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This dataset contains two metrics for climate change exposure using downscaled climate projections with the SRES A2 emissions scenario (Tabor and Williams, 2007).The metrics represent dissimilarity measurements of the squared Euclidean distance between seasonal (June–August and December–February) temperature and precipitation variables in the 20th century climate and mid-21st century climate. (1) disappearing climate risk - measure of dissimilarity between a pixel’s late 20th century climate and its closest matching pixel in the global set of 21st-century climates (2) novel climate risk - measure of dissimilarity between a pixel’s future climate and its closest matching pixel in the global set of late 20th-century climates. The data are in arcASCII format. All data are in units of standard Euclidean distance and multiplied by 1000. This is the original data. To scale the data similar to Tabor et al. (2018), remove outliers above the 99th percentile distribution before rescaling from 0-1. Unprojected number of columns 2160 number of rows 857 Lower Left X Center -179.917 Lower Left Y Center -59.084 Cell size 0.166667 decimal degrees (10 minutes or ~17 km) {"references": ["Tabor, K. et al. (2018). Tropical Protected Areas Under Increasing Threats from Climate Change and Deforestation: https://doi.org/10.3390/land7030090", "Tabor and Williams (2010). Globally downscaled climate projections for assessing the conservation impacts of climate change. https://doi.org/10.1890/09-0173.1", "Williams, J.W. et al. (2007). Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 20100 AD. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0606292104"]} Support for this project was provided by Conservation International, the Land Tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin, the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin, and the Environment Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This research has been funded in part by the Walton Family Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and a gift from Betty and Gordon Moore.

Widespread shrub encroachment is profoundly impacting the structures and functions of global drylands, and precipitation change is assumed to be one of the most critical factors affecting this phenomenon. However, there is little evidence to show how precipitation changes will affect the process. In this study, we conducted a 6-year precipitation manipulation experiment (-30%, ambient, +30%, and +50%) to investigate the effects of precipitation changes on the growth of shrubs and herbaceous plants in a shrub-encroached grassland in Inner Mongolia. We found that the increasing precipitation significantly increased the mean height, coverage, and aboveground biomass of herbaceous species, while the growth of shrub species did not exhibit a significant response to precipitation changes. With increasing precipitation, the relative coverage of shrubs decreased, while that of herbs increased. The native dominant herbaceous plant (Leymus chinensis) with more sensitive maximum photosynthetic rate to the precipitation change, showed higher photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency and water use efficiency than those of the encroached shrub species (Caragana microphylla) at high soil moisture contents, reflecting that the ecophysiological characteristics of L. chinensis might provide it a competitive advantage under increased precipitation. Our findings suggest that increasing precipitation may slow down shrub encroachment by facilitating herbaceous growth in Mongolian grasslands, and consequently affect the forage value and carbon budget in these ecosystems. 

Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) experiences a recurrent drought phenomenon. However, few studies have focused on drought monitoring in this region due to lack of ground observations. The newly released Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) with a long-term record and high resolution has a great potential for drought monitoring. Based on the assessment of CHIRPS for capturing precipitation and monitoring drought, this study aims to evaluate the drought condition in LMB by using satellite-based CHIRPS from January 1981 to July 2016. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) at various time scales (1–12-month) is computed to identify and describe drought events. Results suggest that CHIRPS can properly capture the drought characteristics at various time scales with the best performance at three-month time scale. Based on high-resolution long-term CHIRPS, it is found that LMB experienced four severe droughts during the last three decades with the longest one in 1991–1994 for 38 months and the driest one in 2015–2016 with drought affected area up to 75.6%. Droughts tend to occur over the north and south part of LMB with higher frequency, and Mekong Delta seems to experience more long-term and extreme drought events. Severe droughts have significant impacts on vegetation condition.

Forest soil acidification caused by acid deposition is a serious threat to the forest ecosystem. To investigate the liming effects of biomass ash (BA) and alkaline slag (AS) on the acidic topsoil and subsoil, a three-year field experiment under artificial Masson pine was conducted at Langxi, Anhui province in Southern China. The surface application of BA and AS significantly increased the soil pH, and thus decreased exchangeable acidity and active Al in the topsoil. Soil exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in topsoil were significantly increased by the surface application of BA and AS, while an increase in soil exchangeable K+ was only observed in BA treatments. The soil acidity and active Al in subsoil were decreased by the surface application of AS. Compared with the control, soluble monomeric and exchangeable Al in the subsoil was decreased by 38.0% and 29.4% after 3 years of AS surface application. There was a minimal effect on soluble monomeric and exchangeable Al after the application of BA. The soil exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in the subsoil increased respectively by 54% and 141% after surface application of 10 t ha-1 AS. The decrease of soil active Al and increase of base cations in subsoil were mainly attributed to the high migration capacity of base cations in AS. In conclusion, the effect of surface application of AS was superior to BA in ameliorating soil acidity and alleviating soil Al toxicity in the subsoil of this Ultisol.

