Rainfall seasonality dominates critical precipitation threshold for the Amazon forest in the LPJmL vegetation model.

Understanding the Amazon Rainforest's response to shifts in precipitation is paramount with regard to its sensitivity to climate change and deforestation. Studies using Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) typically only explore a range of socio-economically plausible pathways. In this study, we applied the state-of-the-art DGVM LPJmL to simulate the Amazon forest's response under idealized scenarios where precipitation is linearly decreased and subsequently increased between current levels and zero.

'How to adapt forests?'-Exploring the role of leaf trait diversity for long-term forest biomass under new climate normals.

Forests, critical components of global ecosystems, face unprecedented challenges due to climate change. This study investigates the influence of functional diversity-as a component of biodiversity-to enhance long-term biomass of European forests in the context of changing climatic conditions. Using the next-generation flexible trait-based vegetation model, LPJmL-FIT, we explored the impact of functional diversity on long-term forest biomass under three different climate change scenarios (video abstract: https://www.

Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries.

This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered.

Future tree survival in European forests depends on understorey tree diversity.

Climate change heavily threatens forest ecosystems worldwide and there is urgent need to understand what controls tree survival and forests stability. There is evidence that biodiversity can enhance ecosystem stability (Loreau and de Mazancourt in Ecol Lett 16:106-115, 2013; McCann in Nature 405:228-233, 2000), however it remains largely unclear whether this also holds for climate change and what aspects of biodiversity might be most important. Here we apply machine learning to outputs of a flexible-trait Dynamic Global Vegetation Model to unravel the effects of enhanced functional tree trait diversity and its sub-components on climate-change resistance of temperate forests ( http://www.

Constraining modelled global vegetation dynamics and carbon turnover using multiple satellite observations.

The response of land ecosystems to future climate change is among the largest unknowns in the global climate-carbon cycle feedback. This uncertainty originates from how dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) simulate climate impacts on changes in vegetation distribution, productivity, biomass allocation, and carbon turnover. The present-day availability of a multitude of satellite observations can potentially help to constrain DGVM simulations within model-data integration frameworks.

Leaf and stem economics spectra drive diversity of functional plant traits in a dynamic global vegetation model.

Functional diversity is critical for ecosystem dynamics, stability and productivity. However, dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) which are increasingly used to simulate ecosystem functions under global change, condense functional diversity to plant functional types (PFTs) with constant parameters. Here, we develop an individual- and trait-based version of the DGVM LPJmL (Lund-Potsdam-Jena managed Land) called LPJmL- flexible individual traits (LPJmL-FIT) with flexible individual traits) which we apply to generate plant trait maps for the Amazon basin.

How rare is complex life in the Milky Way?

An integrated Earth system model was applied to calculate the number of habitable Earth-analog planets that are likely to have developed primitive (unicellular) and complex (multicellular) life in extrasolar planetary systems. The model is based on the global carbon cycle mediated by life and driven by increasing stellar luminosity and plate tectonics. We assumed that the hypothetical primitive and complex life forms differed in their temperature limits and CO(2) tolerances.

Maximum number of habitable planets at the time of Earth's origin: new hints for panspermia?

New discoveries have fuelled the ongoing discussion of panspermia, i.e. the transport of life from one planet to another within the solar system (interplanetary panspermia) or even between different planetary systems (interstellar panspermia).