CSIRO Land and Water

We present new global maps of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification at an unprecedented 1-km resolution for the present-day (1980-2016) and for projected future conditions (2071-2100) under climate change. The present-day map is derived from an ensemble of four high-resolution, topographically-corrected climatic maps. The future map is derived from an ensemble of 32 climate model projections (scenario RCP8.5), by superimposing the projected climate change anomaly on the baseline high-resolution climatic maps. For both time periods we calculate confidence levels from the ensemble spread, providing valuable indications of the reliability of the classifications. The new maps exhibit a higher classification accuracy and substantially more detail than previous maps, particularly in regions with sharp spatial or elevation gradients. We anticipate the new maps will be useful for numerous applications, including species and vegetation distribution modeling. The new maps including the associated confidence maps are freely available via www.gloh2o.org/koppen.

We conducted an analysis of global forest cover to reveal that 70% of remaining forest is within 1 km of the forest's edge, subject to the degrading effects of fragmentation. A synthesis of fragmentation experiments spanning multiple biomes and scales, five continents, and 35 years demonstrates that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75% and impairs key ecosystem functions by decreasing biomass and altering nutrient cycles. Effects are greatest in the smallest and most isolated fragments, and they magnify with the passage of time. These findings indicate an urgent need for conservation and restoration measures to improve landscape connectivity, which will reduce extinction rates and help maintain ecosystem services.

Distributions of Earth's species are changing at accelerating rates, increasingly driven by human-mediated climate change. Such changes are already altering the composition of ecological communities, but beyond conservation of natural systems, how and why does this matter? We review evidence that climate-driven species redistribution at regional to global scales affects ecosystem functioning, human well-being, and the dynamics of climate change itself. Production of natural resources required for food security, patterns of disease transmission, and processes of carbon sequestration are all altered by changes in species distribution. Consideration of these effects of biodiversity redistribution is critical yet lacking in most mitigation and adaptation strategies, including the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.

Insects are the most speciose group of animals, but the phylogenetic relationships of many major lineages remain unresolved. We inferred the phylogeny of insects from 1478 protein-coding genes. Phylogenomic analyses of nucleotide and amino acid sequences, with site-specific nucleotide or domain-specific amino acid substitution models, produced statistically robust and congruent results resolving previously controversial phylogenetic relations hips. We dated the origin of insects to the Early Ordovician [~479 million years ago (Ma)], of insect flight to the Early Devonian (~406 Ma), of major extant lineages to the Mississippian (~345 Ma), and the major diversification of holometabolous insects to the Early Cretaceous. Our phylogenomic study provides a comprehensive reliable scaffold for future comparative analyses of evolutionary innovations among insects.

The recent advances in nanotechnology and the corresponding increase in the use of nanomaterials in products in every sector of society have resulted in uncertainties regarding environmental impacts. The objectives of this review are to introduce the key aspects pertaining to nanomaterials in the environment and to discuss what is known concerning their fate, behavior, disposition, and toxicity, with a particular focus on those that make up manufactured nanomaterials. This review critiques existing nanomaterial research in freshwater, marine, and soil environments. It illustrates the paucity of existing research and demonstrates the need for additional research. Environmental scientists are encouraged to base this research on existing studies on colloidal behavior and toxicology. The need for standard reference and testing materials as well as methodology for suspension preparation and testing is also discussed.

We explore the role of lakes in carbon cycling and global climate, examine the mechanisms influencing carbon pools and transformations in lakes, and discuss how the metabolism of carbon in the inland waters is likely to change in response to climate. Furthermore, we project changes as global climate change in the abundance and spatial distribution of lakes in the biosphere, and we revise the estimate for the global extent of carbon transformation in inland waters. This synthesis demonstrates that the global annual emissions of carbon dioxide from inland waters to the atmosphere are similar in magnitude to the carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans and that the global burial of organic carbon in inland water sediments exceeds organic carbon sequestration on the ocean floor. The role of inland waters in global carbon cycling and climate forcing may be changed by human activities, including construction of impoundments, which accumulate large amounts of carbon in sediments and emit large amounts of methane to the atmosphere. Methane emissions are also expected from lakes on melting permafrost. The synthesis presented here indicates that (1) inland waters constitute a significant component of the global carbon cycle, (2) their contribution to this cycle has significantly changed as a result of human activities, and (3) they will continue to change in response to future climate change causing decreased as well as increased abundance of lakes as well as increases in the number of aquatic impoundments.

