly well understood, less is known about ecological interactions potentially affecting LFMC in diverse plant communities. Here, we asked how the interaction between climate and species diversity affects the spatial and temporal dynamics of LFMC in Mediterranean plant communities. We sampled LFMC in six plant communities located along a steep precipitation gradient in four monthly intervals and analysed how LFMC was affected by the structure of the community as well by site and climate conditions. LFMC varied greatly among species, and climate and species richness had an interactive effect on LFMC. On average, species richness had a strong negative effect on LFMC in sites with high rainfall, whereas in drier sites, richness had a small positive effect. Yet the effect of richness on LFMC varied across species, with some exhibiting a positive effect of richness on their LFMC. Individuals surrounded by more heterospecifics tended to have lower LFMC compared with ones surrounded by conspecifics. Our results highlight the interactive roles of climate and community characteristics on LFMC dynamics in eastern Mediterranean ecosystems. We analysed how species composition and climate affect fuel moisture content in Mediterranean plant species. We found that, on average, high diversity decreases fuel moisture in wet sites, but increases fuel moisture in dry sites. As fuel moisture affects combustibility, our results suggest a link between species diversity and fire risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration is a fundamental ecological phenomenon, which in the Northern Hemisphere involves directed movements between northern breeding grounds and southern non-breeding grounds. Migratory movements in the opposite direction to the prevailing seasonal routes had been seldom studied and are considered to be an exceptional behavior of animals. Here we present novel insights on avian movement and challenge the traditional perspective of avian migration, by revealing an exceptional movement pattern. We combine analyses of a large dataset based on high-frequency GPS animal tracking data, deployed on the breeding population of the Judean long-legged buzzard Buteo rufinus (LLB), along with analyses of remotely sensed data (of a satellite-based greenness index NDVI - normalized difference vegetation index) to reveal the migratory patterns of this population. This species had never been tagged before and its annual movements were previously unknown. We show that the Judean LLB population is migratory rather than sedentary, and that this population performs a poleward non-breeding migration from their southern breeding grounds in Israel to their northern non-breeding grounds in Syria, Turkey and Russia. We suggest that this unusual phenomenon is likely related to food availability in their breeding and non-breeding grounds. We provide support to the hypothesis that LLBs occupy rich environments, track specific ecological productivity levels along latitude gradients, and maintain consistently lower NDVI levels across their annual cycle compared to NDVI values available in their respective home range. These low NDVI levels are linked to the foraging ecology of LLBs, which forage in relatively open areas characterized by low vegetation. To the best of our knowledge, we present here a most extreme departure from the seasonally appropriate migratory direction of most avian species, by showing a significant poleward non-breeding pattern and by providing a possible suggestion for this behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-occurrence is a basic measure of spatial relationships between species. This commonly used measure has many benefits and limitations, yet a basic property that can strongly affect it has been overlooked. Co-occurrence analysis is based on discrete sampling in space, and therefore, its grain size may affect the results and their interpretation, because species interactions and their environmental responses are scale-dependent. We utilized a large dataset on tree species from a full-stem mapped forest plot in China as a template for testing the effects of grain on species co-occurrence patterns. We quantified co-occurrence patterns for large trees and saplings in nested sampling plots with increasing radii and analyzed the effect of plot size on co-occurrence. Co-occurrence patterns varied greatly across grains. More than half of the species in large trees we analyzed had significantly non-random co-occurrence patterns at some grain. In contrast, saplings exhibited much fewer non-random co-occurrences. The proportion of segregated species pairs of large trees had a unimodal relationship with grain, whereas the proportion of aggregated species was positively related to grain. These patterns disappeared in saplings, suggesting that spatial interactions among trees are more prominent among larger individuals. Therefore, co-occurrence patterns are scale-dependent, and this scale dependency reflects a mixture of ecological (interspecific interactions, environmental responses) and statistical (sampling effects) processes. Our results suggest that insights from single-grained studies cannot be generalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An influential period in avian life-cycles is the annual breeding season, when competition over suitable nesting sites and territories is a key factor that can determine fitness and distribution, especially for species that are highly selective in their nesting habitats. We analysed nest-site characteristics, breeding success and competitive interactions between two apex predator populations. Whereas the Short-toed Eagle Circaetus gallicus has nested in the Judean Foothills (Israel) for a long time, the Long-legged Buzzard Buteo rufinus has only invaded the nesting habitat of the Short-toed Eagle during their breeding season in the last two decades. These two recently sympatric species have similar nesting ecology and frequently use the same nests. They are therefore expected to compete over nesting sites and territories. We analysed interspecific interactions between these two species by combining information from comprehensive observational, experimental, GIS analysis and remote