Thomas Hickler
Biographic Data
| ID | 3447822 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Hickler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Hickler |
| SIGNATURE | HICKLER T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goethe University Frankfurt |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4668-7552 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 146 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Mapping human-nature archetypes to guide global biodiversity, food security, and land-use policy
Reconciling biodiversity conservation, food security, and sustainable agriculture at global scale requires a clear understanding of regional social-ecological opportunities and challenges. This understanding helps untap regional contributions to better achieve global policy targets, such as those framed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Yet previous global syntheses of social-ecological interlinkages remain limited in t…
Comparison of simulated and proxy-based climate reconstructions for Mid-Holocene Europe reveals high uncertainty
Gridded and time-continuous paleoclimate model outputs are increasingly used to inform high-resolution models in biogeography and other disciplines. However, few studies quantitatively evaluate such outputs for bias, uncertainty, and consistency with other climate reconstructions of similar scale and scope of interest. Here we evaluate downscaled and bias-corrected output from two paleoclimate models against proxy-based reconstructions from Europ…
The fire weather in Europe
The climate over Europe has been recorded to be hotter, drier, and more fire-prone over the last decade than ever before, leading to concerns about how climate change will alter fire weather in the future. A typical measure to estimate fire weather severity based on climate is the Canadian fire weather index (FWI). In this study, we used high-resolution, bias-corrected climate model output (∼9 km) from six CMIP6 climate models and four shared soc…
Simulated sensitivity of the Amazon rainforest to extreme drought
The Amazon rainforest is highly biodiverse and has the largest extent of the remaining intact tropical forests in the world. To this day, undisturbed tropical forests act as a carbon sink by taking up about 15% of anthropogenic carbon emissions per year. However, in the past decades, a declining trend in the carbon sink capacity in the Amazon rainforest has been observed due to increased carbon losses and tree mortality. The causes are disputed, …
Utilizing multi-objective decision support tools for protected area selection
Co-occurrence of climate-change induced and anthropogenic pressures in Central American key biodiversity areas
Central America hosts many key biodiversity areas (KBAs), areas which represent unique and irreplaceable ecosystems of global importance for species conservation. However, large extents of these areas are not under legal protection and could be threatened by pressures from land use change (e.g. deforestation and agricultural expansion), high human population density (e.g. population growth and urban sprawl) and climate-driven biome shifts. Here, …
Towards a better future for biodiversity and people
The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. This paper describes how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support decision-making. First, we describe key considerations for the NFF in developing qualitative and quantitative …
Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes
Young generations are severely threatened by climate change
Post-2020 aspirations for biodiversity
Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability
Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals. As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation pro…
Pronounced and unavoidable impacts of low-end global warming on northern high-latitude land ecosystems
Arctic ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of Arctic amplification. Here, we assessed the climatic impacts of low-end, 1.5 °C, and 2.0 °C global temperature increases above pre-industrial levels, on the warming of terrestrial ecosystems in northern high latitudes (NHL, above 60 °N including pan-Arctic tundra and boreal forests) under the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 2b pro…
Vegetation biomass change in China in the 20th century
Vegetation biomass is a key and active component of the carbon cycle. Though China’s vegetation biomass in recent decades has been widely investigated, only two studies have quantitatively assessed its century-scale changes so far and reported totally opposite trends. This study provided the first multi-model estimates of China’s vegetation biomass change for the 20th century and its responses to historical changes in environmental and anthropoge…
The concerns of the young protesters are justified
In March 2019, German-speaking scientists and scholars calling themselves Scientists for Future , published a statement in support of the youth protesters in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (Fridays for Future, Klimastreik/Climate Strike) , verifying the scientific evidence that the youth protestors refer to. In this article, they provide the full text of the statement, including the list of supporting facts (in both English and German) as well…
Evapotranspiration simulations in Isimip2a—Evaluation of spatio-temporal characteristics with a comprehensive ensemble of independent datasets
Actual land evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the global hydrological cycle and an essential variable determining the evolution of hydrological extreme events under different climate change scenarios. However, recently available ET products show persistent uncertainties that are impeding a precise attribution of human-induced climate change. Here, we aim at comparing a range of independent global monthly land ET estimates with histori…
Evaluating changes of biomass in global vegetation models
la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publis ou non, manant des tablissements d'enseignement et de recherche franais ou trangers, des laboratoires publics ou privs
Great uncertainties in modeling grazing impact on carbon sequestration
