The World's Ecoclimates

This book provides a quantitative fully reproducible delineation of ecoclimatic boundaries to ecoclimate classification. In contrast to previous classifications, the ecoclimate classification does not use the usual “climatological averages,” i.e., the average values of temperature and precipitation and not their indices, but the climatic parameters relevant to plant life (i.e., the length of thermal and hygric growing seasons) as ecophysiologically meaningful variables, as criteria for the delimitation of climate types, as an answer to many environmental questions and also to the global climate change debate. However, the ecoclimate classification model presented here has the potential to infer changes in vegetation cover from changes in climate and vice versa. It is in this context that the ecoclimate classification is a powerful tool for assessing the dimensions of habitat change for flora and fauna or, conversely, for inferring the shift of ecoclimatic boundaries from changes in vegetation cover caused by climate change.

M. Daud Rafiqpoor is a long-time research associate of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz and coordinator of two ecologically oriented long-term projects of this academy (“Three-dimensional Landscape Division of the Tropics and Subtropics” and “Biodiversity in Change”). He attended numerous study trips in almost all tropical and subtropical mountains of the world. His publications include many papers and books on the geography and ecology of tropical and subtropical high mountains and Afghanistan.
Siegmar-W. Breckle worked as a professor and the head of the Department of Ecology at the University of Bielefeld for many years. He continued the multi-volume work “Ecology of the Earth” by Heinrich Walter, published numerous articles and books on the ecology of many regions, especially the drylands combined with countless study trips around the globe. His research focusses on deserts, the tropics, and high mountains.