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The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has failed to achieve its aim of preserving European farmland biodiversity, despite massive investment in subsidies to incentivise environmentally-beneficial farming practices. This failure calls into question the design of the subsidy schemes, which are intended to either function as a safety net and make farming profitable or compensate farmers
Microbial diversity and their activity in the rhizosphere and bulk soil areas were measured in a long-term field trial (started in 1956), where maize has been grown for the last 20 years with and without N fertilisation. Various microbial groups and their substrate feeding strategies (i.e. demonstrating activities) were identified through phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) analysis and their δ13C va
Although there are some epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) of insulin resistance, most of them did not replicate their findings and are focused in populations of European ancestry limiting the generalizability. In EPIPREG (294 Europeans and 162 South Asians), we conducted an EWAS of insulin resistance in maternal peripheral blood leukocytes, with replication in Born in Bradford (n=879; 430
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
Wild insect pollinators are essential to cultivated and natural ecosystems globally. Today, many pollinator species are declining. One reason is a general lack of flowering habitats at landscape scales. However, urban areas, including private gardens, may provide flowers, and constitute beneficial habitats for pollinators. Here, we evaluate the ecological outcomes of a citizen science campaign run
Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon (14C) techniques were employed to investigate the absolute ages of alluvial sediments in Podhale in the West Carpathians, southern Poland. This is an approach to (i) testing the credibility of the above dating methods by their reciprocal age control and (ii) further implications to regional geochronology and to dating campaigns of alluvial se
Phosphorus (P) availability affects the response of terrestrial ecosystems to environmental and climate change (e.g., elevated CO2), yet the magnitude of this effect remains uncertain. This uncertainty arises mainly from a lack of quantitative understanding of the soil biological and geochemical P cycling processes, particularly the P exchange with soil mineral surfaces, which is often described b
Denna rapport är en sammanställning och analys av kunskapsläget när det gäller ekosystembaserade metoder för att minska utsläpp och öka upptag av koldioxid hos brukade marker i Skåne. Med fokus på markanvändning och skötselstrategier inom jordbruk och skogsbruk, samt användning av biokol, analyseras och bedöms potentialen för att inom Skånes gränser öka upptag respektive minska utsläpp av kol från
Climate change and an increasing urbanisation create pressure on cities in terms of extreme weather events, deteriorated public health and wellbeing and a loss of biodiversity. Strengthening the provision of urban green and blue space (UGS) and ecosystem services (ES) is one way to reduce vulnerability and improve living conditions, and ’greening’ is often highlighted as an important path to creat
The Oslofjord subsea road tunnel is a unique environment in which the typically anoxic marine deep subsurface is exposed to oxygen. Concrete biodeterioration and steel corrosion in the tunnel have been linked to the growth of iron- and manganese-oxidizing biofilms in areas of saline water seepage. Surprisingly, previous 16S rRNA gene surveys of biofilm samples revealed microbial communities domina
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
Generating scientific advice to environmental management involves assessments with complex models, sparse data, and challenging empirical experiments, necessitating the integration of expert judgment with data into scientific models. To integrate expert judgement, assessors might elicit judgement by experts as quantiles, find a probability distribution that matches the quantiles, and add this info