sensing data, deriving 65 variables to characterize the nest-sites used and the breeding success in 381 breeding attempts over four consecutive breeding seasons. To assess interspecific and intraspecific territorial behaviour and aggressiveness, stuffed Long-legged Buzzards and Short-toed Eagles were presented close to nests. Nest-site characteristics overlapped substantially between species, and Long-legged Buzzards occupied 21% of all Short-toed Eagle nests. Intraspecific aggression rates among Long-legged Buzzards were higher than their interspecific aggression rates with Short-toed Eagles and also higher than intraspecific aggression among Short-toed Eagles. Long-legged Buzzard and Short-toed Eagle breeding densities (1.59 ± 0.11 and 2.96 ± 0.11 pairs per 10 km2, respectively) are likely to be the highest across their respective breeding distributions, with a maximum productivity of 0.96 ± 0.01 and 0.56 ± 0.05 (young fledged/breeding pair) for Long-legged Buzzard and Short-toed Eagle, respectively. Intraspecific interactions among both species play an important role in determining their breeding success and the spatial distribution of nesting sites. Our results suggest that interspecific competition over nesting sites and territories between both species, and the potential dominance of Long-legged Buzzard, has both direct and indirect impacts on the spatial and demographic distribution of Short-toed Eagles due to the recent establishment of Long-legged Buzzard territories in the Judean breeding area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the processes that drive community assembly has long been a central theme in ecology. For microorganisms, a traditional prevailing hypothesis states that “everything is everywhere, but the environment selects”. Although the bacterial community in floral nectar may be affected by both atmosphere (air-borne bacteria) and animals as dispersal vectors, the environmental and geographic factors that shape microbial communities in floral nectar are unknown. We studied culturable bacterial communities in Asphodelus aestivus floral nectar and in its typical herbivorous bug Capsodes infuscatus, along an aridity gradient. Bacteria were sampled from floral nectar and bugs at four sites, spanning a geographical range of 200 km from Mediterranean to semi-arid conditions, under open and bagged flower treatments. In agreement with the niche assembly hypothesis, the differences in bacterial community compositions were explained by differences in abiotic environmental conditions. These results suggest that microbial model systems are useful for addressing macro-ecological questions. In addition, similar bacterial communities were found in the nectar and on the surface of the bugs that were documented visiting the flowers. These similarities imply that floral nectar bacteria dispersal is shaped not only by air borne bacteria and nectar consumers as previously reported, but also by visiting vectors like the mirid bugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global patters of species distributions and their underlying mechanisms are a major question in ecology, and the need for multi-scale analyses has been recognized. Previous studies recognized climate, topography, habitat heterogeneity and disturbance as important variables affecting such patterns. Here we report on analyses of species composition - environment relationships among different taxonomic groups in two continents, and the components of such relationships, in the contiguous USA and Australia. We used partial Canonical Correspondence Analysis of occurrence records of mammals and breeding birds from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, to quantify relationships between species composition and environmental variables in remote geographic regions at multiple spatial scales, with extents ranging from 105 to 107 km2 and sampling grids from 10 to 10,000 km2. We evaluated the concept that two elements contribute to the impact of environmental variables on composition: the strength of species' affinity to an environmental variable, and the amount of variance in the variable. To disentangle these two elements, we analyzed correlations between resulting trends and the amount of variance contained in different environmental variables to isolate the mechanisms behind the observed relationships. We found that climate and land use-land cover are responsible for most explained variance in species composition, regardless of scale, taxonomic group and geographic region. However, the amount of variance in species composition attributed to land use / land cover (LULC) was closely related to the amount of intrinsic variability in LULC in the USA, but not in Australia, while the effect of climate on species composition was negatively correlated to the variability found in the climatic variables. The low variance in climate, compared to LULC, suggests that species in both taxonomic groups have strong affinity to climate, thus it has a strong effect on species distribution and community composition, while the opposite is true for LULC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of homes are being destroyed by wildfire in the wildland-urban interface. With projections of climate change and housing growth potentially exacerbating the threat of wildfire to homes and property, effective fire-risk reduction alternatives are needed as part of a comprehensive fire management plan. Land use planning represents a shift in traditional thinking from trying to eliminate wildfires, or even increasing resilience to them, toward avoiding exposure to them through the informed placement of new residential structures. For land use planning to be effective, it needs to be based on solid understanding of where and how to locate and arrange new homes. We simulated three scenarios of future residential development and projected landscape-level wildfire risk to residential structures in a rapidly urbanizing, fire-prone region in southern California. We based all future development on an econometric subdivision model, but we varied the emphasis of subdivision decision-making based on three broad and common growth types: infill, expansion, and leapfrog. Simulation