ALBERT

Description: Changes in the life cycle of organisms (i.e. phenology) are one of the most widely used early-warning indicators of climate change, yet this remains poorly understood throughout the tropics. We exhaustively reviewed any published and unpublished study on fruiting phenology carried out at the community level in the American tropics and subtropics (latitudinal range: 26°N?26°S) to (1) provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of fruiting phenology research throughout the Neotropics; (2) unravel the climatic factors that have been widely reported as drivers of fruiting phenology; and (3) provide a preliminary assessment of the potential phenological responses of plants under future climatic scenarios. Despite the large number of phenological datasets uncovered (218), our review shows that their geographic distribution is very uneven and insufficient for the large surface of the Neotropics (~ 1 dataset per ~ 78,000 km2). Phenological research is concentrated in few areas with many studies (state of São Paulo, Brazil, and Costa Rica), whereas vast regions elsewhere are entirely unstudied. Sampling effort in fruiting phenology studies was generally low: the majority of datasets targeted fewer than 100 plant species (71%), lasted 2 years or less (72%), and only 10.4% monitored 〉 15 individuals per species. We uncovered only 10 sites with ten or more years of phenological monitoring. The ratio of numbers of species sampled to overall estimates of plant species richness was wholly insufficient for highly diverse vegetation types such as tropical rainforests, seasonal forest and cerrado, and only slightly more robust for less diverse vegetation types, such as deserts, arid shrublands and open grassy savannas. Most plausible drivers of phenology extracted from these datasets were environmental (78.5%), whereas biotic drivers were rare (6%). Among climatic factors, rainfall was explicitly included in 73.4% of cases, followed by air temperature (19.3%). Other environmental cues such as water level (6%), solar radiation or photoperiod (3.2%), and ENSO events (1.4%) were rarely addressed. In addition, drivers were analyzed statistically in only 38% of datasets and techniques were basically correlative, with only 4.8% of studies including any consideration of the inherently autocorrelated character of phenological time series. Fruiting peaks were significantly more often reported during the rainy season both in rainforests and cerrado woodlands, which is at odds with the relatively aseasonal character of the former vegetation type. Given that climatic models predict harsh future conditions for the tropics, we urgently need to determine the magnitude of changes in plant reproductive phenology and distinguish those from cyclical oscillations. Long-term monitoring and herbarium data are therefore key for detecting these trends. Our review shows that the unevenness in geographic distribution of studies, and diversity of sampling methods, vegetation types, and research motivation hinder the emergence of clear general phenological patterns and drivers for the Neotropics. We therefore call for prioritizing research in unexplored areas, and improving the quantitative component and statistical design of reproductive phenology studies to enhance our predictions of climate change impacts on tropical plants and animals.

Description: To project the future development of the soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in permafrost environments, the spatial and vertical distribution of key soil properties and their landscape controls needs to be understood. This article reports findings from the Arctic Lena River Delta where we sampled 50 soil pedons. These were classified according to the U.S.D.A. Soil Taxonomy and fall mostly into the Gelisol soil order used for permafrost-affected soils. Soil profiles have been sampled for the active layer (mean depth 58 ± 10 cm) and the upper permafrost to one meter depth. We analyze SOC stocks and key soil properties, i.e. C%, N%, C/N, bulk density, visible ice and water content. These are compared for different landscape groupings of pedons according to geomorphology, soil and land cover and for different vertical depth increments. High vertical resolution plots are used to understand soil development. These show that SOC storage can be highly variable with depth. We recommend the treatment of permafrost-affected soils according to subdivisions into: the surface organic layer, mineral subsoil in the active layer, organic enriched cryoturbated or buried horizons and the mineral subsoil in the permafrost. The major geomorphological units of a subregion of the Lena River Delta were mapped with a land form classification using a data-fusion approach of optical satellite imagery and digital elevation data to upscale SOC storage. Landscape mean SOC storage is estimated to 19.2 ± 2.0 kg C/m**2. Our results show that the geomorphological setting explains more soil variability than soil taxonomy classes or vegetation cover. The soils from the oldest, Pleistocene aged, unit of the delta store the highest amount of SOC per m2 followed by the Holocene river terrace. The Pleistocene terrace affected by thermal-degradation, the recent floodplain and bare alluvial sediments store considerably less SOC in descending order.

Description: This study presents evidence that Quaternary frontal arc calc-alkaline lavas from Central Mexican Volcanic Belt (CMVB) contain contributions from partial melts of the subducting garnet-bearing eclogitic oceanic crust and sediment, based on chemical and Hf-Nd isotope data. The CMVB includes both calc-alkaline lavas with arc-type trace element patterns such as aqueous fluid mobile element enrichments and high field strength element depletions; and "high-Nb" alkaline lavas with trace element patterns similar to ocean island basalts. The two types of lavas are closely related geographically and temporally. Distinct from the high-Nb lavas, the calc-alkaline lavas show trends toward higher 176Hf/177Hf and 143Nd/144Nd ratios coupled with lower Lu/Hf. The high Hf-Nd isotope ratios fingerprint contributions of subducted basaltic ocean crust, while the correlation with low Lu/Hf indicates melting in the presence of residual garnet, which reflects conversion of the subducted oceanic crust to eclogite. Isotopic and chemical mass balance considerations indicate that the slab melts are ~ 80% basaltic oceanic crust and ~ 20% subducted sediment. The calc-alkaline lavas have higher SiO2 at a given Mg# compared to the high-Nb alkaline lavas, also reflecting melt contributions from the subducted slab. A survey of global arc lavas shows that calc-alkaline lavas with low Lu/Hf ratios, reflecting melting in the presence of residual garnet and preferential mobilization of Hf over Lu from the subducted slab, are generally associated with hot slab conditions. These include arcs where young (〈 30 Ma old) ocean crust is subducted (e.g. Mexican Volcanic Belt, Cascades, Austral Andes, Luzon, Setouchi), where slab tearing occurred and hot asthenospheric mantle could upwell through the slab window (e.g., western Aleutians, Sunda, southern Scotia), and where oblique or slow subduction leads to higher slab temperatures (e.g. Lesser Antilles, western Aleutians). In some of these hot slab arcs, where low Lu/Hf ratios are coupled with high Nd-Hf isotope ratios, slab melt contributions are dominated by partial melts from the subducted oceanic basalt (e.g., Mexican Volcanic Belt, Aleutians and Cascades). In other hot slab arcs, low Lu/Hf ratios are coupled with low Nd-Hf isotope ratios, reflecting slab contributions dominated by sediment melts (e.g. Setouchi, Lesser Antilles, Luzon, Sunda, and southern Scotia). Arcs associated with colder subducted oceanic crust (e.g. Izu-Bonin-Marianas, Tonga-Kermadec, central and northern Scotia) erupt lavas with high Lu/Hf along with high Hf-Nd isotope ratios, similar to mid-ocean ridge basalts, thus they lack the signature of residual garnet as well as significant slab melt input.