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The Earth functions as an integrated system—its current habitability to complex life is an emergent property dependent on interactions among biological, chemical, and physical components. As global warming affects ecosystem structure and function, so too will the biosphere affect climate by altering atmospheric gas composition and planetary albedo. Constraining these ecosystem‐climate feedbacks is essential to accurately predict future change and develop mitigation strategies; however, the interplay among ecosystem processes complicates the assessment of their impact. Here, we explore the state‐of‐knowledge on how ecological and biological processes (e.g., competition, trophic interactions, metabolism, and adaptation) affect the directionality and magnitude of feedbacks between ecosystems and climate, using illustrative examples from the aquatic sphere. We argue that, despite ample evidence for the likely significance of many, our present understanding of the combinatorial effects of ecosystem dynamics precludes the robust quantification of most ecologically driven climate feedbacks. Constraining these effects must be prioritized within the ecological sciences for only by studying the biosphere as both subject and arbiter of global climate can we develop a sufficiently holistic view of the Earth system to accurately predict Earth's future and unravel its past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem response to climate change is complex. In order to forecast ecosystem dynamics, we need high-quality data on changes in past species abundance that can inform process-based models. Sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) has revolutionised our ability to document past ecosystems' dynamics. It provides time series of increased taxonomic resolution compared to microfossils (pollen, spores), and can often give species-level information, especially for past vascular plant and mammal abundances. Time series are much richer in information than contemporary spatial distribution information, which have been traditionally used to train models for predicting biodiversity and ecosystem responses to climate change. Here, we outline the potential contribution of sedaDNA to forecast ecosystem changes. We showcase how species-level time series may allow quantification of the effect of biotic interactions in ecosystem dynamics, and be used to estimate dispersal rates when a dense network of sites is available. By combining palaeo-time series, process-based models, and inverse modelling, we can recover the biotic and abiotic processes underlying ecosystem dynamics, which are traditionally very challenging to characterise. Dynamic models informed by sedaDNA can further be used to extrapolate beyond current dynamics and provide robust forecasts of ecosystem responses to future climate change. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ecological novelty and planetary stewardship: biodiversity dynamics in a transforming biosphere'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-induced global changes, including anthropogenic climate change, biotic globalization, trophic downgrading and pervasive land-use intensification, are transforming Earth's biosphere, placing biodiversity and ecosystems at the forefront of unprecedented challenges. The Anthropocene, characterized by the importance of Homo sapiens in shaping the Earth system, necessitates a re-evaluation of our understanding and stewardship of ecosystems. This theme issue delves into the multifaceted challenges posed by the ongoing ecological planetary transformation and explores potential solutions across four key subthemes. Firstly, it investigates the functioning and stewardship of emerging novel ecosystems, emphasizing the urgent need to comprehend the dynamics of ecosystems under uncharted conditions. The second subtheme focuses on biodiversity projections under global change, recognizing the necessity of predicting ecological shifts in the Anthropocene. Importantly, the inherent uncertainties and the complexity of ecological responses to environmental stressors pose challenges for societal responses and for accurate projections of ecological change. The RAD framework (resist-accept-direct) is highlighted as a flexible yet nuanced decision-making tool that recognizes the need for adaptive approaches, providing insights for directing and adapting to Anthropocene dynamics while minimizing negative impacts. The imperative to extend our temporal perspective beyond 2100 is emphasized, given the irreversible changes already set in motion. Advancing methods to study ecosystem dynamics under rising biosphere novelty is the subject of the third subtheme. The fourth subtheme emphasizes the importance of integrating human perspectives into understanding, forecasting and managing novel ecosystems. Cultural diversity and biological diversity are intertwined, and the evolving relationship between humans and ecosystems offers lessons for future stewardship. Achieving planetary stewardship in the Anthropocene demands collaboration across scales and integration of ecological and societal perspectives, scalable approaches fit to changing, novel ecological conditions, as well as cultural innovation. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ecological novelty and planetary stewardship: biodiversity dynamics in a transforming biosphere'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As land use leaves massive tracts of land vacant for recovery, restoration must undergo a substantial shift to incorporate a complexity perspective beyond the traditional community, biodiversity or functional views. With an interaction–function perspective, we may be able to achieve ecosystems with better chances to adapt to current environmental changes and, especially, to climate change. We explore combined approaches that include still unused and underexplored techniques that will soon go mainstream and produce massive amounts of information to address the complexity gap. As we understand how complexity reassembles after the end of agriculture, we will be able to design actions to restore or enhance it at unprecedented spatial scales while increasing its adaptability to environmental changes. Moreno and Bhatnagar argue in favor of using an 'interaction–function' perspective to understand the dynamics of ecosystem recovery after land-use change, especially in the light of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, natural and anthropogenic pressures caused an apparent increase in the frequency and spread of red Noctiluca scintillans (RNS) blooms. Here, we describe this potential expansion and the associated environmental factors based on an extensive literature review (1857–2023). Our analysis suggests that Noctiluca increased over time in several Australian, Chinese and European coastal regions. We point to eutrophication, ocean warming and deoxygenation as possible drivers of these intensifications. Moreover, we demonstrate Noctiluca 's importance for coastal ecosystems: with competitive advantages causing fast and intense blooms, Noctiluca has the potential to alter plankton communities, influencing productivity in affected areas. Throughout our analysis, we identified major knowledge gaps that are relevant to assess Noctiluca : (i) challenges in determining its spatiotemporal evolution; (ii) limited knowledge about drivers triggering and ending blooms; (iii) scarce information about feeding, reproduction and interaction in situ and (iv) uncertainty regarding its contribution to carbon export. We hypothesize that these gaps are related to limitations in traditional sampling techniques, and we highlight the need for a holistic approach combining traditional with novel techniques like remote sensing and underwater cameras. Our suggested approach could help filling the identified gaps and facilitate predictions of bloom dynamics and impacts under future climate conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microhabitat utilisation holds a pivotal role in shaping a species' ecological dynamics and stands as a crucial concern for effective conservation strategies. Despite its critical importance, microhabitat use has frequently been addressed as static, centering on microhabitat preference. Yet, a dynamic microhabitat use that allows individuals to adjust to fine-scale spatio-temporal prey fluctuations, becomes imperative for species thriving in challenging environments. High-elevation ecosystems, marked by brief growing seasons and distinct abiotic processes like snowmelt, winds, and solar radiation, feature an ephemeral distribution of key resources. To better understand species' strategies in coping with these rapidly changing environments, we delved into the foraging behaviour of the white-winged snowfinch Montifringilla nivalis, an emblematic high-elevation passerine. Through studying microhabitat preferences during breeding while assessing invertebrate prey availability, we unveiled a highly flexible microhabitat use process. Notably, snowfinches exhibited specific microhabitat preferences, favoring grass and melting snow margins, while also responding to local invertebrate availability. This behaviour was particularly evident in snow-associated microhabitats and less pronounced amid tall grass. Moreover, our investigation underscored snowfinches' fidelity to foraging sites, with over half located within 10 m of previous spots. This consistent use prevailed in snow-associated microhabitats and high-prey-density zones. These findings provide the first evidence of dynamic microhabitat use in high-elevation ecosystems and offer further insights into the crucial role of microhabitats for climate-sensitive species. They call for multi-faceted conservation strategies that go beyond identifying and protecting optimal thermal buffering areas in the face of global warming to also encompass locations hosting high invertebrate densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal size, a trait sensitive to spatial and temporal variables, is a key element in ecological and evolutionary dynamics. In the context of climate change, there is evidence that some bat species are increasing their body size via phenotypic responses to higher temperatures at maternity roosts. To test the generality of this response, we conducted a >20‐year study examining body size changes in 15 bat species in Italy, analysing data from 4393 individual bats captured since 1995. In addition to examining the temporal effect, we considered the potential influence of sexual dimorphism and, where relevant, included latitude and altitude as potential drivers of body size change. Contrary to initial predictions of a widespread increase in size, our findings challenge this assumption, revealing a nuanced interplay of factors contributing to the complexity of bat body size