We look into how the presence of characteristic species, species richness and plant functional traits are related to flooding in humid meadow communities. A topographic wetness index of meadow plots within a Danish monitoring scheme (NOVANA) is derived from remote sensing data and describes the ability of each plot to accumulate water.

Elevated atmospheric CO₂ alters the chemical composition of leaf litter, making it less palatable to consumers. We investigated how ambient- and enriched-CO₂ litter from two tree species affected the consumption rates of eight (four terrestrial and four aquatic) invertebrate detritivores in choice and no-choice scenarios, and discuss implications for the process of decomposition in woodland environments.

Phenology has important demographic implications and is frequently used to assess climate change impacts, but predictive models of future phenology are rare. Using the long-tailed tit, we demonstrate that (i) recent climate change has reduced breeding season length, and (ii) a locally-derived climatic model of phenology predicts phenology at larger spatial and temporal scales.

Many projections suggest climate-driven distribution shifts will leave protected areas impoverished, while other evidence suggests protected (intact) ecosystems should be resilient to change. We identify correlations between recent distribution changes in savannah birds and climate change, protected area status and land degradation. Our results provide evidence of climate-driven range shifts in Africa but support the maintenance of existing protected areas.

In order to predict how individual species will respond to future climatic change, it is important to incorporate life-history data into models. Here, we use data on the foraging behaviour of a mountain ungulate, the alpine chamois, to predict how its daily activity budgets and altitudinal migrations may be altered by future changes in temperature.

We present data from a geothermal stream system in Iceland, which acts as a natural experiment for studying the impacts of warming. We find that warming alters the strength of interactions between key species, leading to altered population biomasses, mass-abundance scaling and energy transfer efficiency. A range of food web properties are also affected by increasing stream temperature.

Species in mountain regions are particularly sensitive to climate warming. Here we provide empirical evidence, from a study site in the British uplands, that dung beetles have altered their elevation range in response to 50 years of warming. We show that changes in species range have also caused changes in community composition, and discuss the implications for ecosystem dynamics.

Climate change and nutrient enrichment are two important and often coinciding causes of biodiversity loss. We investigated their single and interactive effects on the biomass and survival of species in a simulated food chain. The nonlinear model incorporates temperature and body-mass dependencies of biological rates and provides a mechanistic prediction of the interplay of both effects.

Air temperature is an important determinant of tree phenology. However, the effect of urban heat islands on leaf phenology in riverine environments has not been fully investigated. This study aims to examine the influences of terrestrial and riparian areas on tree phenology across a rural-urban gradient, in the Sheffield region.

Which seed dormancy traits are ideal for plant population persistence in fire-driven ecosystems? Are some species more tightly bound to fire than others? Using species with physically dormant seeds, we assessed the variation in dormancy-breaking threshold temperatures between co-occurring species. Two functional groups, based on fire- or season-related dormancy responses, were identified, allowing broader predictive power of climate change impacts.

Climate change-altered flows threaten aquatic birds by disrupting food webs and habitat. Yet understanding of hydrological variability as a driver of species’ distribution is limited. Using a long-term data set of bird records and flow archive data we investigate the relationship between aquatic bird distribution and indices of hydrological variability and assess the vulnerability of species to altered hydrological regimes.

Phenological and distribution changes in response to recent climate change are well described, but relatively few studies document impacts on populations. Using long-term monitoring data, we quantify the impacts of recent climate change on population trends of 63 UK breeding birds, and identify what it takes to be a climate change winner.

Both winter abundance and distribution of common chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita, in Britain and Ireland, have increased considerably between the 1970s and 2000s; the two main drivers identified were reduction in winter severity and an increasing breeding population.  Wintering individuals originated mainly from Western Europe, with small but increasing numbers from Asia. Migration timing and winter survivorship were also investigated.