This study focused on the effects of plant compositions on removal rates of pollutants in microcosms through investigating rhizosphere microbial populations, photosynthetic efficiency and growth characteristics. Mixed-culture groups improved the removal efficiency of TN and TP significantly but exhibited lower COD removal rates. Total plant biomasses were improved as the species richness increased, but the N/P content in the plants was mainly affected by the type of species. The mixed-culture groups showed lower photosynthesis rates and oxygen supply generated from roots under high irradiation. Microbial communities of the cultured groups in the rhizosphere exhibited significant differences. According to principal component analysis (PCA), the fungi were the typical microbes of SPA, SPAB, and SPABC, resulted in improvement in nutrient accumulation. These results demonstrated that a mixed culture strategy can represent the overyielding of biomass, promote the photo-protection mechanism, and will further increase the removal rates of pollutants in a constructed wetland.

Bioenergy is considered a sustainable substitute to fossil-fuel resources and the development of a prudent combination of renewable and innovative conversion technologies are essential for the valorization and effective conversion of biowaste to value-added commodities. Here, a negative pressure-induced carbonization process was proposed for the valorization of lignin-enriched biowaste precursor to bio-oil and environmental materials (biochar) at various temperatures. The high heating values (HHV) of the as-prepared biochars from the lignin enriched precursor under negative pressure (low-medium vacuum) were within 25.9-31.5 MJ/kg, which matched satisfactorily to the commercial charcoal. Whereas, the bio-oils produced from the lignin enriched precursor under vacuum conditions was a blend of complex aromatic and straight-chain hydro-carbons, including aldehyde, ketone, phenol, and furans, exhibiting ability as potential heating-oil with HHV within 21.2-28.2 MJ/kg. Moreover, the biochars produced under vacuum environments at higher temperature showed greater stability (22.5-35.9%) than those produced under N2 atmosphere.

This dataset contains terrestrial fluxes of nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and ecosystem respiration (carbon dioxide (CO2)) calculated from static chamber measurements in riparian buffers of oil palm plantations on mineral soil, in Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia. Measurements were made monthly, from January 2019 until September 2021, with a break from April 2019 to October 2019 to allow for felling and replanting, and another break from January 2021 to June 2021 due to Covid-19 restrictions. To help to reduce the environmental impact of oil palm plantations, riparian buffers are now required by regulations in many Southeast Asian countries. The experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from the riparian buffers. Research was funded through NERC grant NE/R000131/1 Sustainable Use of Natural Resources to Improve Human Health and Support Economic Development (SUNRISE) Greenhouse gas concentrations were measured using static chambers, enclosed for 45 minutes. Multiple regressions (including linear and hierarchical multiple regression) were fitted to calculate the best fit flux, using the RCflux R package, written by Dr Peter Levy (UKCEH).

The dataset comprises of physical and biogeochemical measurements of belowground (root) biomass from across four Scottish saltmarshes. Sites were chosen to represent contrasting habitats types in Scotland, in particular sediment types, vegetation and sea level history. The data provide a quantitative measure of belowground (root) biomass, organic carbon content and belowground (root) carbon. Samples were collected using a wide gauge gouge corer. The samples were processed to determine belowground (root) biomass, the organic carbon was quantified through elemental analysis and these two data sets were combined to calculate the belowground (root) carbon content. The data were collected to help create a detailed picture of saltmarsh carbon storage in surficial soils across Scotland. The work was carried out under the NERC programme - Carbon Storage in Intertidal Environment (C-SIDE), NERC grant reference NE/R010846/1 Soil cores were taken at each sampling location using a wide diameter gouge corer. The location of the sample was recorded using GPS. Prior to analysis the samples were stored at 4 degrees Celsius at the University of St Andrews. Belowground (root) biomass, organic carbon content and belowground (root) carbon data was produced using standard analytical procedures (detailed in the supporting documentation). All laboratory equipment were calibrated in accordance with the laboratory practises at the University of St Andrews. Results were recorded on to lab sheets and transferred into an Excel file. Results were exported as comma separated value (.csv) files for ingestion into the EIDC.