dynamics. Specifically, only three species (Myotis daubentonii, Nyctalus leisleri, and Pipistrellus pygmaeus) out of the 15 exhibited a discernible increase in body size over the studied period, prompting a reassessment of bats as reliable indicators of climate change based on alterations in body size. Our investigation into influencing factors highlighted the significance of temperature‐related variables, with latitude and altitude emerging as crucial drivers. In some cases, this mirrored patterns consistent with Bergmann's rule, revealing larger bats recorded at progressively higher latitudes (Plecotus auritus, Myotis mystacinus, and Miniopterus schreibersii) or altitudes (Pipistrellus kuhlii). We also observed a clear sexual dimorphism effect in most species, with females consistently larger than males. The observed increase in size over time in three species suggests the occurrence of phenotypic plasticity, raising questions about potential long‐term selective pressures on larger individuals. The unresolved question of whether temperature‐related changes in body size reflect microevolutionary processes or phenotypic plastic responses adds further complexity to our understanding of body size patterns in bats over time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increases in extremely large precipitation events (deluges) and shifts in seasonal patterns of water availability with climate change will both have important consequences for ecosystem function, particularly in water-limited regions. While previous work in the semi-arid shortgrass steppe of northeastern Colorado has demonstrated this ecosystem's strong sensitivity to growing season deluges, our understanding of ecosystem responses to deluges during the dormant season is limited. Here, we imposed experimental 100 mm deluges (~ 30% of mean annual precipitation) in either September or October in a native C4-dominated shortgrass steppe ecosystem to evaluate the impact of this post-growing season shift in water availability during the autumn and the following growing season. Soil moisture for both deluge treatments remained elevated compared with ambient levels through April as spring precipitation was atypically low. Despite overall low levels of productivity with spring drought, these deluges from the previous autumn increased aboveground net primary production (ANPP), primarily due to increases with C4 grasses. C3 ANPP was also enhanced, largely due to an increase in the annual C3 grass, Vulpia octoflora, in the October deluge treatment. While spring precipitation has historically been the primary determinant of ecosystem function in this ecosystem, this combination of two climate extremes—an extremely wet autumn followed by a naturally-occurring spring drought—revealed the potential for meaningful carryover effects from autumn precipitation. With climate change increasing the likelihood of extremes during all seasons, experiments which create novel climatic conditions can provide new insight into the dynamics of ecosystem functioning in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correlative species distribution models are widely used to quantify past shifts in ranges or communities, and to predict future outcomes under ongoing global change. Practitioners confront a wide range of potentially plausible models for ecological dynamics, but most specific applications only consider a narrow set. Here, we clarify that certain model structures can embed restrictive assumptions about key sources of forecast uncertainty into an analysis. To evaluate forecast uncertainties and our ability to explain community change, we fit and compared 39 candidate multi‐ or joint species occupancy models to avian incidence data collected at 320 sites across California during the early 20th century and resurveyed a century later. We found massive (>20,000 LOOIC) differences in within‐time information criterion across models. Poorer fitting models omitting multivariate random effects predicted less variation in species richness changes and smaller contemporary communities, with considerable variation in predicted spatial patterns in richness changes across models. The top models suggested avian environmental associations changed across time, contemporary avian occupancy was influenced by previous site‐specific occupancy states, and that both latent site variables and species associations with these variables also varied over time. Collectively, our results recapitulate that simplified model assumptions not only impact predictive fit but may mask important sources of forecast uncertainty and mischaracterize the current state of system understanding when seeking to describe or project community responses to global change. We recommend that researchers seeking to make long‐term forecasts prioritize characterizing forecast uncertainty over seeking to present a single best guess. To do so reliably, we urge practitioners to employ models capable of characterizing the key sources of forecast uncertainty, where predictors, parameters and random effects may vary over time or further interact with previous occurrence states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events like drought and flooding, which threaten to amplify other global change drivers such as species invasion. We investigate the effect of wet and dry extreme precipitation regimes on invasive species' abundances in northern tallgrass prairies. Because soil moisture is a key determinant of prairie composition, theory and evidence suggest drought conditions will hinder invasion, whereas wetter conditions will enhance invasion. To test this hypothesis, we explored the effect of precipitation on invasive plant species abundance from 2010 to 2019 in 25 managed prairies using observations from 267 transects comprising 6675 plots throughout western Minnesota, USA. We estimated how increases in the number of extremely wet or dry months in a year altered overall invasive species abundance and the abundance of the highly invasive grasses Poa pratensis and Bromus inermis. We found that a greater occurrence of abnormally wet months increased invasive species abundance but found mixed evidence that abnormally dry conditions hindered invasion. Further, more moderately wet and dry months reduced native grass abundance. Together, these results suggest that more frequent extremely wet months may intensify invasive dominance and that dry months may not counterbalance these trends. Given the considerable uncertainty still surrounding the interactive effects of climate change and invasion on native plant communities, this research represents an important step toward quantifying the complex influence of precipitation extremes on invasion dynamics in managed ecosystems of critical conservation concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imminent threat of Mongolian montane forests facing extinction due to climate change emphasizes the pressing need to study these ecosystems for sustainable development. Leveraging multispectral remote sensing data from Landsat 8 OLI TIRS (2013–2021), we apply Tsallis non-extensive thermodynamics to assess spatiotemporal fluctuations in the absorbed solar energy budget (exergy, bound energy, internal energy increment) and organizational parameters (entropy, information increment, q-index) within the mountain taiga–meadow landscape. Using the principal component method, we discern three functional subsystems: evapotranspiration, heat dissipation, and a structural-informational component linked to bioproductivity. The interplay among these subsystems delineates distinct landscape cover states. By categorizing ecosystems (pixels) based on these processes, discrete states and transitional areas (boundaries and potential disturbances) emerge. Examining the temporal dynamics of ecosystems (pixels) within this three-dimensional coordinate space facilitates predictions of future landscape states. Our findings indicate that northern Mongolian montane forests utilize a smaller proportion of received energy for productivity compared to alpine meadows, which results in their heightened vulnerability to climate change. This approach deepens our understanding of ecosystem functioning and landscape dynamics, serving as a basis for evaluating their resilience amid ongoing climate challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a measure toward a joint target of promoting residents' life, combating climate change, and protecting ecosystem in the Qinghai–Xizang Plateau, migrant resettlement has made a remarkable achievement not only in preserving the ecological environment and building climate barriers, but also in significantly upgrading the residents' life quality. Yet, it also faces a multitude of challenges, such as the issue of just transition, which concerns the international community. To promote a just transition, the primary challenge lies in addressing the imbalance between the supply and demand in the resettlement. This includes matching the supply of public services with the material needs related to production and residents' life, as well as the alignment between the residents' cultural and psychological identification and the grassroots services available. Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a theoretical framework, this paper examines just transition in migrant resettlement on the Qinghai–Xizang Plateau from a supply–demand perspective based on follow-up fieldwork, and argues that the local community has achieved significant progress in promoting just transition in terms of material security, spiritual needs, and self-development, but further efforts should still be made to improve just transition and ensure a more sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1992 and 2018, the breeding population of Adélie penguins around Anvers Island, Antarctica declined by 98%. In this region, natural climate variability drives five‐year cycling in marine phytoplankton productivity, leading to phase‐offset five‐year cycling in the size of the krill population. We demonstrate that the rate of change of the Adélie breeding population also shows five‐year cycling. We link this population response to cyclical krill scarcity, a phenomenon which appears to have arisen from the interaction between climate variability and climate change trends. Modeling suggests that, since at least 1980, natural climate variability has driven cycling in this marine system. However, anthropogenic climate change has shifted conditions so that fewer years in each cycle now prompt strong krill recruitment, triggering intervals of krill scarcity that result in drastic declines in Adélie penguins. Our results imply that climate change can amplify the impacts of natural climate oscillations across trophic levels, driving cycling across species and disrupting food webs. The findings indicate that climate variability plays an integral role in driving ecosystem