In 1996, version 2.5 of the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) bulk algorithm was published, and it has become one of the most frequently used algorithms in the air–sea interaction community. This paper describes steps taken to improve the algorithm in several ways. The number of iterations to solve for stability has been shortened from 20 to 3, and adjustments have been made to the basic profile stability functions. The scalar transfer coefficients have been redefined in terms of the mixing ratio, which is the fundamentally conserved quantity, rather than the measured water vapor mass concentration. Both the velocity and scalar roughness lengths have been changed. For the velocity roughness, the original fixed value of the Charnock parameter has been replaced by one that increases with wind speeds of between 10 and 18 m s−1. The scalar roughness length parameterization has been simplified to fit both an early set of NOAA/Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL) experiments and the Humidity Exchange Over the Sea (HEXOS) program. These changes slightly increase the fluxes for wind speeds exceeding 10 m s−1. For interested users, two simple parameterizations of the surface gravity wave influence on fluxes have been added (but not evaluated). This new version of the algorithm (COARE 3.0) was based on published results and 2777 1-h covariance flux measurements in the ETL inventory. To test it, 4439 new values from field experiments between 1997 and 1999 were added, which now dominate the database, especially in the wind speed regime beyond 10 m s−1, where the number of observations increased from 67 to about 800. After applying various quality controls, the database was used to evaluate the algorithm in several ways. For an overall mean, the algorithm agrees with the data to within a few percent for stress and latent heat flux. The agreement is also excellent when the bulk and directly measured fluxes are averaged in bins of 10-m neutral wind speed. For a more stringent test, the average 10-m neutral transfer coefficients were computed for stress and moisture in wind speed bins, using different averaging schemes with fairly similar results. The average (mean and median) model results agreed with the measurements to within about 5% for moisture from 0 to 20 m s−1. For stress, the covariance measurements were about 10% higher than the model at wind speeds over 15 m s−1, while inertial-dissipation measurements agreed closely at all wind speeds. The values for stress are between 8% (for inertial dissipation) and 18% (for covariance) higher at 20 m s−1 than two other classic results. Twenty years ago, bulk flux schemes were considered to be uncertain by about 30%; the authors find COARE 3.0 to be accurate within 5% for wind speeds of 0–10 m s−1 and 10% for wind speeds of between 10 and 20 m s−1.

Jinmium rock shelter is famous for the claims made by Fullagar et al. (1996) for the early human colonization and ancient rock art of northern Australia. These claims were based on thermo‐luminescence ages obtained for the artefact‐bearing quartz sediments that form the floor deposit at the site. In this paper, we outline the background to the optical dating programme at Jinmium, and describe the experimental design and statistical methods used to obtain optical ages from single grains of quartz sand. The results, interpretations, and implications of this dating programme are reported in a companion paper (Roberts et al. 7999, this volume).

Black Carbon (BC) may significantly affect nutrient retention and play a key role in a wide range of biogeochemical processes in soils, especially for nutrient cycling. Anthrosols from the Brazilian Amazon (ages between 600 and 8700 yr BP) with high contents of biomass‐derived BC had greater potential cation exchange capacity (CEC measured at pH 7) per unit organic C than adjacent soils with low BC contents. Synchrotron‐based near edge X‐ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy coupled with scanning transmission X‐ray microscopy (STXM) techniques explained the source of the higher surface charge of BC compared with non‐BC by mapping cross‐sectional areas of BC particles with diameters of 10 to 50 μm for C forms. The largest cross‐sectional areas consisted of highly aromatic or only slightly oxidized organic C most likely originating from the BC itself with a characteristic peak at 286.1 eV, which could not be found in humic substance extracts, bacteria or fungi. Oxidation significantly increased from the core of BC particles to their surfaces as shown by the ratio of carboxyl‐C/aromatic‐C. Spotted and non‐continuous distribution patterns of highly oxidized C functional groups with distinctly different chemical signatures on BC particle surfaces (peak shift at 286.1 eV to a higher energy of 286.7 eV) indicated that non‐BC may be adsorbed on the surfaces of BC particles creating highly oxidized surface. As a consequence of both oxidation of the BC particles themselves and adsorption of organic matter to BC surfaces, the charge density (potential CEC per unit surface area) was greater in BC‐rich Anthrosols than adjacent soils. Additionally, a high specific surface area was attributable to the presence of BC, which may contribute to the high CEC found in soils that are rich in BC.

