Description:    The condition of many wetlands across Australia has deteriorated due to increased water regulation and the expansion and intensification of agriculture and increased urban and industrial expansion. Despite this situation, a comprehensive overview of the distribution and condition of wetlands across Australia is not available. Regional analyses exist and several exemplary mapping and monitoring exercises have been maintained to complement the more general information sets. It is expected that global climate change will exacerbate the pressures on inland wetlands, while sea level rises will adversely affect coastal wetlands. It is also expected that the exacerbation of these pressures will increase the potential for near-irreversible changes in the ecological state of some wetlands. Concerted institutional responses to such pressures have in the past proven difficult to sustain, although there is some evidence that a more balanced approach to water use and agriculture is being developed with the provision of increasing funds to purchase water for environmental flows being one example. We identify examples from around Australia that illustrate the impacts on wetlands of long-term climate change from palaeoecological records (south-eastern Australia); water allocation (Murray-Darling Basin); dryland salinisation (south-western Australia); and coastal salinisation (northern Australia). These are provided to illustrate both the extent of change in wetlands and the complexity of differentiating the specific effects of climate change. An appraisal of the main policy responses by government to climate change is provided as a basis for further considering the opportunities for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Content Type Journal Article Category Effects of Climate Change on Wetlands Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s00027-011-0232-5 Authors C. M. Finlayson, Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, NSW 2640, Australia J. A. Davis, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia P. A. Gell, Centre for Environmental Management, School of Science and Engineering, University of Ballarat, PO Box 663, Ballarat, VIC 3353, Australia R. T. Kingsford, Australian Rivers and Wetland Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia K. A. Parton, Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 883, Orange, NSW 2800, Australia Journal Aquatic Sciences - Research Across Boundaries Online ISSN 1420-9055 Print ISSN 1015-1621

Description:    Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions from grazed grasslands are estimated to be approximately 28% of global anthropogenic N 2 O emissions. Estimating the N 2 O flux from grassland soils is difficult because of its episodic nature. This study aimed to quantify the N 2 O emissions, the annual N 2 O flux and the emission factor (EF), and also to investigate the influence of environmental and soil variables controlling N 2 O emissions from grazed grassland. Nitrous oxide emissions were measured using static chambers at eight different grasslands in the South of Ireland from September 2007 to August 2009. The instantaneous N 2 O flux values ranged from -186 to 885.6 μg N 2 O-N m −2  h −1 and the annual sum ranged from 2 ± 3.51 to 12.55 ± 2.83 kg N 2 O-N ha −1  y −1 for managed sites. The emission factor ranged from 1.3 to 3.4%. The overall EF of 1.81% is about 69% higher than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) default EF value of 1.25% which is currently used by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to estimate N 2 O emission in Ireland. At an N applied of approximately 300 kg ha −1  y −1 , the N 2 O emissions are approximately 5.0 kg N 2 O-N ha −1 y −1 , whereas the N 2 O emissions double to approximately 10 kg N ha −1 for an N applied of 400 kg N ha −1  y −1 . The sites with higher fluxes were associated with intensive N-input and frequent cattle grazing. The N 2 O flux at 17°C was five times greater than that at 5°C. Similarly, the N 2 O emissions increased with increasing water filled pore space (WFPS) with maximum N 2 O emissions occurring at 60–80% WFPS. We conclude that N application below 300 kg ha −1  y −1 and restricted grazing on seasonally wet soils will reduce N 2 O emissions. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s10021-011-9434-x Authors Rashad Rafique, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Hydrology, Micrometeorology and Climate Change, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Deirdre Hennessy, Department of Animals &, Grassland Science Research, Teagasc-Moorpark, Fermoy, Ireland Gerard Kiely, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Hydrology, Micrometeorology and Climate Change, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Journal Ecosystems Online ISSN 1435-0629 Print ISSN 1432-9840

Description:    This review reports background information on wetlands in the Northeast Asia and High Asia areas, including wetland coverage and type, significance for local populations, and threats to their vitality and protection, with particular focus on the relationship of how global change influenced wetlands. Natural wetlands in these areas have been greatly depleted and degraded, largely due to global climate change, drainage and conversion to agriculture and silviculture, hydrologic alterations, exotics invasions, and misguided management policies. Global warming has caused wetland and ice-sheet loss in High Asia and permafrost thawing in tundra wetlands in Northeast Asia, and hence induced enormous reductions in water-storage sources in High Asia and carbon loss in Northeast Asia. This, in the long term, will exacerbate chronic water shortage and positively feed back global warming. Recently, better understanding of the vital role of healthy wetland ecosystems to Asia’s sustainable economic development has led to major efforts in wetland conservation and restoration. Nonetheless, collaborative efforts to restore and protect the wetlands must involve not only the countries of Northeast and High Asia but also international agencies. Research has been productive but the results should be more effectively integrated with policy-making and wetland restoration practices under future climatic scenarios. Content Type Journal Article Category Research Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00027-012-0281-4 Authors Shuqing An, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Ziqiang Tian, River and Coastal Environment Research Center, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012 People’s Republic of China Ying Cai, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Teng Wen, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Delin Xu, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Hao Jiang, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Zhigang Yao, The Wetland Management Station, Jiangsu Administrate of Forestry, Nanjing, 210036 People’s Republic of China Baohua Guan, The Institute of Geography and Limnology, China Academy of Science, Nanjing, 210008 People’s Republic of China Sheng Sheng, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Yan Ouyang, The State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, The Institute of Wetland Ecology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093 People’s Republic of China Xiaoli Cheng, Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074 People’s Republic of China Journal Aquatic Sciences - Research Across Boundaries Online ISSN 1420-9055 Print ISSN 1015-1621

