Filtyp
Microfluidic soil chips render optical access to the naturally opaque soil systems and enable direct investigation of microbial growth and interactions in micro-structurally and chemically controlled environments. However, chemical analyses of these interactions at high spatial and temporal resolution are still lacking. Here we propose that the use of advanced microspectroscopy techniques, namely
Although invasive species are recognized as a major threat to freshwaters, little is known about how future climate warming will affect the success of invaders. Ecosystems are also often simultaneously impacted by multiple, potentially interacting, invading species and the management of species invasions can be incredibly difficult. Sensitive methods such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding,
Reconciling biodiversity conservation with agricultural production requires a better understanding of how key ecosystem service providing species respond to agricultural intensification. Carabid beetles and spiders represent two widespread guilds providing biocontrol services. Here we surveyed carabid beetles and spiders in 66 winter wheat fields in four northwestern European countries and analyze
Intra-seasonal variation in abiotic and biotic conditions can have profound consequences for pollinator community compositions and foraging movement, with flow-on effects upon pollination services. Yet, few studies have related such variations to pollination services in crop systems. In a cultivated highbush blueberry system with two primary pollinators — the managed European honey bee and a wild
Context: Agri-environment schemes support land management interventions that benefit biodiversity, environmental objectives, and other public goods. Process-based model simulations suggest the English scheme, as implemented in 2016, increased wild bee pollination services to pollinator-dependent crops and non-crop areas in a geographically heterogeneous manner. Objectives: We investigated which in
1. Challenging calibration of complex models can be approached by using prior knowledge on the parameters. However, the natural choice of Bayesian inference can be computationally heavy when relying on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. When the likelihood of the data is intractable, alternative Bayesian methods have been proposed. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) only requires sampli
While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance estimates were obtained with the use of a Delphi asses
The remaining lifetime of concrete structures subjected to chloride-induced corrosion has been studied in many papers. However, few studies so far consider explicitly experiences from case studies, jointly several corrosion mechanisms and a system perspective. This paper introduces a methodology to evaluate the time-dependent system reliability for concrete bridges subjected to reinforcement corro
For successful climate change adaptation, the distribution of responsibility within society is an important question. While the literature highlights the need for involving both public and private actors, little is still known of how citizens perceive their own and others’ responsibility, let alone the moral groundings for such perceptions. In this paper, we report the results of a survey regardin
Creating typologies of forest owners is a common approach for analyzing and understanding heterogeneity in responses to forest policies and management practice uptake. While many forest owner typologies have been developed, only a few quantitative methods dominate the field with little information on how methodological choice affects outcomes. In this study we compare five methods for quantitative
Transitioning to low-input agricultural systems such as organic farming has been acknowledged as a way to mitigate negative effects of agriculture on biodiversity. However, the speed, magnitude and context dependence of biodiversity recovery after converting to organic farming remain uncertain. In this study, we explored the response of plant communities to time since transition to organic farming
Flowering time is an important phenological trait in plants and a critical determinant of the success of pollination and fruit or seed development, with immense significance for agriculture as it directly affects crop yield and overall food production. Shifts in the growth season, changes in the growth season duration and changes in the production rate are environmental processes (potentially link
The widespread decline of insect pollinators poses a conservation concern and threatens both the pollination of wild plants and crops. Primary drivers of pollinator decline are habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, which to a large extent result from agricultural intensification. Numerous tools have been developed to aid decision-making relating to insect pollinators and pollination in agri
The Paris agreement on climate change requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. One important mitigation strategy, at least in the intermediate future, is the substitution of fossil fuels with bioenergy. However, using agriculture- and forest-derived biomass for energy has sparked controversy regarding both the climate mitigation potential and conflicts with biodiversity conservation.
Ecological intensification has been embraced with great interest by the academic sector but is still rarely taken up by farmers because monitoring the state of different ecological functions is not straightforward. Modelling tools can represent a more accessible alternative of measuring ecological functions, which could help promote their use amongst farmers and other decision-makers. In the case
Invasive species are predicted to adjust their morphological, physiological and life-history traits to adapt to their non-native environments. Although a loss of genetic variation during invasion may restrict local adaptation, introduced species often thrive in novel environments. Despite being founded by just a few individuals, Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera: Apidae) has in less than 30 years suc
Pollinators benefit from increasing floral resources in agricultural landscapes, which could be an underexplored co-benefit of mass-flowering crop cultivation. However, the impacts of mass-flowering crops on pollinator communities are complex and appear to be context-dependent, mediated by factors such as crop flowering time and the availability of other flower resources in the landscape. A synthe
Introduced social insects can be highly invasive outside of their native range. Around the world, the introduction and establishment of the eusocial bumblebee Bombus terrestris (L. 1758) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) has negatively impacted native pollinators and ecosystems. Understanding how morphological variation is linked to environmental variation across invasive ranges can indicate how rapidly speci
