ABSTRACT
The relationship between climate and natural resource use has long been the subject of analysis and speculation and has formed the basis of teaching environmental systems and geography into the twenty-fi rst century (Huggett et al., 2004; Strahler and Strahler, 2006; Holden, 2008). The relationship is often considered deterministic, exemplifi ed in the notion that global vegetation distribution is dependent upon climate leading to an ‘equilibrium’ distribution, widely used to map and explain the world’s major biomes. There are several well-used global classifi cations of climate, (e.g. by Koppen, 1931; Thornthwaite, 1948; UNESCO, 1977) using rainfall, temperature, evaporation and water balances. Time and stability are key factors in such classifi cations but more detailed analysis reveals that rarely are ecosystems in such a steady state or equilibrium. Climate has undergone change at both global and local levels, and on both geological and historic (human) timescales. Early twentieth-century discussions of climate too often failed to take into account the dynamic nature of the atmosphere and, further, the need to distinguish between climate, weather and meteorology (see Box 3.1) but today we are only too well aware of the need to view climate as a temporal as well as a spatial environmental variable.
