Filtyp
This project is designed as a typical consultancy work for Environmental Engineering students at the Faculty of Engineering (LTH), Lund University, Sweden. It gives students a feeling of a possible future work by being a practical training in solving a complex environmental problem involving hydrological and ecological challenges. Additionally, the project work provides training of critical thinki
In 2022, the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) adopted resolution 5/14, giving mandate to UN Member States to start negotiations toward an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. This report delves into the pre-session submissions by states and coalitions for the second (INC-2) and third (INC-3) rounds of negotiations, held in 2023. Once the contents of the docume
Sustaining yields for smallholder perennial agriculture under a rapidly changing climate regime may require consideration of landscape features and on-farm management decisions in tandem. Optimising landscape and management may not be possible for maximising yields in any one year but maintaining heterogeneous landscapes could be an important climate adaptation strategy. In this study, we observed
This article investigates the impact of climate policies on electoral support for governing parties in Sweden through mixed methods combining a sentiment analysis of news articles and regression discontinuities of voter support over time. The regression discontinuity models indicate that the effects of climate policies on government support are not robust and are spurious across different model sp
Increase in wildfires has changed parts of the landscape and ecosystems of the Mediterranean region. By using the firecapes approach, this paper aims to establish a connection between wildfires as a natural phenomenon and the political dynamics surrounding land ownership, knowledge, and mitigation. Theoretically, we apply political ecology to contextualize firescapes by examining the historical pr
A long-standing question in evolutionary biology is how historical biogeographic processes have shaped the current diversity of organisms, especially for highly diverse groups. We study the diversification dynamics and biogeographic processes of one of the most diverse families of Lepidoptera, Geometridae, with over 24,000 described species and a worldwide distribution. Despite the cosmopolitan di
The nitrogen (N) cycle is a familiar concept. As is the much simplified, often diagrammatic, representation commonly used to illustrate the scale, importance and interconnectedness of this global cycle that links air, water, rocks and living beings. However, in this representation, humans are often presented as a seemingly minor entity or not explicitly shown at all. This can obscure the idea that
Aim: To determine how species richness gradients—commonly considered universal—vary across the phylogenetic hierarchy of birds and mammals, and to uncover how clade age and size predetermine the gradients. Location: Global. Time Period: Last 120 million years. Taxa Studied: Birds and mammals (~15,000 species). Methods: We used large-scale phylogenies of birds and mammals and captured the species r
High-altitude regions are highly vulnerable to impacts of climate change because the retreat of glaciers and snow impacts ecosystems, local livelihoods, cultural practices, and values. Although glacier change is widely documented within the natural sciences, limited focus has been given to the lived experiences of emerging challenges in changing glacier environments. We used a mixed methods approa
Plant functional traits are fundamental to ecosystem dynamics and Earth system processes, but their global characterization is limited by available field surveys and trait measurements. Recent expansions in biodiversity data aggregation—including vegetation surveys, citizen science observations, and trait measurements—offer new opportunities to overcome these constraints. Here we demonstrate that
Groundwater-dependent vegetation (GDV) plays a vital role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Mediterranean biome but is increasingly threatened by climate and land use change. Large-scale GDV mapping in arid regions is critical for effective conservation and water resource management but remains challenging due to limited ground-truth data and the lack of high-resolution rem
The search for predictors of plant diversity has challenged scientists for decades. Here we identify intense photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) as a major factor constraining plant species richness in global grasslands. We show that the strength of the negative relationship between species richness and PAR increases with increasing elevation and that species richness is more strongly correl
Topography and historical range expansion has formed a so-called migratory divide between two subspecies of willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) in central Scandinavia. The autumn migratory directions of individuals assigned molecularly to both subspecies and possible hybrids were recorded using orientation cage experiments in southwest and southeast Sweden. We found pronounced differences in w
Monitoring the aquatic environment and the life of free-floating organisms remains on the borderline of our technical capabilities. Therefore, our insights into aquatic habitats, such as, abundance and behavior of organisms are limited. In order to improve our understanding of aquatic life, we have developed a low-cost inelastic hyperspectral lidar with unlimited focal depth and enough sensitivity
A thermophilic bacterial strain, Geobacillus sp. ZGt-1, isolated from Zara hot spring in Jordan, was capable of inhibiting the growth of the thermophilic G. stearothermophilus and the mesophilic Bacillus subtilis and Salmonella typhimurium on a solid cultivation medium. Antibacterial activity was not observed when ZGt-1 was cultivated in a liquid medium; however, immobilization of the cells in aga
Across a range of organisms, related species or even populations of the same species exhibit strikingly different scales and patterns of movement. A significant proportion of the phenotypic variance in migratory traits is genetic, but the genes involved in shaping these phenotypes are still unknown. Although recent achievements in genomics will evolve migratory genetics research from a phenotypic
2. Using the software STRUCTURE 2.2, we found two distinct genotype clusters present in different frequencies at all study sites. The frequencies of these genotypic clusters varied significantly between years within the same site. Remarkably few individuals were of mixed ancestry, indicating that some isolating mechanisms are present. Twenty-seven mtDNA haplotypes were identified but they showed n
Many recent studies have found genetically differentiated populations in microorganisms despite potentially high dispersal. We designed a study to specifically examine the importance of physical dispersal barriers, i.e. geographic distance and lack of hydrological connectivity, in restricting gene flow and enhancing divergence in limnic microorganisms. We focused on the nuisance microalga Gonyosto
Sexual selection of high-quality mates can conflict with species recognition if traits that govern intraspecific mate preferences also influence interspecific recognition. This conflict might be resolved by developmental plasticity and learned mate preferences, which could drive preference divergence in populations that differ in local species composition. We integrate field and laboratory experim
