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Stress factors such as climate change and drought may switch the role of temperate peatlands from carbon dioxide (CO2) sinks to sources, leading to positive feedback to global climate change. Water level management has been regarded as an important climate change mitigation strategy as it can sustain the natural net CO2 sink function of a peatland. Little is known about how resilient peatlands are

This study investigates values and narratives of urban biodiversity in the highly culturally and biologically diverse city Cape Town, South Africa. Local expressions of values of biodiversity are explored, in the context of the challenge of accounting for diverse values of biodiversity through a green infrastructure approach. Based on interviews with practitioners involved in green space and biodi

Sweden is often seen as a frontrunner when it comes to sustainability. For example, it has the highest share of renewable energy in the EU and is known for its thorough recycling and waste separation. Sweden is sparsely populated and 70% of its land area is covered by forests. Over the last century, the volume of yearly timber harvests has doubled, but despite this remarkable productivity increase

Ensuring sustainable consumption and production is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable consumption can be supported through regulatory processes. Voluntary private regulatory schemes claiming to contribute to sustainability are a rapidly growing form of regulation. We study one such voluntary sustainability scheme in order to look at the opportunities and challeng

Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, which records the aggregation of billions of individual decisions. Here we consider a broad range of individual lifestyle choices and calculate their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, based on 148 scenarios from 39 sources. We recommend four widely applicable high

The role of in-stream aquatic vegetation as ecosystem engineers in the distribution of organic matter was investigated in the Okavango Delta, one of the world’s largest oligotrophic wetlands. The Okavango channel beds are covered up to 50% with submerged macrophyte patches. By accumulating and concentrating organic matter in the sediments below the patches, macrophytes are likely able to locally f

The Southern California Borderland is a region that experiences strong natural variations in bottom water oxygen and pH. We use marine sediments from Santa Monica Basin to reconstruct environmental conditions in the basin's bottom water from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to present. We then compare the records to the adjacent Santa Barbara Basin and Santa Lucia Slope. High-resolution records of b

Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to agriculture. While growers have always struggled with year-to-year variation in climate – early rains or unusually hot summers – climate change provides a major directional shift in mean climate. Across the globe, growing regions are warming and plants are shifting in both time and space. Current and future shifts pose a major challenge to researc

Salinity variations in restricted basins like the Baltic Sea can alter their vulnerability to hypoxia (i.e., bottom water oxygen concentrations <2 mg/l) and can affect the burial of phosphorus (P), a key nutrient for marine organisms. We combine porewater and solid-phase geochemistry, micro-analysis of sieved sediments (including XRD and synchrotron-based XAS), and foraminiferal δ18O and δ13C anal

Due to the scarcity of reliable palaeoecological and climatic proxy records from the Eastern Baltic covering the Holocene, there has been increased interest for multi-proxy studies in the region to detect local to regional environmental changes. The Čepkeliai wetland complex, SE Lithuania, provides an uninterrupted Holocene sediment sequence, which is used here to reconstruct palaeoenvironmental h

Since 2010, the EU`s External Action Service (EEAS) is the permanent chair of the Council working groups on the EU´s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), thus terminating the procedural rule of EU member states alternatingly holding the presidency of such working groups for a period of sixmonths. This thesis aims therefore at exploring the consequences of the EEAS taking over the chairmanshi

The objectives were to investigate (i) the forms and release pattern of P from an ash-rich biochar-amended sandy soil; (ii) the transformation of biochar P in a soil-plant system. Several methodologies (a bioassay test, soluble P extractions, a sequential P fractionation and successive P extractions via resin strips) were used to study the bioavailability and transformation of P in a sandy soil

Human activities, especially increased nutrient loads that set in motion a cascading chain of events related to eutrophication, accelerate development of hypoxia (lower oxygen concentration) in many areas of the world's coastal ocean. Climate changes and extreme weather events may modify hypoxia. Organismal and fisheries effects are at the heart of the coastal hypoxia issue, but more subtle regime

Nutrient loads from the land to the sea must be reduced to combat coastal eutrophication. It has been suggested that further mitigation efforts are needed in the brackish Baltic Sea to decrease nutrients, especially in eutrophic coastal areas. Mussel farming is a potential measure to remove nutrients directly from the sea. Mussels consume phytoplankton containing nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P); w

We assessed the role of vegetation and hydrology in the Si cycle in the Okavango Delta. Our results show a large storage of biogenic Si (BSi) in vegetation and the sediments. The biological storage is among the highest observed so far for any ecosystem worldwide. Floodplain vegetation accumulates similar amounts of BSi in both the temporary floodplains and the permanent floodplains, with most valu

A detailed diatom record from Lake Kälksjön, west-central Sweden, reveals two periods of abrupt ecological change correlative with the 8.2 ka cooling event. Using a combination of abrupt step changes and piece-wise linear regressions, the diatom data were analysed for change points over time, and two sudden and large events that are described as regime shifts were detected. During the first event

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is one of the most active and mobile carbon pools, and thus an important component of the global carbon cycle. Previous research on DOC transport in the soil and on factors controlling DOC export towards the river system focused mainly on forest and wetland areas, with only limited information available from agricultural soils. We carried out rainfall simulations on

Temperate calcareous grasslands are characterized by high levels of species richness at small spatial scales. Nevertheless, many species from a habitat-specific regional species pool may be absent from local communities and represent the dark diversity' of these sites. Here we investigate dry calcareous grasslands in northern Europe to determine what proportion of the habitat-specific species pool

The influence of soil physicochemical properties on microbial communities can be large, especially in developing soils of glacier forefield chronosequences. However, small-scale expositional differences in bare soils and their impacts on soil microbial communities have so far been largely neglected. Here we studied the changes of microbial communities in three deglaciated unvegetated sites along a