With the plethora of new journals being issued each year, the first thing one must ask about a new one is whether it is really necessary. Does it fill a gap? In the case of Global Change Biology the answer is a resounding yes, because biology has not been given sufficient prominence in the climate change debate.
This journal was created to promote understanding of the interface between all aspects of environmental change and biological systems. That there is much research being carried out in this area is apparent from the wide range of topics, by authors from many different countries, that have been gathered together in the 50 papers that comprise the first seven issues. The papers are a good balance between field, laboratory studies and modelling. They cover the effects of change factors on a wide range of organisms such as flowering plants, ferns, mosses, aphids and collembola as well as on several different natural and manmade ecosystems. The geographical coverage is broad, with papers about Antarctic organisms, Amazon rainforest, Mediterranean grasslands, Hawaiian soils and the Pantanal swampland of Brazil.
As would be expected in a journal about global change, carbon dioxide is the most frequently discussed topic. It is apparent that many different laboratories are working on the biological effects of an increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Several of the studies reported show a considerable increase in plant growth as a result of higher concentrations in CO2. However, it is notable that responses to CO2 are substantially smaller in mixed competitive systems than in a single species in the laboratory. The increase in growth caused by CO2 fertilisation represents a part of the missing sink for the difference between carbon emissions and known sinks. The living earth is making some self-adjustment to this situation. The burning of fossil fuel accounts for the emission of about 5.5Gt (trillion tonnes) of carbon a year and deforestation, mainly in the tropics, for a further 1.6Gt. It is estimated that the atmosphere absorbs 3.2Gt, the oceans 2Gt and the regenerating northern forests 0.5Gt per year. The rest (1.4Gt) is hard to account for, but some of this is through increased growth as is demonstrated in several articles.
The enterprising authors of one paper did not need a laboratory system to study exposure to high levels of CO2 for they observed the growth of Arbutus unedo growing near natural vents of CO2 in Italy. It is interesting that an experiment with C4 and C3 species from the shortgrass steppe showed no significant growth differences between the C4 and C3 grasses used. Both showed a 19 per cent biomass increase under conditions of elevated CO2.
Not all the experiments report a beneficial effect of CO2 fertilisation. Seedling growth and survivorship and ultimately the regeneration of temperate forests could be reduced by CO2 enrichment. In contrast to CO2 fertilisation ozone, which is the topic of several papers, tends to retard growth. An experiment with five plant species of calcareous grassland in Britain showed that high concentrations affected the species differently. There were large reductions in growth rates for shoots and roots in the two species of legumes studied. At higher acute fumigation concentrations, ozone injury was apparent in some species and not in others. Legumes appear to be much more susceptible to ozone damage than grasses. A single paper deals with methane. Apart from the effect of these atmospheric gases, the two other environmental factors that feature in several papers are temperature and ultraviolet light. CO2 production from Hawaiian soils increased exponentially with temperature changes from 15C to 55C. The effects of temperature change on ammonia and nitrous oxide were much more complex and variable. Such experiments are important to determine potential feedbacks between trace gas emissions and warmer climates and will depend on the relative sensitivities of the processes governing both production and consumption of each gas. Those people trying to keep down the growth of bracken may be alarmed to learn that bracken growth increased considerably with enhanced temperature because this extended the growing season through fronds emerging earlier in the spring and senescing later in the autumn. Climate change is likely to lead to more vigorous bracken.
A few papers deal with historic aspects of climate change over long or short periods. The most speculative paper of the first volume asks whether low atmospheric CO2 during the Pleistocene was a limiting factor for the origin of agriculture. It is hypothesised that the reason for agriculture arising independently in many distinct regions at approximately the same time in human history was that the low CO2 content of the atmosphere before that time was too low to support the level of productivity required for successful establishment of agriculture. This is the first "opinion article", and these features are obviously expected to be provocative.
Another more factual paper deals with postvegetative changes in the Brazilian Pantanal arboreal-grassy savanna ecotone using carbon isotope ratios in organic matter. It is concluded that in 4,600BP and 11,400BP vegetative changes from C3 to C4 plants in the grassy savanna occurred, agreeing with other observations about major climatic changes in South America. Shorter-term history is recorded in papers linking the frequency of records for three British butterfly species with weather records and one on the growth response to climate of subalpine fir in the Olympic Mountains of Washington state, using dendrochronological analysis.
The journal will have some issues devoted to a single topic. The first of these is dedicated to the response of wheat growth to predicted changes in global atmosphere. Since wheat is mankind's single most important food crop it is important to know the impact of climate change on this vital resource. These papers demonstrate that much research is being carried out to understand the future of wheat, but that there are still differences of opinion and difficulties in predicting wheat growth response to global environmental change. Volume two promises that the next special issue will be on the important topic of coral reefs and climate change.
Other features that will appear regularly are commentaries, commissioned reviews and technical advances. The first is on terrestrial higher-plant response to increasing CO2 in relation to the global carbon cycle. The second is on land-use change and the carbon cycle. The first review is a summary of laboratory work and the second of the effect of worldwide changes in land use between 1850 and 1980, showing the effects on atmosphere of the increase in croplands and pastures and of tropical deforestation.
The first seven issues of Global Change Biology were enjoyable and there is no doubt that the journal will bring biologists and global change scientists closer together. It is backed by an editorial board that reads like a who's who of ecology and climate change. Volume two appears to be keeping to the quick response time between submission of papers and publication and so we may expect the continuation of up-to-date information on this vital topic for the future of humankind.
Sir Ghillean Prance is director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Global Change Biology
Editor - Steve Long, Harry Smith, Jeff Bale, Paul Falkowski, Chris Field, Jim Prosser and Richard Spilsbury
ISBN - ISSN 1354 1013
Publisher - Blackwell Science
Price - £128.00 institutions £30.00 individuals
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