dynamics under climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alaskan landscape has undergone substantial changes in recent decades, most notably the expansion of shrubs and trees across the Arctic. We developed a Bayesian hierarchical model to quantify the impact of climate change on the structural transformation of ecosystems using remotely sensed imagery. We used latent trajectory processes to model dynamic state probabilities that evolve annually, from which we derived transition probabilities between ecotypes. Our latent trajectory model accommodates temporal irregularity in survey intervals and uses spatio‐temporally heterogeneous climate drivers to infer rates of land cover transitions. We characterized multi‐scale spatial correlation induced by plot and subplot arrangements in our study system. We also developed a Pólya–Gamma sampling strategy to improve computation. Our model facilitates inference on the response of ecosystems to shifts in the climate and can be used to predict future land cover transitions under various climate scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document discusses the importance of understanding the relationship between vegetation growth and climate variations in order to comprehend ecosystem dynamics. It highlights the limitations of ground observation and the benefits of remote sensing techniques, such as vegetation indices, in studying land surface phenology. The document also explores the effects of climatic and anthropogenic factors, as well as nutrient availability, on vegetation growth and phenology. The Special Issue presented in the document includes studies on vegetation-climate relationships, land surface phenology, and the application of PhenoCam observations. [Extracted from the article]

Identifying potential links between food web structure and animal body condition is fundamental for predicting the long‐term persistence of populations under rapidly changing environments. Northern lakes, and the cold‐water adapted species that inhabit them, are particularly vulnerable to a warming climate.We explored relationships among body condition and energy channel use in lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and seasonal variation in food‐chain length in the Lake of Two Rivers, Ontario, Canada. Bayesian mixing models using carbon isotope values (δ13C) of essential amino acids showed that individuals utilising multiple energy channels had higher gonad mass, suggesting that dietary diversity has reproductive fitness benefits.Amino acid nitrogen isotope (δ15N) analysis revealed seasonal variation in food chain length, with extension of the food web during winter and spring and truncation of the food web during summer. Although these findings illustrate increased omnivory of lake trout during summer, there was no clear evidence that seasonal changes in food chain length had an impact on trout condition.These findings provide new insight into potential relationships between food web structure, energy flow and consumer condition in freshwater ecosystems, thereby revealing potential responses of species to shifting ecosystem states under intensifying climate change at high latitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Solanum viarum has been a widely invasive species. We aimed to understand the prevailing historical dispersal, ecological niche dynamics, and distribution patterns. The invasion history of S. viarum consisted of three phases: lagging (before 1980), dispersal (1980–2010), and equilibrium (2010–present). Ecological niches remained conservative. The potential geographic distribution of S. viarum will reach a maximum in the 2050s, SSP5–8.5, and in the future, it will migrate to higher latitudes. Global factors continue to increase this threat. The relevant quarantine authorities should take prevention and control measures. Solanum viarum has become extensively invasive owing to international trade, climate change, and land–use change. As it is classified as a quarantine weed by countries such as the U.S. and Mexico, it is critical to understand the prevailing historical dispersal, ecological niche dynamics, and distribution patterns. We reconstructed the historical invasion countries and analyzed the ecological niche shift of S. viarum. Using MaxEnt based on the conservativeness of ecological niches, we studied variations in the potential geographical distributions (PGDs) of S. viarum in ecosystems and variations in suitability probabilities along latitudinal gradients. The invasion history in six continents involved three phases: lag (before 1980), spread (1980–2010), and equilibrium (2010–present). The ecological niche remains conserved. The area of S. viarum PGDs had increased by 259 km2; the PGDs will expand to reach a maximum in the 2050s, SSP5–8.5. The PGDs of S. viarum will migrate to higher latitudes under the same future climate scenarios. The latitudes subject to high threats range from 20° to 30° in forest and cropland ecosystems, 15.5° to 27.5° (northern hemisphere) and 33.1° to 42.8° (southern hemisphere) in grassland ecosystems, and 20° to 35° in urban ecosystems. Global change has led to an increased threat of S. viarum at high latitudes. These findings provide a theoretical basis to monitor and control S. viarum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mammalian carnivores are key to our understanding of ecosystem dynamics, but most of them are threatened with extinction all over the world. Conservating large carnivores is often an arduous task considering the complex relationship between humans and carnivores, and the diverse range and reasons of threats they face. Climate change is exacerbating the situation further by interacting with most existing threats and amplifying their impacts. The Mountains of Central and South Asia are warming twice as rapidly as the rest of the northern hemisphere. There has been limited research on the effect of climate change and other variables on large carnivores. We studied the patterns in spatio-temporal distribution of three sympatric carnivores, common leopard, snow leopard, and Asiatic black bear in Kishtwar high altitude National Park, a protected area in the Great Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir. We investigated the effects of key habitat characteristics as well as human disturbance and climatic factors to understand the spatio-temporal change in their distributions between the early 1990s and around the year 2016–2017. We found a marked contraction in the distribution of the three carnivores between the two time periods. While snow leopard shifted upwards and further away from human settlements, common leopard and Asiatic black bear suffered higher rates of local extinctions at higher altitudes and shifted to lower areas with more vegetation, even if that brought them closer to settlements. We also found some evidence that snow leopards were less likely to have faced range contraction in areas with permanent glaciers. Our study underscores the importance of climate adaptive conservation practices for long-term management in the Greater Himalaya, including the monitoring of changes in habitat, and space-use patterns by human communities and wildlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shifts in plant phenology regulate ecosystem structure and function, which feeds back to the climate system. However, drivers for the peak of growing season (POS) in seasonal dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems remain unclear. Here, spatial-temporal patterns of POS dynamics were analyzed by solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) and vegetation index in the Northern Hemisphere over the past two decades from 2001 to 2020. Overall, a slow advanced POS was observed in the Northern Hemisphere, while a delayed POS distributed mainly in northeastern North America. Trends of POS were driven by the start of growing season (SOS) rather than pre-POS climate both at hemisphere and biome scale. The effect of SOS on the trends in POS was the strongest in shrublands while the weakest in evergreen broad-leaved forest. These findings highlight the crucial role of biological rhythms rather than climatic factors in exploring seasonal carbon dynamics and global carbon balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Understanding temporal trends and varying responses of water use efficiency (WUE) to environmental changes of diverse ecosystems is key to predicting vegetation growth. WUE dynamics of major ecosystem types (e.g., forest, grassland and cropland) have been studied using various WUE definitions/metrics, but a comparative study on WUE dynamics and their driving forces among different ecosystem types using multiple WUE metrics is lacking. We used eddy covariance measurements for 42 FLUXNET2015 sites (396 site years) from 1997 to 2014, as well as three commonly used WUE metrics (i.e., ecosystem, inherent, and underlying WUE) to investigate the commonalities and differences in WUE trends and driving factors among deciduous broadleaf forests (DBFs), evergreen needleleaf forests (ENFs), grasslands, and croplands. Results: Our results showed that the temporal trends of WUE were not statistically significant at 73.8% of the forest, grassland and cropland sites, and none of the three WUE metrics exhibited better performance than the others in quantifying WUE. Meanwhile, the trends observed for the three WUE metrics were not significantly different among forest, grassland and cropland ecosystems. In addition, WUE was mainly driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at sites with significant WUE trends, and by vapor pressure deficit (VPD) at sites without significant trends (except cropland). Conclusions: Our findings revealed the commonalities and differences in the application of three WUE metrics in disparate ecosystems, and further highlighted the important effect of VPD on WUE change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixotrophs are ubiquitous and integral to microbial food webs, but their impacts on the dynamics and functioning of broader ecosystems are largely unresolved.Here, we show that mixotrophy produces a unique type of food web module that exhibits unusual ecological dynamics, with surprising consequences for carbon flux under warming. We develop a generalizable model of a mixotrophic food web module that incorporates dynamic switching between phototrophy and phagotrophy to assess ecological dynamics and total system CO2 flux.We find that warming switches mixotrophic systems between alternative stable carbon states—including a phototrophy‐dominant carbon sink state, a phagotrophy‐dominant carbon source state and cycling between these two. Moreover, warming always shifts this mixotrophic system from a carbon sink state to a carbon source state, but a coordinated increase in nutrients can erase early warning signals of this transition and expand hysteresis.This suggests that mixotrophs can generate critical carbon tipping points under warming that will be more abrupt and less reversible when combined with increased nutrient levels, having widespread implications for ecosystem functioning in the face of rapid global change. