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Terrestrial vegetation is a crucial component of the Earth system, and its changes not only represent one of the most distinct aspects of climate change but also exert significant feedback within the climate system by exchanging energy, moisture, and carbon dioxide. To quantitatively and mechanistically study climate-vegetation feedback, numerical vegetation models have been developed on the theor
Globally, boreal forests act as important carbon sinks, however, drought and forest management could substantially alter the sink strength, though the controlling mechanisms of drought and management remain unclear. In this study, we combined the detailed process-based CoupModel with multiple measurements to study the impacts of recent drought and forest thinning on a boreal forest during 2018–202
The critical soil moisture threshold (SMth) of plant water stress distinguishes whether vegetation is in an energy-limited or water-limited regime. Accurate quantification of SMth for grasslands holds significant implications for drought monitoring and efficient grassland management. However, our understanding of SMth within global grasslands remains limited. In this study, we investigated the rel
Snowpack atop sea ice plays a vital role in the Arctic heat and energy balance by reducing the energy transfer between the atmosphere and the ocean. This study presents an improved snow depth retrieval model over Arctic multiyear ice (MYI) from the Microwave Radiometer Imager (MWRI) data of the Fengyun-3 (FY-3) series satellites using the optimal machine learning approach identified. Validation ag
Surface soil moisture (SM) is a crucial variable representing the water content in soil at the topmost soil layer. Accurate data of SM are essential for various purposes, including the monitoring of drought, vegetation modeling, weather forecasting, and agriculture management. Over the past decades, microwave remote sensing has been employed to estimate SM at large scales, with the Sentinel-1 sate
Widespread autumn cooling occurred in the northern hemisphere (NH) during the period 2004-2018, primarily due to the strengthening of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Siberian High. Yet, while there has been considerable focus on the warming impacts, the effects of natural cooling on autumn leaf senescence and plant productivity have been largely overlooked. This gap in knowledge hinders our un
Monitoring the changes of ecosystem functioning is pivotal for understanding the global carbon cycle. Despite its size and contribution to the global carbon cycle, Africa is largely understudied in regard to ongoing changes of its ecosystem functioning and their responses to climate change. One of the reasons is the lack of long-term in situ data. Here, we use eddy covariance to quantify the net e
Droughts are often long-lasting phenomena, without a distinct start or end and with impacts cascading across sectors and systems, creating long-term legacies. Nevertheless, our current perceptions and management of droughts and their impacts are often event-based, which can limit the effective assessment of drought risks and reduction of drought impacts. Here, we advocate for changing this perspec
Accurately simulating stomatal behavior is crucial for understanding water, carbon, and energy fluxes between land and atmosphere. Given the significant impact of plastic film mulching on water and temperature, it is essential to incorporate water and temperature modifications into stomatal conductance models under these conditions. In this study, we evaluated three commonly used stomatal conducta
BACKGROUND: Self-reported mental stress is not consistently recognized as a risk factor for stroke. This prompted development of a novel algorithm for stress-phenotype indices to quantify chronic stress prevalence in relation to a modified stroke risk score in a South African cohort. The algorithm is based on biomarkers adrenocorticotrophic hormone, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-sensi
OBJECTIVE: We investigated whether prepregnancy BMI (prePregBMI) in women with obesity was associated with differential DNA methylation (DNAm) in cord blood (CB) and whether DNAm may mediate the association of prePregBMI and early childhood BMI z score (BMIz).METHODS: From the Treatment of Obese Pregnant Women (TOP) study, 232 mother-child pairs were included. We conducted an epigenome-wide associ
Airborne mineral dust is sensitive to climatic changes, but its response to orbital forcing is still not fully understood. Here, we present a reconstruction of dust input to the Subarctic Pacific Ocean covering the past 190 kyr. The dust composition record is indicative of source moisture conditions, which were dominated by precessional variations. In contrast, the dust flux record is dominated by
Winter warming events (WWEs) are short-lasting events of unusually warm weather, occasionally combined with rainfall, which can cause severe ecosystem impacts by altering ground temperatures and water fluxes. Despite their importance, how large-scale ecosystem models perform in depicting the impacts of WWEs remain largely unknown. The frequency and intensity of WWEs will likely increase further in
Background: Taxi drivers in a Chinese megacity are frequently exposed to traffic-related particulate matter (PM2.5) due to their job nature, busy road traffic, and urban density. A robust method to quantify dynamic population exposure to PM2.5 among taxi drivers is important for occupational risk prevention, however, it is limited by data availability. Methods: This study proposed a rapid assessme
The term “Holocene temperature conundrum” refers to the inconsistencies between proxy-based reconstructions and transient model simulations, and it challenges our understanding of global temperature evolution during the Holocene. Climate reconstructions indicate a cooling trend following the Holocene Thermal Maximum, while model simulations indicate a consistent warming trend due to ice-sheet retr
Spores of Curvularia lunata were immobilized in polyacrylamide granules and in calcium alginate beads (2–3 mm in diam.). Germination of the spores, initiated by the addition of nutrients, resulted in an even distribution of mycelium throughout the beads after 48 h. Such beads were used for the conversion of cortexolone to cortisol by steroid-11β-hydroxylation. In order to improve the steroid trans
Accurate and reliable estimation of actual evapotranspiration (AET) is essential for various hydrological studies, including drought prediction, water resource management, and the analysis of atmospheric–terrestrial carbon exchanges. Gridded AET products offer potential for application in ungauged areas, but their uncertainties may be significant, making it difficult to identify the best products
Rapid warming increases winter soil carbon dioxide (CO2) efflux in Arctic tundra ecosystems, which can significantly offset carbon (C) uptake during growing seasons and affect the overall annual C balance. In winter, the Arctic landscape is predominantly covered with snow, which is vital for regulating ecological processes. Nevertheless, the impact of snow redistribution on the spatial distributio
In response to rapid climate change and increasing human pressure, a wide variety of taxa have shifted their distribution in the past decades (range shift), with important consequences for ecosystem services and human health and economy. However, it is not yet clear whether most species will be able to track their favourable habitats or lag behind the climate signal (migration lag). Studying the p
