Species differences in germination play a crucial role in structuring annual plant communities. Germination depends upon numerous cues, including temperature and moisture, with global climate change models predicting increasing nighttime temperatures and more variable precipitation with larger, but less frequent rainstorms.

Changing global climate patterns may have a significant impact on plant phenology. In the northern hemisphere plants have responded to warmer temperatures by flowering earlier and sustaining longer periods of growth. Changes in atmospheric N deposition and precipitation may also affect plant phenology. We tested the effects of increased winter precipitation, summer temperature and nitrogen (N) on plant phenology in an alpine moist-meadow community at the Niwot Ridge LTER site. Treatment effects were simulated using snowfences, open-top warming chambers and N fertilizer in 1 m2 plots.

Wind and Water erosion are two dominant, interrelated transport processes that influence the dynamics of arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Complex interactions between wind and water erosion and transport events vary across different landscape units, exhibiting varying degrees of dominance; thereby, affecting soil types, topography, and the movement of soil parent material over spatial and temporal scales. Historic and prehistoric interactions of these erosion events between different landform units are poorly documented in the stratigraphic record.

 Future changes in climate are likely to strongly affect plant physiological and growth parameters, and thus potentially influence competitive interactions among plants. We used rainout shelters and sprinklers to test the influence of changes in precipitation on aboveground physiological parameters and belowground growth of honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) and black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda) at the Jornada Basin LTER. In this area of the northern Chihuahuan Desert, mesquite and other woody plants have encroached into former desert grasslands over the past 150 years.

The Pantanal wetland is one of the largest wetlands in the world (ca. 140.000 km2). Most of the time series collected from this natural system result in partial data set, specially water quality, thus compromising the performance of usual statistical analysis. The main goal of this research is to apply a new computational methodology for short time series analysis, showing non-linear behaviour in the time, amplitude and frequency domains to understand the hydro-ecological functioning of this river-floodplain system.

Rates of biogeochemical cycling in desert ecosystems are inherently constrained by water availability. Water pulses resulting from discrete climate events therefore can significantly alter biogeochemical processes. The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, a polar desert region, have experienced discrete warming events that resulted in episodic pulses of water made available through permafrost and snow melt.