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human intervention and climate change jointly influence the functions and dynamics of marine ecosystems. Studying the impacts of human and climate on ecosystem dynamics is challenging. Unlike experimental studies, research on natural systems is not amendable at the scale of time, space, and biology. With confounding factors well balanced for two adjacent subtropical estuaries except urbanized disturbances, we conducted ecosystem modelling using indirect reasoning by exclusion to quantify the relative impacts of human disruption on estuarine ecosystems under climate variability. One major finding of this study is that the human intervention tends to magnify species fluctuations, complicate the species interaction network, and enhance species interaction strength combined with disclosed downscaling climate effects (indexed as North Atlantic Oscillation and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation) on estuarine hydrology and biological communities. In addition, functional groups appeared to respond more diversely to external forcing in company with human interventions. While human perturbation was shown to destabilize the estuarine ecosystems, making them vulnerable to environmental variability under climate change, buffering effects of species diversity and trophic interaction tend to underpin the ecosystem functions. The findings of this study contribute to the holistic assessment and strategic management of estuarine ecosystems subjected to human and natural disturbances in the face of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapidly changing conditions alter disturbance patterns, highlighting the need to better understand how the transition from pulse disturbances to more persistent stress will impact ecosystem dynamics. We conducted a global analysis of the impacts of 11 types of disturbances on reef integrity using the rate of change of coral cover as a measure of damage. Then, we evaluated how the magnitude of the damage due to thermal stress, cyclones, and diseases varied among tropical Atlantic and Indo‐Pacific reefs and whether the cumulative impact of thermal stress and cyclones was able to modulate the responses of reefs to future events. We found that reef damage largely depends on the condition of a reef before a disturbance, disturbance intensity, and biogeographic region, regardless of the type of disturbance. Changes in coral cover after thermal stress events were largely influenced by the cumulative stress of past disturbances and did not depend on disturbance intensity or initial coral cover, which suggests that an ecological memory is present within coral communities. In contrast, the effect of cyclones (and likely other physical impacts) was primarily modulated by the initial reef condition and did not appear to be influenced by previous impacts. Our findings also underscore that coral reefs can recover if stressful conditions decrease, yet the lack of action to reduce anthropogenic impacts and greenhouse gas emissions continues to trigger reef degradation. We uphold that evidence‐based strategies can guide managers to make better decisions to prepare for future disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Despite the vital role in carbon (C) sequestration and nutrient retention, variations and patterns in root C and nitrogen (N) stoichiometry of the first five root orders across woody plant species remains unclear.We compiled a dataset to explore variations and patterns of root C and N stoichiometry in the first five orders of 218 woody plant species.Across the five orders, root N concentrations were greater in deciduous, broadleaf, and arbuscular mycorrhizal species than in evergreen, coniferous species, and ectomycorrhizal association species, respectively. Contrasting trends were found for root C : N ratios. Most root branch orders showed clear latitudinal and altitudinal trends in root C and N stoichiometry. There were opposite patterns in N concentrations between latitude and altitude. Such variations were mainly driven by plant species, and climatic factors together.Our results indicate divergent C and N use strategies among plant types and convergence and divergence in the patterns of C and N stoichiometry between latitude and altitude across the first five root orders. These findings provide important data on the root economics spectrum and biogeochemical models to improve understanding and prediction of climate change effects on C and nutrient dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate warming alters the seasonal timing of biological events. This raises concerns that species‐specific responses to warming may de‐synchronize co‐evolved consumer‐resource phenologies, resulting in trophic mismatch and altered ecosystem dynamics. We explored the effects of warming on the synchrony of two events: the onset of the phytoplankton spring bloom and the spring/summer maximum of the grazer Daphnia. Simulation of 16 lake types over 31 years at 1907 North African and European locations under 5 climate scenarios revealed that the current median phenological delay between the two events varies greatly (20–190 days) across lake types and geographic locations. Warming moves both events forward in time and can lengthen or shorten the delay between them by up to ±60 days. Our simulations suggest large geographic and lake‐specific variations in phenological synchrony, provide quantitative predictions of its dependence on physical lake properties and geographic location and highlight research needs concerning its ecological consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worldwide proliferation of harmful algal blooms (HABs) both in freshwater and marine ecosystems make understanding and predicting their occurrence urgent. Trait‐based approaches, where the focus is on functional traits, have been successful in explaining community structure and dynamics in diverse ecosystems but have not been applied extensively to HABs. The existing trait compilations suggest that HAB taxa differ from non HAB taxa in key traits that determine their responses to major environmental drivers. Multi‐trait comparisons between HAB‐forming and other phytoplankton taxa, as well as within the HAB groups to characterize interspecific and intraspecific differences will help better define ecological niches of different HAB taxa, develop trait‐based mechanistic models, and better identify environmental conditions that would likely lead to HABs. Building databases of HAB traits and using them in diverse statistical and mechanistic models will increase our ability to predict the HAB occurrence, composition, and severity under changing conditions, including the anthropogenic global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought events are projected to be more extreme and frequent in the future and have profound influences on the structure and functions of terrestrial ecosystems. Thus, better understanding the mechanisms of recovery is critical for predicting the future dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. We performed a 7‐year field precipitation experiment to examine recovery of a grassland ecosystem from different magnitudes of sustained drought, from slight to extreme. The ecosystem was exposed to precipitation treatments in the first 3 years (2010–2012) and recovered during the last 4 years (2013–2016) without precipitation treatments. Overall, large reductions of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP, −43.3%) and perennial forb biomass (−83.1%) were observed in the third year (2012) of extreme drought only. Nevertheless, ANPP fully recovered within 1 year after the drought treatments were terminated, and the rapid recovery was mainly due to increased soil total nitrogen and root biomass allocation after drought. Surprisingly, large increases of ANPP under the extreme drought treatment occurred during the recovery periods from 2013 to 2015 (+74.1, +88.5, and +119.8 g m−2 year−1) compared to the control. The overcompensation offset the extreme drought‐induced reduction of ANPP in the treatment years and was primarily ascribed to the enhanced biomass of perennial grasses (PG). Higher resistance to drought and fast resource acquisition strategy might drive the rapid recovery and expansion of PG. Our findings revealed the rapid recovery of grasslands and the critical role of community overcompensation in maintaining grassland ecosystem function and stability under future climate change scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recurrent emphasis on their ecological and economic roles, the importance of high trophic levels (HTLs) on ocean carbon dynamics, through passive (fecal pellet production, carcasses) and active (vertical migration) processes, is still largely unexplored, notably under climate change scenarios. In addition, HTLs impact the ecosystem dynamics through top‐down effects on lower trophic levels, which might change under anthropogenic influence. Here we compare two simulations of a global biogeochemical–ecosystem model with and without feedbacks from large marine animals. We show that these large marine animals affect the evolution of low trophic level biomasses, hence net primary production and most certainly ecosystem equilibrium, but seem to have little influence on the 21st‐century anthropogenic carbon uptake under the RCP8.5 scenario. These results provide new insights regarding the expectations for trophic amplification of climate change through the marine trophic chain and regarding the necessity to explicitly represent marine animals in Earth System Models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of natural resources is currently more challenging than ever before. Climate change and human population growth pose a threat to marine ecosystems as we know them. In order to preserve ecosystems, biodiversity and ecosystem services, management of biological resources must adopt a holistic strategy. Ecosystem‐Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) enables this by managing natural resources at the ecosystem level. However, EBFM objectives and implementation can be unclear at times, particularly when framed in the context of shifting conditions. In this research, the strategies available for managing marine biological resources within the EBFM framework and in a changing environment are reviewed. The purpose of this publication is to guide the decision on whether and how to change current management strategies in order to achieve policy goals. The manuscript starts with a revision of ecosystem