Filetype
The European Alps are rapidly losing glacier mass due to climatic warming and are anticipated to be largely ice-free by the year 2100. Long-term glacier monitoring in the Alps provides a record of anthropogenically-driven climate change since the Little Ice Age maximum in ~1850. Understanding these long-term glacier changes provides a basis for mitigating hazards (e.g., mass movements) associated
The United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) has completed its second round of negotiations on a new international legally binding instrument to ‘end plastic pollution’. This paper examines the results of the second session of negotiations, which took place May 29–June 2, 2023, and analyses the trends, barriers, and themes shaping the emerging legally binding instrument. T
Understanding the evolutionary processes that influence fitness is critical to predicting species' responses to selection. Interactions among evolutionary processes including gene flow, drift and the strength of selection can lead to either local adaptation or maladaptation, especially in heterogenous landscapes. Populations experiencing novel environments or resources are ideal for understanding
Tropical ecosystems have an important role in global change scenarios, in part because they serve as a large terrestrial carbon pool. Carbon protection is mediated by soil aggregation processes, whereby biotic and abiotic factors influence the formation and stability of aggregates. Nutrient additions may affect soil structure indirectly by simultaneous shifts in biotic factors, mainly roots, and f
Dendrometers offer valuable insights into how tree growth responds to climatic variables and physiological processes over the course of a year. Yet, their applicability to extremely slow-growing trees, such as those in peatlands, has been limited due to the intricate and slow nature of growth, therefore rendering interpretation of results complex. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive monito
Tree establishment on peatlands has various adverse effects on the environment, with one of the most significant being their transformation from carbon sinks to carbon sources. This transformation has largely been instigated by economic-driven ditching initiatives. In this study, 80 peat-rooted pine seedlings were subjected to hydrological scenarios corresponding to natural, ditched, and rewetted
Highbush blueberry production has expanded worldwide in recent decades. To safeguard future yields, it is essential to understand if insect pollination is limiting current blueberry production and which insects contribute to pollination in different production regions. We present a systematic review including a set of meta-analyses on insect-mediated pollination in highbush blueberry. We summarize
Understanding biodiversity patterns poses a persistent challenge due to the complex interconnections of ecological and evolutionary processes. The particular difficulty comes from the various processes influencing biodiversity patterns across different spatial scales. This thesis aims to enhance comprehension of community diversity patterns by employing theoretical models that are capable of gener
Aims: To develop a consistent ecological indicator value system for Europe for five of the main plant niche dimensions: soil moisture (M), soil nitrogen (N), soil reaction (R), light (L) and temperature (T). Study area: Europe (and closely adjacent regions). Methods: We identified 31 indicator value systems for vascular plants in Europe that contained assessments on at least one of the five aforem
Major migration events in Holocene Eurasia have been characterized genetically at broad regional scales1–4. However, insights into the population dynamics in the contact zones are hampered by a lack of ancient genomic data sampled at high spatiotemporal resolution5–7. Here, to address this, we analysed shotgun-sequenced genomes from 100 skeletons spanning 7,300 years of the Mesolithic period, Neol
When the ecovillage of Toarp was established in the peri-urban landscape of Malmö, Sweden, it was designed with inspiration from the historical regional landscape and its settlement forms. In the launching of the area the past was mirrored as more sustainable than the present. As demonstrated, the historical references in the planned and produced Toarp landscape are however made selectively and ra
Agricultural landscapes across the planet have replaced natural habitat with crop production that is less diverse at field and landscape scales. Loss of cropland heterogeneity can increase pest colonization rates and decrease predation rates, thereby exacerbating pest pressure and leading to increased use of pesticides. Linking landscape pattern, crop pest pressure, and pesticide use is emerging a
Nutritional stability – a food system’s capacity to provide sufficient nutrients despite disturbance – is an important, yet challenging to measure outcome of diversified agriculture. Using 55 years of data across 184 countries, we assemble 22,000 bipartite crop-nutrient networks to quantify nutritional stability by simulating crop and nutrient loss in a country, and assess its relationship to crop
It is well known that ecological and evolutionary processes act in concert while shaping biological communities. Diversification can, for example, arise through ecological opportunity and adaptive radiations and competition play an essential role in such diversification. Eco-evolutionary components of competition are thus important for our understanding of community assembly. Such understanding in
Aims: Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the former three groups). Location: Palaearctic biog
The draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework commits to achievement of equity and justice outcomes and represents a “relational turn” in how we understand inclusive conservation. Although “inclusivity” is drawn on as a means to engage diverse stakeholders, widening the framing of inclusivity can create new tensions with regard to how to manage protected areas. We first offer a set of tensions
Question: When evaluating forests in terms of their biodiversity, distinctiveness and naturalness, the affinity of the constituent species to forests is a crucial parameter. Here we ask to what extent are vascular plant species associated with forests, and does species’ affinity to forests vary between European regions?Location: Temperate and boreal forest biome of Northwestern and Central Europe.
