Quantifying the impact of climate on ecosystems worldwide
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/quantifying-the-impact-of-climate-on-ecosystems-worldwide[font face=Serif][font size=5]Quantifying the impact of climate on ecosystems worldwide[/font]
[font size=4]UCLA-led study restores consensus after controversial 2014 paper questioned direct effects of climate change[/font]
Stuart Wolpert | October 08, 2015
[font size=3]An international research team led by UCLA life scientists has, for the first time, quantified the direct influence of climate on the growth of ecosystems around the globe.
The paper also restores scientific consensus to the fact that record-breaking temperatures and droughts directly affect ecosystems which was called into question by a 2014 University of Arizona paper in the journal Nature.
The new study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, was
published this week in the journal Global Change Biology.
The growth of whole ecosystems the accumulation of new growth in a forest, shrub land or grass land is referred to by scientists as net primary productivity. NPP is greater in the tropics than in the arctic because productivity responds directly to climate in much the same way that individual plants do. This means that the growth of ecosystems would respond rapidly to climate change. And because forests take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, even as their growth responds to climate, they play a role in determining ongoing climate change.
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