Special Issue ?Climate-Vegetation Interaction: Natural Processes Versus Human Impact?

摘要

With the last decades of globally documented climate change, concern is growingthat it will have widespread impact on the world’s environments and human populations(IPCC 2014). Comprehensive studies of vegetation–atmosphere interaction at differentspatial (from ecosystem to regional and global scales) and temporal scales are nowadaysan important challenge in geography, ecology and climatology. There are numerousfactors and multiple pathways that control the interaction of land surface, vegetationand the atmosphere. It is well known that the weather and climatic characteristics (e.g.air temperature, solar radiation and precipitation) influence significantly plant growthand primary production (Woodward, 1987). In turn, the vegetation via various feedbackmechanisms (e.g. CO2 uptake and release, surface albedo, evapotranspiration) affect thelocal, regional, and, to some extent, global weather and climate conditions (Bonan et al.1992; Bathiany et al. 2010). Despite the many available studies and reports documentingthe various pathways of climate-vegetation interactions, there is a broad spectrum ofunresolved scientific questions. In particular it is still not clear.