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Agricultural land use is a major driver of biodiversity losses and changes in ecosystem services. Thus, for the sake of both humans and wild organism per se, effective strategies that enable both agricultural production and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services are urgently needed. Such strategies can be divided into those that reduce the intensity of farming in general (such as orga
Plant-soil feedback is increasingly recognized as a vital framework to analyze multi-trophic interactions involving herbivores, plants and microbes, but research is still lacking on understanding such feedback in the context of global change. In grasslands, patterns of herbivory are expected to be affected by global change, further modifying existing plant-soil feedbacks. We tested this by evaluat
The integration of ecosystem service (ES) knowledge into decision-making processes is increasingly endorsed by various policies and initiatives, with spatial planning targeted as one of the most relevant fields. Learning and feeding back from existing experiences is therefore a fundamental step to ensure appropriate and useful support by ES science. This paper aims to gather and critically analyse
20 oktober 2025 12:00 till 24 oktober 2025 13:00 | Föreläsning Den 20-26 oktober är det den internationella open access veckan. Vid Lunds universitet uppmärksammas detta genom presentationer och samtal om lokala open access initiativ. Det kommer att finnas gott om utrymme för frågor och diskussioner. Ingen anmälan behövs, alla intresserade är välkomna! När: kl. 12-13, 20e till 24e oktober Var: Sce
https://www.medarbetarwebben.lu.se/evenemang/open-access-week-pa-lunds-universitet - 2026-07-06
The arrangement of plant species within a landscape influences pollination via changes in pollinator movement trajectories and plant–pollinator encounter rates. Yet the combined effects of landscape composition and pollinator traits (especially specialisation) on pollination success remain hard to quantify empirically. We used an individual-based model to explore how landscape and pollinator speci
Globally, plants display enormous variation in life-history strategies and trait combinations. However, evidence suggests that evolutionary and physiological constraints limit the number of plant ecological strategies. Although there have been recent advances in understanding correlations among plant traits, reproductive traits are rarely considered, despite their key role in shaping plant life-hi
Bees play a key role in maintaining healthy terrestrial ecosystems by pollinating plants. Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are a diverse clade of social bees (>500 species) with a pantropical distribution spanning South and Central America, Africa, India, Australia and Asia. They are garnering increasing attention as commercially-beneficial pollinators of some crops, yet their contribution to t
The use of pesticides and the lack of resources caused by the simplification of landscapes are often cited as the main drivers of the loss of wild bees. Landscape complexity has been shown to interact with local pesticide use in studies of the effect of these factors on the abundance and diversity of insects. But, to date, few studies have simultaneously investigated local and landscape effects on
This chapter presents the mapping of ecosystem service hotspots in the city of Trento, in the Italian Alps, and discusses the possible uses of the results to support the drawing of the new Urban Plan. Hotspots are defined as areas characterized by high levels of provision of multiple services. Particularly, the following ecosystem services were selected: biodiversity support, risk mitigation, miti
In Padova, the municipal department of green infrastructure monitors the urban forest through a continuously updated database that stores information about locations, species, dimensions, health conditions, and management of more than 47,000 trees. The aim of the research presented in this chapter was to support urban forest planning and management by integrating the existing database with informa
A major uncertainty in the estimation of soils acting as net carbon (C) sinks or sources stem from the effects of anthropogenic nitrogen (N) input on the balance between plant C input and soil C loss. In contrast to the generally observed increasing pattern of plant C input, the response of soil C loss to increased N deposition remains elusive, largely due to its large temporal variation. Here sim
Microplastics can perturb microbial nutrient-mining strategies. However, the mechanism by which microplastics affect the resource-acquisition strategies of crops in agricultural systems remains unknown. The nutrient-acquisition potential of crops and microbes was investigated under treatments with two common microplastics (polyethylene [PE] and polyvinyl chloride [PVC]) at 0%, 1%, and 5% (w/w). Di
The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has not halted farmland biodiversity loss. The CAP post-2023 has a new ‘‘Green Architecture,’’ including the new ‘‘Eco-scheme’’ instrument. How can this new Green Architecture help tackle the biodiversity crisis? Through 13 workshops and an online survey, over 300 experts from 23 European Member States addressed this question. From experts’ con
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
Understanding the coupling of nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) cycles of land ecosystems requires understanding microbial element use efficiencies of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Whereas important controls of those efficiencies by microbial community adaptations have been shown at the scale of a soil pore, a simplified representation of those controls is needed at the ecosystem scale. Howev
Microplastics provide a new ecological niche for microorganisms, and the accumulation levels of microplastics (MPs) in terrestrial ecosystems are higher than those in marine ecosystems. Here, we applied the zymography to investigate how MPs — polyethylene [PE], and polyvinyl chloride [PVC]) at two levels (0.01% and 1% soil weight) impacted the spatial distribution of soil hydrolases, nutrient avai