results showed that decision-making based on these growth types, when applied locally for subdivision of individual parcels, produced substantial landscape-level differences in pattern, location, and extent of development. These differences in development, in turn, affected the area and proportion of structures at risk from burning in wildfires. Scenarios with lower housing density and larger numbers of small, isolated clusters of development, i.e., resulting from leapfrog development, were generally predicted to have the highest predicted fire risk to the largest proportion of structures in the study area, and infill development was predicted to have the lowest risk. These results suggest that land use planning should be considered an important component to fire risk management and that consistently applied policies based on residential pattern may provide substantial benefits for future risk reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is thought that the science of ecology has experienced conceptual shifts in recent decades, chiefly from viewing nature as static and balanced to a conception of constantly changing, unpredictable, complex ecosystems. Here, we ask if these changes are reflected in actual ecological research over the last 30 years. We surveyed 750 articles from the entire pool of ecological literature and 750 articles from eight leading journals. Each article was characterized according to its type, ecological domain, and applicability, and major topics. We found that, in contrast to its common image, ecology is still mostly a study of single species (70% of the studies); while ecosystem and community studies together comprise only a quarter of ecological research. Ecological science is somewhat conservative in its topics of research (about a third of all topics changed significantly through time), as well as in its basic methodologies and approaches. However, the growing proportion of problem-solving studies (from 9% in the 1980s to 20% in the 2000 s) may represent a major transition in ecological science in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lightning fires are a common natural disturbance in North America, and account for the largest proportion of the area burned by wildfires each year. Yet, the spatiotemporal patterns of lightning fires in the conterminous US are not well understood due to limitations of existing fire databases. Our goal here was to develop and test an algorithm that combined MODIS fire detections with lightning detections from the National Lightning Detection Network to identify lightning fires across the conterminous US from 2000 to 2008. The algorithm searches for spatiotemporal conjunctions of MODIS fire clusters and NLDN detected lightning strikes, given a spatiotemporal lag between lightning strike and fire ignition. The algorithm revealed distinctive spatial patterns of lightning fires in the conterminous US While a sensitivity analysis revealed that the algorithm is highly sensitive to the two thresholds that are used to determine conjunction, the density of fires it detected was moderately correlated with ground based fire records. When only fires larger than 0.4 km^2 were considered, correlations were higher and the root-mean-square error between datasets was less than five fires per 625 km^2 for the entire study period. Our algorithm is thus suitable for detecting broad scale spatial patterns of lightning fire occurrence, and especially lightning fire hotspots, but has limited detection capability of smaller fires because these cannot be consistently detected by MODIS. These results may enhance our understanding of large scale patterns of lightning fire activity, and can be used to identify the broad scale factors controlling fire occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Mediterranean regions, the combination of disturbances, life histories, plant regeneration traits, and microhabitat variability form highly heterogeneous vegetation mosaics which shift in space and time. Consequently, structure-based forest management is emerging as a superior alternative to management of vegetation formations in such areas. Delineation of management units in these areas is often based on manual interpretation of aerial imagery coupled with field surveys. Here, we propose an alternative approach that is based on segmentation of remotely sensed height and cover maps derived from light detection and ranging (LiDAR) imagery. A large suite of alternative segmentation maps was generated using multiresolution segmentation (MS) with different parameters, and an area-fit approach used to select the map that most successfully captured a reference set of structural units delineated manually. We assessed the feasibility of this approach in a nature reserve in northern Israel, compared the resulting map with a traditional vegetation formations map, and explored the performance of the segmentation algorithm under various parameter combinations. Pronounced differences between the structure and formation maps highlight the suitability of this approach as an alternative to the existing methods of delineating vegetation units in Mediterranean systems, and possibly in other systems as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Relationships between species composition and its environmental determinants are a basic objective of ecology. Such relationships are scale dependent, and predictors of species composition typically include variables such as climate, topographic, historical legacies, land uses, human population levels, and random processes. Our objective was to quantify the effect of environmental determinants on U.S. mammal composition at various spatial scales. We found that climate was the predominant factor affecting species composition, and its relative impact increased in correlation with the increase of the spatial scale. Another factor affecting species composition is land-use-land-cover. Our findings showed that its impact decreased as the spatial scale increased. We provide quantitative indication of highly significant effect of climate and landuse- land-cover variables on mammal composition at multiple scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]