Description:    Severe water erosion is notorious for its harmful effects on land-water resources as well as local societies. The scale effects of water erosion, however, greatly exacerbate the difficulties of accurate erosion evaluation and hazard control in the real world. Analyzing the related scale issues is thus urgent for a better understanding of erosion variations as well as reducing such erosion. In this review article, water erosion dynamics across three spatial scales including plot, watershed, and regional scales were selected and discussed. For the study purposes and objectives, the advantages and disadvantages of these scales all demonstrate clear spatial-scale dependence. Plot scale studies are primarily focused on abundant data collection and mechanism discrimination of erosion generation, while watershed scale studies provide valuable information for watershed management and hazard control as well as the development of quantitatively distributed models. Regional studies concentrate more on large-scale erosion assessment, and serve policymakers and stakeholders in achieving the basis for regulatory policy for comprehensive land uses. The results of this study show that the driving forces and mechanisms of water erosion variations among the scales are quite different. As a result, several major aspects contributing to variations in water erosion across the scales are stressed: differences in the methodologies across various scales, different sink-source roles on water erosion processes, and diverse climatic zones and morphological regions. This variability becomes more complex in the context of accelerated global change. The changing climatic factors and earth surface features are considered the fourth key reason responsible for the increased variability of water erosion across spatial scales. Content Type Journal Article Pages 127-143 DOI 10.1007/s11769-012-0524-2 Authors Wei Wei, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085 China Liding Chen, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085 China Lei Yang, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085 China Bojie Fu, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085 China Ranhao Sun, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085 China Journal Chinese Geographical Science Online ISSN 1993-064X Print ISSN 1002-0063 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 2

Description:    In this paper, we proposed a framework for evaluating the performance of ecosystem strategies prepared for enhancing vulnerability reduction in the face of hazards due to climate change. The framework highlights the positive effects of human activities in the coupled human and natural system (CHANS) by introducing adaptive capacity as an evaluation criterion. A built-in regional vulnerability to a certain hazard was generated based upon interaction of three dimensions of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. We illustrated the application of this framework in the temperate farming-grazing transitional zone in the middle Inner Mongolia of the northern China, where drought hazard is the key threat to the CHANS. Specific indices were produced to translate such climate variance and social-economic differences into specific indicators. The results showed that the most exposed regions are the inner land areas, while counties located in the eastern part are potentially the most adaptive ones. Ordos City and Bayannur City are most frequently influenced by multiple climate variances, showing highest sensitivity. Analysis also indicated that differences in the ability to adapt to changes are the main causes of spatial differences. After depiction of the spatial differentiations and analysis of the reasons, climate zones were divided to depict the differences in facing to the drought threats. The climate zones were shown to be similar to vulnerability zones based on the quantitative structure of indexes drafted by a triangular map. Further analysis of the composition of the vulnerability index showed that the evaluation criteria were effective in validating the spatial differentiation but potentially ineffective because of their limited time scope. This research will be a demonstration of how to combine the three dimensions by quantitative methods and will thus provide a guide for government to vulnerability reduction management. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s11769-012-0583-4 Authors Xiaoqian Liu, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871 China Yanglin Wang, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871 China Jian Peng, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871 China K. Braimoh Ademola, Global Land Project, Sapporo Nodal Office, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-0809 Japan He Yin, Geomatics Laboratory, Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, 10099 Germany Journal Chinese Geographical Science Online ISSN 1993-064X Print ISSN 1002-0063

Description:    Agricultural drainage is thought to alter greenhouse gas emissions from temperate peatlands, with CH 4 emissions reduced in favor of greater CO 2 losses. Attention has largely focussed on C trace gases, and less is known about the impacts of agricultural conversion on N 2 O or global warming potential. We report greenhouse gas fluxes (CH 4 , CO 2 , N 2 O) from a drained peatland in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, California, USA currently managed as a rangeland (that is, pasture). This ecosystem was a net source of CH 4 (25.8 ± 1.4 mg CH 4 -C m −2  d −1 ) and N 2 O (6.4 ± 0.4 mg N 2 O-N m −2  d −1 ). Methane fluxes were comparable to those of other managed temperate peatlands, whereas N 2 O fluxes were very high; equivalent to fluxes from heavily fertilized agroecosystems and tropical forests. Ecosystem scale CH 4 fluxes were driven by “hotspots” (drainage ditches) that accounted for less than 5% of the land area but more than 84% of emissions. Methane fluxes were unresponsive to seasonal fluctuations in climate and showed minimal temporal variability. Nitrous oxide fluxes were more homogeneously distributed throughout the landscape and responded to fluctuations in environmental variables, especially soil moisture. Elevated CH 4 and N 2 O fluxes contributed to a high overall ecosystem global warming potential (531 g CO 2 -C equivalents m −2  y −1 ), with non-CO 2 trace gas fluxes offsetting the atmospheric “cooling” effects of photoassimilation. These data suggest that managed Delta peatlands are potentially large regional sources of greenhouse gases, with spatial heterogeneity in soil moisture modulating the relative importance of each gas for ecosystem global warming potential. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-15 DOI 10.1007/s10021-011-9411-4 Authors Yit Arn Teh, Environmental Change Research Group, School of Geography & Geosciences, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9 AL Scotland, UK Whendee L. Silver, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94702, USA Oliver Sonnentag, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94702, USA Matteo Detto, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94702, USA Maggi Kelly, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94702, USA Dennis D. Baldocchi, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94702, USA Journal Ecosystems Online ISSN 1435-0629 Print ISSN 1432-9840