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Amazonia is an environmentally heterogeneous and biologically megadiverse region, and its biodiversity varies considerably over space. However, existing knowledge on Amazonian biodiversity and its environmental determinants stems almost exclusively from studies of macroscopic above-ground organisms, notably vertebrates and trees. In contrast, diversity patterns of most other organisms remain elusi
Intensive agricultural management negatively affects both natural enemies of pests and pollinators. Such management also has the potential to adversely affect the ecosystem services that these communities confer. Organic management has been proposed as an alternative method to mitigate such problems by restoring the services provided by arthropod communities. We evaluated the effect of organic
The EU's farmers are no longer required to produce commodities to receive direct payments as long as they keep their land in good condition. Some believe this is bad for development because it encourages passive farming. We evaluate, using a real options approach, the implications of decoupled payments for the desirability and optimal timing of agricultural land development when considering sunk i
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has provided periodic assessments of the state of knowledge on climate change for 30 years. While these assessments have been central to the making of international climate policy, their relevance has been questioned in the post-Paris era. Can the IPCC's global kinds of knowledge match the demands of an increasingly decentralized and polycentric
Background. Knowledge on the globally outstanding Amazonian biodiversity and its environmental determinants stems almost exclusively from aboveground organisms, notably plants. In contrast, the environmental factors and habitat preferences that drive diversity patterns for micro-organisms in the ground remain elusive, despite the fact that micro-organisms constitute the overwhelming majority of li
Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-c
The 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) introduced compulsory ‘greening’ measures with the goal to mitigate environmental degradation caused by intensive agriculture. This paper aims to investigate how the implementation of the Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) obligation will affect regional agricultural development, the economic performance of farms and land use (including choices of
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) affects about half of the land area of the EU and allocates close to 40% of the EU’s budget. Consequently, CAP has great potential to guide land management decisions towards multifunctional agricultural landscapes supporting both commodity production and biodiversity. The 2015 “greening” reform was an attempt to increase the multifunctionality of agricultural l
We examined farmers’ costs of providing public goods under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the expected impacts of the 2015 CAP “greening” reform on regional development and provisioning of public goods. Less than half of CAP spending Before the reform was justifiable in terms of the delivery of specific public goods; and predicted benefits from greening are low. We recommend re-allocatin
Co-flowering plant species commonly share flower visitors, and thus have the potential to influence each other's pollination. In this study we analysed 750 quantitative plant-pollinator networks from 28 studies representing diverse biomes worldwide. We show that the potential for one plant species to influence another indirectly via shared pollinators was greater for plants whose resources were mo
In response to climate change, China's power industry is undertaking the task of reducing carbon emissions. Renewable energy generation has become an important option. For the government and state grid companies, it is important to know the maximum possible capacities of renewable energy generation from its different sources in order to plan the construction of the power grid in the future. In thi
We present extensions to the agent-based agricultural policy simulator (AgriPoliS) model that make it possible to simulate the consequences of agricultural policy reform on farmers' land use decisions and concomitant impacts on landscape mosaic, biodiversity and ecosystem services in a real agricultural region. An observed population of farms is modelled as a multi-agent system where individual fa
Iron (Fe) is a key element, strongly influencing the biogeochemistry of soils, sediments and waters, but the knowledge about the variety of Fe species present in these systems is still limited. In this work we have used X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to study the speciation of Fe in soils and waters from a boreal catchment in northern Sweden. The aim was to better understand the controls of F
Owing to complex direct and indirect effects, impacts of higher trophic levels on plants is poorly understood. In tropical agroecosystems, ants interact with crop mutualists and antagonists, but little is known about how this integrates into the final ecosystem service, crop yield. We combined ant exclusion and introduction of invasive and native-dominant species in cacao agroecosystems to test wh
Payments to compensate landowners for carrying out costly land-use measures that benefit endangered biodiversity have become an important policy instrument. When designing such payments, it is important to take into account that spatially connected habitats are more valuable for many species than isolated ones. One way to incentivize provision of connected habitats is to offer landowners an agglom
The available carbon (C) to phosphorus (P) ratio in soil is regulated by extracellular hydrolases for C and P acquisition by microbes and plants. However, the stoichiometric relationship between acquiring C and P in paddy rhizosphere and bulk soils remains unclear. The objective was to explore the underlying mechanisms of C and P acquisition stoichiometry in rhizosphere and bulk soils in response
Savannas cover a wide climatic gradient across large portions of the Earth’s land surface and are an important component of the terrestrial biosphere. Savannas have been undergoing changes that alter the composition and structure of their vegetation such as the encroachment of woody vegetation and increasing land-use intensity. Monitoring the spatial and temporal dynamics of savanna ecosystem stru
Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is of great importance to control the land-atmosphere exchange of water and CO2. Here we use in situ observations to assess the performance of monthly VPD calculated from state-of-the-art data sets including CRU, ERA5, and Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA2). We investigate trends in VPD at global scale and for different
Abstract in UndeterminedCharacteristic of ecosystems is that different organisms can have similar functions and hence provide similar ecosystem services. Consequently functional diversity can maintain the rate of services despite environmental fluctuations. In this paper we present a method for estimating the resilience value of biodiversity. Central to a resilience perspective on biological conse