The impact of grazing activity on terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration has been noticed and studied worldwide. Recent efforts have been made to incorporate the disturbance into process-based land models. However, the performance of grazing models has not been well investigated at large scales. In this study, we performed a spatially explicit model uncertainty assessment in the world's largest pasture ecosystem, the temperate Eurasian Steppe. Five…
Assessing the impacts of 1.5 °C global warming – simulation protocol of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (Isimip2b)
In Paris, France, December 2015, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. In Nairobi, Kenya, April 2016, the IPCC panel accepted the invitation. Here we describe th…
Benchmarking carbon fluxes of the Isimip2a biome models
Photosynthetic productivity and its efficiencies in Isimip2a biome models
Regional contribution to variability and trends of global gross primary productivity
Last Millennium hydro-climate variability in Central–Eastern Europe (Northern Carpathians, Romania)
Proxy-based reconstructions of climate variability over the last millennium provide important insights for understanding current climate change within a long-term context. Past hydrological changes are particularly difficult to reconstruct, yet rainfall patterns and variability are among the most critical environmental variables. Ombrotrophic bogs, entirely dependent on water from precipitation and sensitive to changes in the balance between prec…
Reconstruction of a regional drought index in southern Sweden since AD 1750
We used a network of eight pedunculate oak ( Quercus robur L.) sites ( n trees = 70) and one Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L.) site ( n trees = 53) to develop drought-sensitive master chronologies for the two areas in southern Scandinavia: a SW-area centred on 57°N 12.7°E and a NE-area centred on 58.8°N 18.2°E. The ratio of actual to equilibrium evapotranspiration (AET/EET) was used as a measure of drought during the growing season defined as the…
Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks
The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites), to infer long-term records of past land-cover from pollen data, (3) to present a new project (…
Structuring sustainability science
It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative solutions to these complex challenges. In this article, we propose a research agenda that advances …
Macis
The recently finished EU funded project MACIS reviewed observed and projected climate change impacts on biodiversity. It assessed mitigation and adaptation options. It also reviewed and developed methods to assess future impacts of climate change on biodiversity including the identification of policy options to prevent and minimise these impacts
Structuring sustainability science
It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative solutions to these complex challenges. In this article, we propose a research agenda that advances …
Towards a better future for biodiversity and people
The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. This paper describes how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support decision-making. First, we describe key considerations for the NFF in developing qualitative and quantitative …
Effects of human land-use on the global carbon cycle during the last 6,000 years
Last Millennium hydro-climate variability in Central–Eastern Europe (Northern Carpathians, Romania)
Proxy-based reconstructions of climate variability over the last millennium provide important insights for understanding current climate change within a long-term context. Past hydrological changes are particularly difficult to reconstruct, yet rainfall patterns and variability are among the most critical environmental variables. Ombrotrophic bogs, entirely dependent on water from precipitation and sensitive to changes in the balance between prec…
Effects of human land-use on the global carbon cycle during the last 6,000 years
Macis
The recently finished EU funded project MACIS reviewed observed and projected climate change impacts on biodiversity. It assessed mitigation and adaptation options. It also reviewed and developed methods to assess future impacts of climate change on biodiversity including the identification of policy options to prevent and minimise these impacts
Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks
The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites), to infer long-term records of past land-cover from pollen data, (3) to present a new project (…
Structuring sustainability science
It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative solutions to these complex challenges. In this article, we propose a research agenda that advances …
Reconstruction of a regional drought index in southern Sweden since AD 1750
We used a network of eight pedunculate oak ( Quercus robur L.) sites ( n trees = 70) and one Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L.) site ( n trees = 53) to develop drought-sensitive master chronologies for the two areas in southern Scandinavia: a SW-area centred on 57°N 12.7°E and a NE-area centred on 58.8°N 18.2°E. The ratio of actual to equilibrium evapotranspiration (AET/EET) was used as a measure of drought during the growing season defined as the…
Last Millennium hydro-climate variability in Central–Eastern Europe (Northern Carpathians, Romania)
Proxy-based reconstructions of climate variability over the last millennium provide important insights for understanding current climate change within a long-term context. Past hydrological changes are particularly difficult to reconstruct, yet rainfall patterns and variability are among the most critical environmental variables. Ombrotrophic bogs, entirely dependent on water from precipitation and sensitive to changes in the balance between prec…
Assessing the impacts of 1.5 °C global warming – simulation protocol of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (Isimip2b)
In Paris, France, December 2015, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. In Nairobi, Kenya, April 2016, the IPCC panel accepted the invitation. Here we describe th…