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.

, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible.

▪ Abstract The single-point statistics of turbulence in the ‘roughness sub-layer’ occupied by the plant canopy and the air layer just above it differ significantly from those in the surface layer. The mean velocity profile is inflected, second moments are strongly inhomogeneous with height, skewnesses are large, and second-moment budgets are far from local equilibrium. Velocity moments scale with single length and time scales throughout the layer rather than depending on height. Large coherent structures control turbulence dynamics. Sweeps rather than ejections dominate eddy fluxes and a typical large eddy consists of a pair of counter-rotating streamwise vortices, the downdraft between the vortex pair generating the sweep. Comparison with the statistics and instability modes of the plane mixing layer shows that the latter rather than the boundary layer is the appropriate model for canopy flow and that the dominant large eddies are the result of an inviscid instability of the inflected mean velocity profile. Aerodynamic drag on the foliage is the cause both of the unstable inflected velocity profile and of a ‘spectral short cut’ mechanism that removes energy from large eddies and diverts it to fine scales, where it is rapidly dissipated, bypassing the inertial eddy-cascade. Total dissipation rates are very large in the canopy as a result of the fine-scale shear layers that develop around the foliage.

In order to use environmental models effectively for management and decision-making, it is vital to establish an appropriate level of confidence in their performance. This paper reviews techniques available across various fields for characterising the performance of environmental models with focus on numerical, graphical and qualitative methods. General classes of direct value comparison, coupling real and modelled values, preserving data patterns, indirect metrics based on parameter values, and data transformations are discussed. In practice environmental modelling requires the use and implementation of workflows that combine several methods, tailored to the model purpose and dependent upon the data and information available. A five-step procedure for performance evaluation of models is suggested, with the key elements including: (i) (re)assessment of the model's aim, scale and scope; (ii) characterisation of the data for calibration and testing; (iii) visual and other analysis to detect under- or non-modelled behaviour and to gain an overview of overall performance; (iv) selection of basic performance criteria; and (v) consideration of more advanced methods to handle problems such as systematic divergence between modelled and observed values.

Soil microorganisms are critical to ecosystem functioning and the maintenance of soil fertility. However, despite global increases in the inputs of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) to ecosystems due to human activities, we lack a predictive understanding of how microbial communities respond to elevated nutrient inputs across environmental gradients. Here we used high-throughput sequencing of marker genes to elucidate the responses of soil fungal, archaeal, and bacterial communities using an N and P addition experiment replicated at 25 globally distributed grassland sites. We also sequenced metagenomes from a subset of the sites to determine how the functional attributes of bacterial communities change in response to elevated nutrients. Despite strong compositional differences across sites, microbial communities shifted in a consistent manner with N or P additions, and the magnitude of these shifts was related to the magnitude of plant community responses to nutrient inputs. Mycorrhizal fungi and methanogenic archaea decreased in relative abundance with nutrient additions, as did the relative abundances of oligotrophic bacterial taxa. The metagenomic data provided additional evidence for this shift in bacterial life history strategies because nutrient additions decreased the average genome sizes of the bacterial community members and elicited changes in the relative abundances of representative functional genes. Our results suggest that elevated N and P inputs lead to predictable shifts in the taxonomic and functional traits of soil microbial communities, including increases in the relative abundances of faster-growing, copiotrophic bacterial taxa, with these shifts likely to impact belowground ecosystems worldwide.

Rodríguez, J. P., T. D. Beard, Jr., E. M. Bennett, G. S. Cumming, S. Cork, J. Agard, A. P. Dobson, and G. D. Peterson. 2006. Trade-offs across space, time, and ecosystem services. Ecology and Society 11(1): 28. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01667-110128

Key Points Drivers and impacts of Australia's record drought were analyzed Impacts accumulated and propagated through the water cycle at different rates Future droughts may not be managed better than past ones.