indicators and ecosystem models used to detect and describe changes in ecosystem dynamics and stocks productivities under present and future conditions. Then, the different frameworks and methods available for integrating this information into the decision‐making process are summarised. Currently, some of the options available to include ecosystem realism into the fisheries advice include using ecosystem models in the Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) process, adjusting single species reference points with ecosystem information and implementing risk‐equivalent empirical approaches. However, barriers that are impeding the adoption of these techniques exist. I concluded the study by identifying them and providing literature‐based solutions to overcome them from an interdisciplinary perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long term monitoring programs (LTMPs) are increasingly demanded for investigating relationships between ecosystem dynamics and climate change. Most of active LTMPs are focussed on abiotic parameters and vegetation, being animals rarely included in continuous samplings. In this paper we described the results of the first two years of a LTMP involving nocturnal macrolepidoptera (including Cossoidea and Hepialoidea) started in 2019 in a suburban area of the Crati Valley, Calabria, South Italy. In the experimental farm of the Research Centre for Forestry and Wood two light traps were settled up, running about every night. During the first two years of monitoring, a total of 12,164 individuals belonging to 297 taxa were counted, showing a community similar to those observed in other Calabrian sites with Mediterranean climate and cultivated areas. The presence of small remnants of riparian forests significantly contributed to the community composition as the observation of hygrophilous species demonstrated. Among them, Xanthia ocellaris and Leucania obsoleta were never found before in the Calabria region. Furthermore, 177 species were added to the poorly investigated Crati Valley fauna. The results presented pose a solid baseline for investigating ecosystem changes of an area submitted to short term anthropic pressures and to long term climate driven changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Magdalena River in Colombia is one of the world's largest (discharge = 7100 m3 s−1) tropical rivers, hosting > 170 aquatic vertebrate species. However, concise synthesis of the current ecological and environmental status is lacking. By documenting the anthropogenic stressors impacting the river on time scales ranging from centuries to decades, we found that the river system is subject to the compounding impacts of climate change, river impoundment, invasive alien species (IAS), catchment deforestation, and water pollution. We show that the Magdalena is a woefully understudied ecosystem relative to its critical importance to Colombia's economy, culture, and biodiversity compared with other similarly sized tropical rivers. We emphasize the need for research on (1) IAS population and ecological dynamics, (2) river damming and its links with IAS and climate change, and (3) land‐use changes as well as identifying sources of water pollution and strategies for mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the evolutionary ecology of urban areas reveals how human-induced evolutionary changes affect biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. In a rapidly urbanizing world imposing many selective pressures, a time-sensitive goal is to identify the emergent issues and research priorities that affect the ecology and evolution of species within cities. Here, we report the results of a horizon scan of research questions in urban evolutionary ecology submitted by 100 interdisciplinary scholars. We identified 30 top questions organized into six themes that highlight priorities for future research. These research questions will require methodological advances and interdisciplinary collaborations, with continued revision as the field of urban evolutionary ecology expands with the rapid growth of cities. The impact of urbanization on biodiversity has been well documented, yet research into the complex dynamics of ecological and evolutionary processes in urban areas is still in its infancy. When novel research challenges emerge, a horizon scan exercise is an integrated approach that brings together global interdisciplinary-minded individuals to identify future research questions that can influence new collaborations and funding agenda. Our horizon scan identified 30 questions for future research in urban evolutionary ecology covering themes in fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes, temporal and spatial scales, sustainability, climate change, sociopolitical and ethical considerations, and innovation in technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how species' ecological niches adapt to environmental changes through time is critical for predicting the effect of future global change on endangered species. Yet few studies have incorporated knowledge of past niche shifting into the assessment of species' future fate in a changing world. In this study, we integrated the ecological niche dynamics into the species distribution modeling of the Asian crested ibis (Nipponia nippon) in East Asia. Specifically, we compared historical and present ecological niches of crested ibis in four‐dimensional environmental space based on species occurrence and environmental data. We then employed a multi‐temporal ecological niche model to estimate the potential geographical distribution of crested ibis under future climate and land‐use changes. Our results show that crested ibis retained similar though not identical ecological niches over time. Compared to the historical baseline range, the current suitable habitat for crested ibis has been reduced by 39.6%. The effects of human activity outweigh those of climate change regarding the distribution of crested ibis. We conclude that the ecological niche of crested ibis was tended to be conservative, and future potentially suitable habitat may encounter northeastward and northwestward shift, and possibly expand by 18.7% referred to the historical range. The findings of our study are of clear importance for the conservation and successful reintroduction of crested ibis in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Highlight: Réveillon, T., Rota, T., Chauvet, É., Lecerf, A., & Sentis, A. (2022). Energetic mismatch induced by warming decreases leaf litter decomposition by aquatic detritivores. Journal of Animal Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365‐2656.13710. Global change holds complex consequences for Earth's ecosystems, with global warming simultaneously affecting multiple aspects including individual physiology, population dynamics and ecosystem processes. In a recent study on stream decomposition under global warming, Réveillon, et al. (2022) combined individual‐level laboratory assessments of metabolic rates and leaf‐litter ingestion with experimentally parameterized consumer‐resource models, designed to reveal how stream‐detritivore populations respond to combined impacts of warming and declining body size. Their findings of reduced energetic efficiency, weakened detritivore populations and reduced decomposition in warmed streams expand our understanding of how global change mechanistically links changes from the individual to the ecosystem level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abundance of studies in marine systems have documented species range shifts in response to climate change, and many more have used species distribution models to project species ranges under future conditions. However, there is increasing interest in moving beyond a single‐species focus to understand how species redistribution alters ecosystem dynamics via changes in trophic interactions. We employed spatiotemporal models to characterize decadal‐scale changes in spatial overlap between the distribution of juvenile walleye pollock Gadus chalcogrammus and the distributions of four of its groundfish predators: arrowtooth flounder Atheresthes stomias, Pacific cod Gadus macrocephalus, Pacific halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis and adult walleye pollock. These fishes represent ecologically and commercially important species in a rapidly changing sub‐Arctic ecosystem, the eastern Bering Sea, Alaska, USA. We then examined whether changes in spatial overlap corresponded to changes in predation, using spatiotemporal models of predator stomach contents. We found marked shifts in spatial overlap between juvenile pollock and two predators (arrowtooth flounder and Pacific halibut) over 34 years, with changes in overlap corresponding to increases in population‐scale predation pressure. By contrast, we did not find clear relationships between spatial overlap and predation for Pacific cod and adult pollock, the two predators for which juvenile pollock constitute a much smaller diet proportion. Our findings highlight the complexity of predicting predation dynamics for generalist marine species and suggest a need for better process‐based methods for understanding the potential future ecological impacts of coupled species range shifts. However, simple metrics of spatial overlap between relatively specialized predators and their prey offer promise as a means to integrate predictions from species distribution models into ecosystem‐based fisheries management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency and duration of exceptionally intense droughts is increasing as a consequence of ongoing climate change in many regions of the planet. Lower rain fall in some regions and the increasing in the use of water resources by human populations is increasing the number of water bodies experiencing drying processes. Such changes in ecosystem dynamics have direct impacts on biological communities.Here, we investigated the temporal structure of fish assemblage in terra‐firme (i.e., non‐floodable) streams in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon by sampling over three seasonal cycles (2012, 2013, 2014). The research investigated the temporal dynamics of the ichthyofauna of streams that experienced temporary flow interruption in 2012; using the ichthyofauna of perennial streams (not interrupted by the effects of drought) as controls to determine the effects of flow cessation on the temporal structure of fish assemblages and their recovery after drought.The species composition of perennial streams remained stable over 3 years (2012, 2013, 2014), not differing between the dry and rainy periods. On by contrast, the species composition of the streams that temporarily dried changed after the flow interruption event.Responses to the temporary flow interruption were not uniform among species, with some increasing in abundance after the event