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Anthropogenic warming is expected to accelerate global soil organic carbon (SOC) losses via microbial decomposition, yet, there is still no consensus on the loss magnitude. In this Perspective, we argue that, despite the mechanistic uncertainty underlying these losses, there is confidence that a strong, positive land carbon–climate feedback can be expected. Two major lines of evidence support net
Changes in nutrient bioavailability due to increased loading of dissolved organic matter (DOM) may impact boreal freshwaters. Yet, the relative bioavailability of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) associated with terrestrial DOM remains poorly understood. We applied short-term bioassays with natural bacterial inocula to determine seasonal variation in bioavailable organic nutrient pools
Wetland bird species have been declining in population size worldwide as climate warming and land-use change affect their suitable habitats. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict changes in range dynamics for 64 non-passerine wetland birds breeding in Europe, including range size, position of centroid, and margins. We fitted the SDMs with data collected for the first European Breed
During the last decade it has been increasingly acknowledged that carbon (C) contained in root exudates can accelerate decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM), a phenomenon known as rhizosphere priming effect (RPE). However, the controlling factors and the role of different soil microorganisms in RPE are not yet well understood. There are some indications that the response of the soil microbial
Feedbacks between the intertwined water and carbon cycles in semi-arid mountain ecosystems can introduce large uncertainties into projections of carbon storage. In this study, we sought to understand the influence of key mechanisms on carbon balances, focusing on an ecosystem whose complex terrain and large interannual variability in precipitation adds to its vulnerability to warming. We applied a
The rhizosphere priming effect (RPE) is increasingly being considered to be an important regulator of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition and nutrient turnover, with potential importance for the global CO2 budget. As a result, studies on the RPE have rapidly increased in number over the last few years. Most of these experiments have been performed using unplanted soil as the control, which cou
Pollinators are critical for food security; however, their contribution to the pollination of locally important crops is still unclear, especially for non-bee pollinators. We reviewed the diversity, conservation status, and role of bee and non-bee pollinators in 83 different crops described either as important for the global food market or of local importance. Bees are the most commonly recorded c
The lakes in the arid or semi-arid regions of western China are more sensitive to climate changes, and lake levels are considered as a direct indicator of regional climate variability. In this study, we combined satellite altimetry data from ICESat-1 with a smaller footprint and higher accuracy (compared to radar altimetry) and CryoSat-2 with a higher resolution in the along-track direction to mon
Leaf pigments are critical indicators of plant photosynthesis, stress, and physiological conditions. Inversion of radiative transfer models (RTMs) is a promising method for robustly retrieving leaf biochemical traits from canopy observations, and adding prior information has been effective in alleviating the “ill-posed” problem, a major challenge in model inversion. Canopy structure parameters, su
The role of precipitation (P) variability with respect to evapotranspiration (ET) and its two components, transpiration (T) and evaporation (E), from savannas continues to draw significant research interest given its relevance to a number of ecohydrological applications. Our study reports on 6 years of measured ET and estimated T and E from a grazed savanna grassland at Welgegund, South Africa. An
Herbaceous aboveground biomass (HAB) is a key indicator of grassland vegetation and indirect estimation tools, such as remote sensing imagery, increase the potential for covering larger areas in a timely and cost-efficient way. Structure from Motion (SfM) is an image analysis process that can create a variety of 3D spatial models as well as 2D orthomosaics from a set of images. Computed from Unman
Strengthening of feed security in the Sahel is urgently needed given the climate change and growing human population. A prerequisite to this is sustainable use of rangeland forage resources for livestock. Many studies have focused on the assessment of rangeland resources during the rainy season, while only a few have focused on the dry season which is the longest and most demanding period for live
Climate warming could destabilise the Earth's largest terrestrial store of reactive carbon (C), by accelerating the decomposition of soil organic matter. A third of that C store resides in the tropics. The potential for tropical soils to sequester C, or to act as an additional source of CO2, will depend on the balance of C inputs and outputs, mediated by the response of soil microbial communities
Aim: The aim was to identify the primary drivers of compositional change in breeding bird assemblages over a 40-year period. Location: Britain. Time period: From 1970 to 2010. Major taxa studied: Birds. Methods: Using morphological trait measurements and a dataset of presence–absence data for British breeding birds surveyed in 10 km × 10 km hectads during two time periods, we calculated temporal t
How will life on Earth and the ecosystems that support it adapt to climate change? Which species will go extinct – or evolve into something new? How will microbes develop further resistance to antibiotics?These kinds of questions, which are of fundamental importance to our way of life, are all a focus for researchers who study evolution and will prove increasingly important as the planet heats up.
Despite our growing understanding of the global carbon cycle, scientific consensus on the drivers and mechanisms that control dissolved organic carbon (DOC) turnover in aquatic systems is lacking, hampered by the mismatch between research that approaches DOC reactivity from either intrinsic (inherent chemical properties) or extrinsic (environmental context) perspectives. Here we propose a conceptu
We measured CO2 and CH4 fluxes using chambers and eddy covariance (only CO2) from a moist moss tundra in Svalbard. The average net ecosystem exchange (NEE) during the summer (9 June–31 August) was negative (sink), with −0.139 ± 0.032 µmol m−2 s−1 corresponding to −11.8 g C m−2 for the whole summer. The cumulated NEE over the whole growing season (day no. 160 to 284) was −2.5 g C m−2. The CH4 flux
Pheromones have become an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional insecticides for pest control. Most current pheromone-based pest control products target lepidopteran pests of high-value crops, as today’s manufacturing processes cannot yet produce pheromones at low enough costs to enable their use for lower-value crops, especially commodity crops. Camelina sativa seeds genetically mo
While the eddy covariance (EC) technique is a well-established method for measuring water fluxes (i.e., evaporation or 'evapotranspiration’, ET), the measurement is susceptible to many uncertainties. One such issue is the potential underestimation of ET when relative humidity (RH) is high (>70%), due to low-pass filtering with some EC systems. Yet, this underestimation for different types of EC sy