Abstract We present Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation, version 2 (MSWEP V2), a gridded precipitation P dataset spanning 1979–2017. MSWEP V2 is unique in several aspects: i) full global coverage (all land and oceans); ii) high spatial (0.1°) and temporal (3 hourly) resolution; iii) optimal merging of P estimates based on gauges [WorldClim, Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily (GHCN-D), Global Summary of the Day (GSOD), Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), and others], satellites [Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH), Gridded Satellite (GridSat), Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP), and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) 3B42RT)], and reanalyses [European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim) and Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55)]; iv) distributional bias corrections, mainly to improve the P frequency; v) correction of systematic terrestrial P biases using river discharge Q observations from 13,762 stations across the globe; vi) incorporation of daily observations from 76,747 gauges worldwide; and vii) correction for regional differences in gauge reporting times. MSWEP V2 compares substantially better with Stage IV gauge–radar P data than other state-of-the-art P datasets for the United States, demonstrating the effectiveness of the MSWEP V2 methodology. Global comparisons suggest that MSWEP V2 exhibits more realistic spatial patterns in mean, magnitude, and frequency. Long-term mean P estimates for the global, land, and ocean domains based on MSWEP V2 are 955, 781, and 1,025 mm yr −1 , respectively. Other P datasets consistently underestimate P amounts in mountainous regions. Using MSWEP V2, P was estimated to occur 15.5%, 12.3%, and 16.9% of the time on average for the global, land, and ocean domains, respectively. MSWEP V2 provides unique opportunities to explore spatiotemporal variations in P , improve our understanding of hydrological processes and their parameterization, and enhance hydrological model performance.

Carbon sequestration strategies highlight tree plantations without considering their full environmental consequences. We combined field research, synthesis of more than 600 observations, and climate and economic modeling to document substantial losses in stream flow, and increased soil salinization and acidification, with afforestation. Plantations decreased stream flow by 227 millimeters per year globally (52%), with 13% of streams drying completely for at least 1 year. Regional modeling of U.S. plantation scenarios suggests that climate feedbacks are unlikely to offset such water losses and could exacerbate them. Plantations can help control groundwater recharge and upwelling but reduce stream flow and salinize and acidify some soils.

Abstract In this first worldwide synthesis of in situ and satellite‐derived lake data, we find that lake summer surface water temperatures rose rapidly (global mean = 0.34°C decade −1 ) between 1985 and 2009. Our analyses show that surface water warming rates are dependent on combinations of climate and local characteristics, rather than just lake location, leading to the counterintuitive result that regional consistency in lake warming is the exception, rather than the rule. The most rapidly warming lakes are widely geographically distributed, and their warming is associated with interactions among different climatic factors—from seasonally ice‐covered lakes in areas where temperature and solar radiation are increasing while cloud cover is diminishing (0.72°C decade −1 ) to ice‐free lakes experiencing increases in air temperature and solar radiation (0.53°C decade −1 ). The pervasive and rapid warming observed here signals the urgent need to incorporate climate impacts into vulnerability assessments and adaptation efforts for lakes.

Metal oxide nanoparticles are finding increasing application in various commercial products, leading to concerns for their environmental fate and potential toxicity. It is generally assumed that nanoparticles will persist as small particles in aquatic systems and that their bioavailability could be significantly greater than that of larger particles. The current study using nanoparticulate ZnO (ca. 30 nm) has shown that this is not always so. Particle characterization using transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering techniques showed that particle aggregation is significant in a freshwater system, resulting in flocs ranging from several hundred nanometers to several microns. Chemical investigations using equilibrium dialysis demonstrated rapid dissolution of ZnO nanoparticles in a freshwater medium (pH 7.6), with a saturation solubility in the milligram per liter range, similar to that of bulk ZnO. Toxicity experiments using the freshwater alga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata revealed comparable toxicity for nanoparticulate ZnO, bulk ZnO, and ZnCl2, with a 72-h IC50 value near 60 microg Zn/ L, attributable solely to dissolved zinc. Care therefore needs to be taken in toxicity testing in ascribing toxicity to nanoparticles per se when the effects may be related, at least in part, to simple solubility.