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Climate Variability Has A Stabilizing Effect On The Coexistence Of Prairie Grasses, Peter B. Adler, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Phaedon C. Kyriakidis, Qingfeng Guan, Jonathan M. Levine

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

How expected increases in climate variability will affect species diversity depends on the role of such variability in regulating the coexistence of competing species. Despite theory linking temporal environmental fluctuations with the maintenance of diversity, the importance of climate variability for stabilizing coexistence remains unknown because of a lack of appropriate long-term observations. Here, we analyze three decades of demographic data from a Kansas prairie to demonstrate that interannual climate variability promotes the coexistence of three common grass species. Specifically, we show that (i) the dynamics of the three species satisfy all requirements of ‘‘storage effect’’ theory based on recruitment …

Agenda: Climate Change And The Future Of The American West: Exploring The Legal And Policy Dimensions, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Sponsors: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; BP America; Holland & Hart; Patrick, Miller & Krope, P.C.; The Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, Rocky Mountain Natural Resource Center of the National Wildlife Federation, Western Water Assessment.

Exploring the legal and political dimensions that climate change will bring to the American West will be the focus of the CU-Boulder Natural Resources Law Center's 27th Annual Summer Conference.

Titled "Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions," the conference will be held June 7-9 at the Fleming Law Building on the University of Colorado at …

Ambassadors Of The Bay: 2005 Final Report, Maine Sea Grant College Program

Maine Sea Grant Publications

The MDI Water Quality Coalition has been working with citizens on water quality related projects in Frenchman Bay since 1997. Over the last decade, many issues of concern to the residents and users of the bay have come up. These issues include polluted runoff from paved streets and parking lots, increasing development in the upper reaches of coastal watersheds as well as right on the shoreline, nutrient enrichment of bays, over harvesting of marine resources, shifting of mussel harvesting techniques to aquaculture, building of piers, increasing visitation by cruise ships, contamination of swim areas, declining eelgrass populations, shoreline erosion, and …

Uncertainty, Climate Change And Nuclear Power, David M. Hassenzahl

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications

Long time-horizon environmental risks with potential for global impacts have increased in visibility over the past several decades. Such issues as climate change, the nuclear fuel cycle, persistent synthetic chemicals, and stratospheric ozone depletion share some characteristics, including intergenerational impacts, strongly decoupled incidence of risks and benefits, substantial decision stakes and extreme uncertainty. What is not well understood are the similarities and differences among sources and implications of uncertainty among these global environmental threats, especially those associate with current and future human behavior. This describes the uncertainties associated with managing two global concerns: the nuclear (fission) fuel cycle and anthropogenic …

Diurnal Temperature Range Over The United States: A Satellite View, D. Sun, R. T. Pinker, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Diurnal temperature range (DTR) is an important climate change index. Information on this parameter comes primarily from sparse and unevenly distributed observations of shelter air temperature. In this study, five years of GOES- 8 based estimates of land surface temperature (LST) over the United States are used to evaluate DTR at high spatial resolution. The spatial and temporal patterns that emerged show a high degree of consistency with independent satellite estimates of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Specifically, the arid regions in the western and central U.S. have larger DTRs than the eastern United States or the northwest coast. …