while others decreased. The species whose abundance increased immediately after flow interruption tended to return to initial conditions in the third year of sampling, which might be related to low resource availability in those streams. Species whose abundance decreased tended to remain in low abundance, possibly as a result of local/regional rarity of these species, hindering population restoration processes.The dissimilarity in fish assemblage composition (based on the relative abundance of species) between sampling events revealed that the changes caused by the temporary flow interruption were significantly greater than the temporal changes recorded in perennial streams. Overall, the results indicated that intense drought events may alter fish species composition in terra‐firme streams and that such changes may persist for some years.Our results also provide evidence that the responses of fish species to flow regime change are not uniform, highlighting the need for a better understanding of the basic biology of fishes to predict the effects of increased climate disturbances more accurately in aquatic communities. Untangling the effects of natural cyclical factors from the effects deriving from unpredictable extreme events is crucial to better predict the impacts of global climate change on the structure of biological communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quantitative assessment of vegetation resilience and resistance is worthwhile to deeply understand the responses of vegetation growth to climate anomalies. However, few studies comprehensively evaluate the spatiotemporal resilience and resistance of global vegetation responses to climate change (i.e., temperature, precipitation, and radiation). Furthermore, although ecosystem models are widely used to simulate global vegetation dynamics, it is still not clear whether ecosystem models can capture observation-based vegetation resilience and resistance. In this study, based on remotely sensed and model-simulated leaf area index (LAI) time series and climate datasets, we quantified spatial patterns and temporal changes in vegetation resilience and resistance from 1982–2015. The results reveal clear spatial patterns of observation-based vegetation resilience and resistance for the last three decades, which were closely related to the local environment. In general, most of the ecosystem models capture spatial patterns of vegetation resistance to climate to different extents at the grid scale (R = 0.43 ± 0.10 for temperature, R = 0.28 ± 0.12 for precipitation, and R = 0.22 ± 0.08 for radiation); however, they are unable to capture patterns of vegetation resilience (R = 0.05 ± 0.17). Furthermore, vegetation resilience and resistance to climate change have regionally changed over the last three decades. In particular, the results suggest that vegetation resilience has increased in tropical forests and that vegetation resistance to temperature has increased in northern Eurasia. In contrast, ecosystem models cannot capture changes in vegetation resilience and resistance over the past thirty years. Overall, this study establishes a benchmark of vegetation resilience and resistance to climate change at the global scale, which is useful for further understanding ecological mechanisms of vegetation dynamics and improving ecosystem models, especially for dynamic resilience and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eco-system in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is extremely fragile, and highly vulnerable to climate change. Knowledge of the changes in the ecological conditions is vital to mitigate the impact of climate change. In this study, we investigated the trend of ecological conditions of the QTP using the remotely sensed ecological index (RSEI), which is the first PCA (principal component analysis) axis of the four indexes derived from the MODIS (Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) images captured in the growing season of 2000–2020. The four indexes, i.e., NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index), heat (land surface temperature, LST), wetness (tasseled cap wetness index, WET) and dryness (normalized difference impervious surface index, NDBSI), were calculated on the Google Earth Engine platform. Using land use cover change (LUCC) data, long-term meteorological records and the supplementary annual livestock production, we explored the drivers of spatiotemporal changes in the RSEI. The results show the following points: (1) the ecological conditions of the QTP have remarkable spatiotemporal variations. There were two ecological degradation periods, one of them occurred in the central region during 2005–2010, mainly attributed to the rising temperatures and decreasing precipitation. The other occurred during 2015–2020, driven primarily by overgrazing in the southwest. From 2000 to 2005, it was a period of rapid ecological restoration in the ecologically fragile northeast region. (2) The contribution rate of pc1 was stable at 60%, while the contribution rate of pc2 remained below 40%, indicating that pc1 demonstrated most of the characteristics of the four indexes. The correlation coefficients between NDVI and WET with pc1 are both positive, while LST and NDBSI have negative correlation coefficients, i.e., negative effects. This is consistent with the actual situation. (3) Overgrazing caused grass degradation in the southwest area of the QTP, which might be the main reason for the poor ecological conditions (i.e., low RSEI value) during 2015–2020. (4) Temperature and precipitation showed an increasing trend during the study period. A warmer and wetter climate is expected to have profound impacts on the ecosystems in QTP and practices should be concentrated on identifying climate-sensitive ecosystem components and designating adaptative options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil moisture (SM) spatiotemporal variability critically influences water resources, agriculture, and climate. However, besides site‐specific studies, little is known about how SM varies locally (1–100‐m scale). Consequently, quantifying the SM variability and its impact on the Earth system remains a long‐standing challenge in hydrology. We reveal the striking variability of local‐scale SM across the United States using SMAP‐HydroBlocks — a novel satellite‐based surface SM data set at 30‐m resolution. Results show how the complex interplay of SM with landscape characteristics and hydroclimate is primarily driven by local variations in soil properties. This local‐scale complexity yields a remarkable and unique multi‐scale behavior at each location. However, very little of this complexity persists across spatial scales. Experiments reveal that on average 48% and up to 80% of the SM spatial information is lost at the 1‐km resolution, with complete loss expected at the scale of current state‐of‐the‐art SM monitoring and modeling systems (1–25 km resolution). Plain Language Summary: Soil moisture (SM) widely varies in space and time. This variability critically influences freshwater availability, agriculture, ecosystem dynamics, climate and land‐atmosphere interactions, and it can also trigger hazards such as droughts, floods, landslides, and aggravate wildfires. Limited SM observational data constrained our understanding of this variability and its impact on the Earth system. Here, we present the first continental assessment of how SM varies at the local scales using SMAP‐HydroBlocks – the first 30‐m surface SM data set over the United States. This study maps the SM spatial variability, characterizes the landscape drivers, and quantifies how this variability persists across larger spatial scales. Results revealed striking SM spatial variability across the United States, mainly driven by local spatial variations in soil properties and less so by vegetation and topography. However, this SM variability does not persist at coarser spatial scales resulting in extensive information loss. This information loss implicates inaccuracies when predicting non‐linear SM‐dependent hydrological, ecological, and biogeochemical processes using coarse‐scale models and satellite estimates. By mapping the SM spatial variability locally and its scaling behavior, we provide a pathway toward understanding SM‐dependent hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological processes at local (and so far unresolved) spatial scales. Key Points: 30‐m soil moisture (SM) data shows striking and complex spatial variability driven mainly by climate and local variations in soil propertiesThis variability yields a remarkable and unique multi‐scale behavior at each location that cannot be generalized across the diverse USUp to 80% of SM information is lost at the 1‐km scale, with complete loss at the scale of state‐of‐the‐art SM observation/monitoring systems [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Fish larvae and juveniles are necessary fishery recruitment resources. As climate change and natural climate events continue to impact marine ecology, it may become difficult to determine the characteristics of changes in fish larvae and juveniles. Using samples and data from long-term marine experimental monitoring, we found a high diversity of fish larvae and juveniles in the waters around Taiwan, and the abundance of different fish species varied spatially and seasonally. We also found that distance from the coastline and topography were the key factors affecting the community of fish larvae and juveniles. By presenting these data as times series, we confirmed that 2009 was a critical year for regime change between fish larvae and juveniles in different depth zones. The year also happened to include Taiwan's worst typhoon on record. These results emphasize the need to conduct more detailed research to prevent predictable and unpredictable shocks. Taiwan is located at the intersection of tropical and subtropical islands in the western Pacific Ocean. This area is an important spawning and breeding ground for many economic and noneconomic species; however, little is known about the long-term dynamics of fish larvae and juveniles in these waters. In this study, we conducted an in-depth exploration of their spatial characteristics using 2007–2019 field survey samples. Our results demonstrated the seasonality and spatiality of the larvae and juveniles of different fish species. We also found that the continental shelf and offshore distance were key factors affecting fish larvae and juveniles. Changes in community structure were temporally correlated with the extreme rainfall of Typhoon Morakot (the worst typhoon ever recorded in Taiwan). These data can be used as a management reference for fisheries' policymaking and provide key insights into nearby marine ecosystems and the early life history of fish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on long-term human ecodynamics