Benchmarking carbon fluxes of the Isimip2a biome models
Photosynthetic productivity and its efficiencies in Isimip2a biome models
Regional contribution to variability and trends of global gross primary productivity
Evapotranspiration simulations in Isimip2a—Evaluation of spatio-temporal characteristics with a comprehensive ensemble of independent datasets
Actual land evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the global hydrological cycle and an essential variable determining the evolution of hydrological extreme events under different climate change scenarios. However, recently available ET products show persistent uncertainties that are impeding a precise attribution of human-induced climate change. Here, we aim at comparing a range of independent global monthly land ET estimates with histori…
Evaluating changes of biomass in global vegetation models
la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publis ou non, manant des tablissements d'enseignement et de recherche franais ou trangers, des laboratoires publics ou privs
Great uncertainties in modeling grazing impact on carbon sequestration
The impact of grazing activity on terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration has been noticed and studied worldwide. Recent efforts have been made to incorporate the disturbance into process-based land models. However, the performance of grazing models has not been well investigated at large scales. In this study, we performed a spatially explicit model uncertainty assessment in the world's largest pasture ecosystem, the temperate Eurasian Steppe. Five…
The concerns of the young protesters are justified
In March 2019, German-speaking scientists and scholars calling themselves Scientists for Future , published a statement in support of the youth protesters in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (Fridays for Future, Klimastreik/Climate Strike) , verifying the scientific evidence that the youth protestors refer to. In this article, they provide the full text of the statement, including the list of supporting facts (in both English and German) as well…
Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability
Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals. As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation pro…
Pronounced and unavoidable impacts of low-end global warming on northern high-latitude land ecosystems
Arctic ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of Arctic amplification. Here, we assessed the climatic impacts of low-end, 1.5 °C, and 2.0 °C global temperature increases above pre-industrial levels, on the warming of terrestrial ecosystems in northern high latitudes (NHL, above 60 °N including pan-Arctic tundra and boreal forests) under the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 2b pro…
Vegetation biomass change in China in the 20th century
Vegetation biomass is a key and active component of the carbon cycle. Though China’s vegetation biomass in recent decades has been widely investigated, only two studies have quantitatively assessed its century-scale changes so far and reported totally opposite trends. This study provided the first multi-model estimates of China’s vegetation biomass change for the 20th century and its responses to historical changes in environmental and anthropoge…
Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes
Young generations are severely threatened by climate change
Post-2020 aspirations for biodiversity
Utilizing multi-objective decision support tools for protected area selection
Co-occurrence of climate-change induced and anthropogenic pressures in Central American key biodiversity areas
Central America hosts many key biodiversity areas (KBAs), areas which represent unique and irreplaceable ecosystems of global importance for species conservation. However, large extents of these areas are not under legal protection and could be threatened by pressures from land use change (e.g. deforestation and agricultural expansion), high human population density (e.g. population growth and urban sprawl) and climate-driven biome shifts. Here, …
Towards a better future for biodiversity and people
The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. This paper describes how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support decision-making. First, we describe key considerations for the NFF in developing qualitative and quantitative …
The fire weather in Europe
The climate over Europe has been recorded to be hotter, drier, and more fire-prone over the last decade than ever before, leading to concerns about how climate change will alter fire weather in the future. A typical measure to estimate fire weather severity based on climate is the Canadian fire weather index (FWI). In this study, we used high-resolution, bias-corrected climate model output (∼9 km) from six CMIP6 climate models and four shared soc…
Simulated sensitivity of the Amazon rainforest to extreme drought
The Amazon rainforest is highly biodiverse and has the largest extent of the remaining intact tropical forests in the world. To this day, undisturbed tropical forests act as a carbon sink by taking up about 15% of anthropogenic carbon emissions per year. However, in the past decades, a declining trend in the carbon sink capacity in the Amazon rainforest has been observed due to increased carbon losses and tree mortality. The causes are disputed, …
Mapping human-nature archetypes to guide global biodiversity, food security, and land-use policy
Reconciling biodiversity conservation, food security, and sustainable agriculture at global scale requires a clear understanding of regional social-ecological opportunities and challenges. This understanding helps untap regional contributions to better achieve global policy targets, such as those framed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Yet previous global syntheses of social-ecological interlinkages remain limited in t…
Environmental Science (19 works) · Ecology (17 works) · Climate change (15 works) · Geography (14 works) · Climatology (12 works) · Ecosystem (9 works) · Geology (9 works) · Atmospheric sciences (8 works) · Biology (8 works) · Climate model (7 works)