Climatic Driving Forces

All living organisms in terrestrial ecosystems ultimately depend directly or indirectly on photosynthesis for their energy requirements. We will explore some climatic driving forces for ecosystem processes and then examine some ecological processes on various scales, including the global where we consider the global production of plant carbon.

Solar radiation, temperature, precipitation, air humidity, and atmospheric CO₂ are the key ambient forces that drive ecosystem processes. Of these, changes in temperature, water availability, and CO₂ levels are subject to change in the next 100 years.

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