examines changes in the size and structure of human populations, often in relation to climate change. Here we offer an alternative perspective that draws on recent progress in conservation science, examining the causes and consequences of ecosystem collapse. We identify human actions that can cause abrupt transformation of ecosystems, in relation to key mechanisms and underlying theory. Such ecosystem collapse can in turn affect human societies by altering flows of ecosystem benefits to people. In this way, human ecodynamics can be understood by separately analysing the dynamics of social and ecological sub-systems, which are reciprocally linked. Ecosystem collapse represents a perturbation of these sub-systems, and provides insights into the mechanisms underlying their respective dynamics. We illustrate this approach through four case studies, which examine the spread of agriculture during the Holocene. Four key knowledge gaps emerge through consideration of these case studies: the linkages between social and ecological sub-systems, and how these change over time; the presence of feedbacks between these sub-systems; the relationships between local- and regional-scale collapse; and the relationships with ecological recovery. Increased research on ecosystem collapse could help clarify the relative influence of environmental degradation on societal dynamics, while providing insights into resilience and sustainability. Given the outstanding societal importance of ecosystem collapse, such research could also strengthen the relevance of historical sciences to the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitional features of desert environments partially determine the risks associated with ecosystems. Influenced by climate change and human activities, the variability and uncertainty of desertification levels and ecological risks in the Qinghai Area of Qilian Mountain National Park (QMNPQA) has become increasingly prominent. As a critical ecological barrier in northwest China, monitoring desertification dynamics and ecological risks is crucial for maintaining ecosystem stability. This study identifies the optimal monitoring model from four constructed desertification monitoring models and analyzes spatiotemporal changes in desertification. The spatial and temporal changes in ecological risks and their primary driving factors were analyzed using methods such as raster overlay calculation, geographic detector, cloud model, and trend analysis. The main conclusions are as follows: The desertification feature spatial model based on GNDVI-Albedo demonstrates better applicability in the study area, with an inversion accuracy of 81.24%. The levels of desertification and ecological risks in QMNPQA exhibit significant spatial heterogeneity, with a gradual decrease observed from northwest to southeast. From 2000 to 2020, there is an overall decreasing trend in desertification levels and ecological risks, with the decreasing trend area accounting for 89.82% and 85.71% respectively, mainly concentrated in the southeastern and northwestern parts of the study area. The proportion of areas with increasing trends is 4.49% and 7.05% respectively, scattered in patches in the central and southern edge areas. Surface temperature (ST), Digital Elevation Map (DEM), and Green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI) are the most influential factors determining the spatial distribution of ecological risks in QMNPQA. The effects of management and climatic factors on ecological risks demonstrate a significant antagonistic effect, highlighting the positive contributions of human activities in mitigating the driving effects of climate change on ecological risks. The research results can provide reference for desertification prevention and ecological quality improvement in QMNPQA. • A desertification monitoring model more suitable for semi-arid alpine mountains has been proposed. • Climate change is a major contributor to increased ecological risk. • Management Factors Show Positive Effects on Responding to Ecological Risks Driven by Climate Change. • Emphasizing the positive contribution of ecological management in addressing climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Climatic warming and wetting enhanced eukaryotic microbial α-diversity. • Climatic warming and wetting reduced eukaryotic microbial β-diversity. • Climatic warming and wetting enhanced eukaryotic microbial HoS process. • WL played a mediating role in eukaryotic microbial DL and HoS processes. Over the last six decades, northwest China has undergone a significant climatic shift from "warm-dry" to "warm-wet", profoundly impacting the structures and functions of lake ecosystem across the region. However, the influences of this climatic transition on the diversity patterns, co-occurrence network, and assembly processes of eukaryotic microbial communities in lake ecosystem, along with the underlying mechanisms, remain largely unexplored. To bridge this knowledge gap, our study focused on Lake Bosten, the largest inland freshwater body in China, conducting a comprehensive analysis. Firstly, we examined the dynamics of key water quality parameters in the lake based on long-term monitoring data (1992–2022). Subsequently, we collected 93 water samples spanning two distinctive periods: low water level (WL) and high total dissolved solids (TDS) (Per WL TDS ; 2010–2011; attributed to "warm-dry" climate), and high WL and low TDS (Per TDS WL ; 2021–2022; associated with "warm-wet" climate). Eukaryotic microorganisms were further investigated using 18S rRNA gene sequencing and various statistical methods. Our findings revealed that climatic warming and wetting significantly increased eukaryotic microbial α-diversity (all Wilcox. test: P <0.05), while simultaneously reducing β-diversity (all Wilcox. test: P <0.001) and network complexity. Through the two sampling periods, assembly mechanisms of eukaryotic microorganisms were predominantly influenced by dispersal limitation (DL) and drift (DR) within stochastic processes, alongside homogeneous selection (HoS) within deterministic processes. WL played a mediating role in eukaryotic microbial DL and HoS processes in the Per TDS WL , whereas water quality and α-diversity influenced the DL process in the Per WL TDS. Collectively, these results underscore the direct and indirect impacts of "warm-wet" conditions on the eukaryotic microorganisms within Lake Bosten. This study provides valuable insights into the evolutionary dynamics of lake ecosystems under such climatic conditions and aids in predicting the ecological ramifications of global climatic changes. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preserving and restoring biodiversity is becoming a great challenge as we face a world where planetary boundaries will likely be crossed over the following decades. Such challenge needs to consider multiple scales of complexity, both in space and time. A common threat in most cases is the presence of nonlinear phenomena generating shifts among alternative states. These breaking points imply a new perception of risk and different management strategies. A broad range of phenomena affect the preservation of healthy communities and constrain the ways to deal with conservation, from local features associated with habitat loss or facilitation to mesoscale or global network-level ecological complexity and the role played by extreme events. How are these scales connected? How can the emergent properties associated with ecosystem dynamics be exploited? Here a synthesis of ideas is presented, with a complex systems view of the different scales involved, the emergent phenomena separating them, and the universal properties that allow defining simple models on each scale. • Understanding how ecosystems can decay and collapse is a necessary step to define conservation strategies. • Simple mathematical models can provide useful insight to the challenges associated to climate change and habitat loss. • Multiple scales are involved in any strategy associated to habitat restoration and biodiversity protection. • Understanding their nature and how they interact is a much needed goal for the future of the biosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenically-driven climate warming and land use change are the main causes of an ongoing decrease in global biodiversity. It is unclear how ecosystems, particularly freshwater habitats, will respond to such continuous and potentially intensifying disruptions. Here we analyse how different components of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems responded to natural climate change during the Lateglacial. By applying a range of analytical techniques (sedimentology, palaeoecology, geochemistry) to the well-dated sediment archive from Lake Hämelsee (Germany), we show evidence for vegetation development, landscape dynamics and aquatic ecosystem change typical for northwest Europe during the Lateglacial. By particularly focussing on periods of abrupt climate change, we determine the timing and duration of changes in biodiversity in response to external forcing. We show that onsets of changes in biodiversity indicators (e.g. diatom composition, Pediastrum concentrations) lag changes in environmental records (e.g. loss-on-ignition) by a few decades, particularly at the Allerød/Younger Dryas transition. Most biodiversity indicators showed transition times of 10–50 years, whereas environmental records typically showed a 50–100 year long transition. In some cases, transition times observed for the compositional turnover or productivity records were up to 185 years, which could have been the result of the combined effects of direct (e.g. climate) and indirect (e.g. lake stratification) drivers of ecosystem change. Our results show differences in timing and duration of biodiversity responses to external disturbances, suggesting that a multi-decadal view needs to be taken when designing effective conservation management of freshwater ecosystems under current global warming. • Multi-proxy approach applied to Lateglacial sediment record from Germany. • Detailed palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstruction. • Decadal-scale lags in biodiversity responses to climate change. • Ecological transitions to a new stable state typically take 10–50 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Drought is intensifying globally with climate change, creating an urgency to understand ecosystem response to drought both during and after these events end to limit loss of ecosystem functioning. The literature is replete with studies of how ecosystems respond during drought, yet there are far fewer studies focused on ecosystem dynamics after drought ends. Furthermore, while the terms used to describe drought can be variable and inconsistent, so can those that describe ecosystem responses following drought. With this review, we sought to evaluate and create clear definitions of the terms that ecologists use to describe post‐drought responses. We found that legacy effects, resilience and recovery were used most commonly with respect to post‐drought ecosystem responses, but the definitions used to describe these terms were variable. Based on our review of the literature, we propose a framework for generalizing ecosystem responses after drought ends, which we refer to as 'the post‐drought period'. We suggest that future papers need to clearly describe characteristics of the imposed drought, and we encourage authors to use the term post‐drought period as a general term that encompasses responses after drought ends and use other terms as more specific descriptors of responses during the post‐drought period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, biogeography has described the distribution of species. But as plant functional traits and functional diversity underpin ecosystem dynamics, understanding drivers of functional diversity at biogeographical scales is essential to understand spatial variation in ecosystem characteristics, particularly in light of ongoing environmental changes. Here we investigate geographic patterns of functional diversity and ‐traits of the Norwegian flora. We explore whether climate, land‐use or glacial history are important drivers of functional diversity. We combine species occurrence records and assemblage‐means of functional traits to assess the spatial distribution of functional traits and ‐diversity of native vascular plants in Norway in a 20 × 20 km grid. We use multiple‐model inference to identify which environmental factors contribute the most in explaining the spatial patterns of trait distributions and functional diversity. Additionally, we use the constructed models to predict potential changes in distributions of traits and functional diversity given different climate change scenarios. Both individual traits and functional diversity display clear geographic patterns, predictable by climate, landscape and glacial history. Traits related to plant size and growth peak in warmer areas and are predicted to increase in the future, as is functional richness and dispersion. In contrast, functional evenness peaks in northern regions and is predicted to decrease in the future. The different environmental drivers vary in degree of importance, effect sizes and ‐directions on the assemblage‐averaged functional traits and ‐diversity. This underlines the importance of multiple drivers in determining plant assemblage functionality. In the face of climate‐ and land‐use change, Norway is expected to become warmer, wetter and experience a substantial increase in anthropogenic land‐uses, such as increased urbanisation. In turn, the functional composition of the Norwegian flora is predicted to shift towards tall, woody, fast‐growing species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change alters forest development pathways, with consequences for ecosystem services and biodiversity. As the rate of warming increases, ecosystem change is expected to accelerate. However, ecosystem dynamics can have many causes unrelated to climate (for example, disturbance and stand development legacies). The compound effects of multiple drivers remain largely unclear. Here, we assessed forest dynamics over 28 years at Berchtesgaden National Park (BGNP), Germany, quantifying the spatiotemporal patterns and unraveling the drivers of forest change. We analyzed high-density forest inventory data, consisting of three consecutive censuses of 3759 permanent sample plots (132,866 tree records in total). We used semi-variograms to analyze spatial patterns of change, and boosted regression trees to quantify the effect of 30 covariates on changes in nine indicators of forest structure and composition. Over the 28 years investigated, the forests of BGNP were becoming denser, structurally more complex, and more species rich. Changes in forest structure were more pronounced and spatially correlated on the landscape than changes in tree species composition. Change rates of all indicators increased over time, signifying an acceleration of forest dynamics since the 1980s. Legacies and climate were the most important drivers of change, but had diverging impacts. Although forest change accelerated with increasing temperature, high legacy levels typical for late development stages dampened it. We here provide evidence for accelerating forest dynamics in mountain forests of the Alps, with potentially far-reaching consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem processes. We highlight that unmanaged forest development toward old-growth conditions could counteract climate-mediated acceleration of forest change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has multiple effects on Baltic Sea species, communities and ecosystem functioning through changes in physical and biogeochemical environmental characteristics of the sea. Associated indirect and secondary effects on species interactions, trophic dynamics and ecosystem function are expected to be significant. We review studies investigating species-, population- and ecosystem-level effects of abiotic factors that may change due to global climate change, such as temperature, salinity, oxygen, pH, nutrient levels, and the more indirect biogeochemical and food web processes, primarily based on peer-reviewed literature published since 2010. For phytoplankton, clear symptoms of climate change, such as prolongation of the growing season, are evident and can be explained by the warming, but otherwise climate effects vary from species to species and area to area. Several modelling studies project a decrease of phytoplankton bloom in spring and an increase in cyanobacteria blooms in summer. The associated increase in N:P ratio may contribute to maintaining the "vicious circle of eutrophication". However, uncertainties remain because some field studies claim that cyanobacteria have not increased and some experimental studies show that responses of cyanobacteria to temperature, salinity and pH vary from species to species. An increase of riverine dissolved organic matter (DOM) may also decrease primary production, but the relative importance of this process in different sea areas is not well known. Bacteria growth is favoured by increasing temperature and DOM, but complex effects in the microbial food web are probable. Warming of seawater in spring also speeds up zooplankton growth and shortens the time lag between phytoplankton and zooplankton peaks, which may lead to decreasing of phytoplankton in spring. In summer, a shift towards smaller-sized zooplankton and a decline of marine copepod species has been projected. In deep benthic communities, continued eutrophication promotes high sedimentation and maintains good food conditions for zoobenthos. If nutrient abatement proceeds, improving oxygen conditions will first increase zoobenthos biomass, but the subsequent decrease of sedimenting matter will disrupt the pelagic–benthic coupling and lead to a decreased zoobenthos biomass. In the shallower photic systems, heatwaves may produce eutrophication-like effects, e.g. overgrowth of bladderwrack by epiphytes, due to a trophic cascade. If salinity also declines, marine species such as bladderwrack, eelgrass and blue mussel may decline. Freshwater vascular plants will be favoured but they cannot replace macroalgae on rocky substrates. Consequently invertebrates and fish benefiting from macroalgal belts may also suffer. Climate-induced changes in the environment also favour establishment of non-indigenous species, potentially affecting food web dynamics in the Baltic Sea. As for fish, salinity decline and continuing of hypoxia is projected to keep cod stocks low, whereas the increasing temperature has been projected to favour sprat and certain coastal fish. Regime shifts and cascading effects have been observed in both pelagic and benthic systems as a result of several climatic and environmental effects acting synergistically. Knowledge gaps include uncertainties in projecting the future salinity level, as well as stratification and potential rate of internal loading, under different climate forcings. This weakens our ability to project how pelagic productivity, fish populations and macroalgal communities may change in the future. The 3D ecosystem models, food web models and 2D species distribution models would benefit from integration, but progress is slowed down by scale problems and inability of models to consider the complex interactions between species. Experimental work should be better integrated into empirical and modelling studies of food web dynamics to get a more comprehensive view of the responses of the pelagic and benthic systems to climate change, from bacteria to fish. In addition, to better understand the effects of climate change on the biodiversity of the Baltic Sea, more emphasis should be placed on studies of shallow photic environments. The fate of the Baltic Sea ecosystem will depend on various intertwined environmental factors and on development of the society. Climate change will probably delay the effects of nutrient abatement and tend to keep the ecosystem in its "novel" state. However, several modelling studies conclude that nutrient reductions will be a stronger driver for ecosystem functioning of the Baltic Sea than climate change. Such studies highlight the importance of studying the Baltic Sea as an interlinked socio-ecological system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has led to intensification and poleward migration of the Southeastern Pacific Anticyclone, forcing diverging regions of increasing, equatorward and decreasing, poleward coastal phytoplankton productivity along the Humboldt Upwelling Ecosystem, and a transition zone around 31° S. Using a 20-year dataset of barnacle larval recruitment and adult abundances, we show that striking increases in larval arrival have occurred since 1999 in the region of higher productivity, while slower but significantly negative trends dominate poleward of 30° S, where years of recruitment failure are now common. Rapid increases in benthic adults result from fast recruitment–stock feedbacks following increased recruitment. Slower population declines in the decreased productivity region may result from aging but still reproducing adults that provide temporary insurance against population collapses. Thus, in this region of the ocean where surface waters have been cooling down, climate change is transforming coastal pelagic and benthic ecosystems through altering primary productivity, which seems to propagate up the food web at rates modulated by stock–recruitment feedbacks and storage effects. Slower effects of downward productivity warn us that poleward stocks may be closer to collapse than current abundances may suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]