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In 2020, the German government introduced a legislation to phase-out coal mining and combustion by 2038. Expert reports state that this is too late for Germany to meet its obligations from the Paris Agreement. For many people in Lusatia, one of the three coal mining areas in Germany, even the 2038 coal-exit is happening too fast. They fear for their economic and personal future in the coal-mining
The financial assistance department of social service organisations is a department where variations in experiences and perspectives regarding the work are apparent. Social workers in this department are the primary practitioners and enforcers of decisions regarding applicants’ cases, making their perspectives and understanding of the knowledge they use valuable to have insight into, and to gain s
Urban last mile delivery has become an increasingly relevant topic in this day and age, where the urban population is growing at the same time as climate change forces nations to limit emissions. The demand for fast and flexible deliveries in urban areas accelerates, which further escalates the need to optimize these last mile deliveries since they are the most polluting part of the supply chain.
Realistic projection of future climate-carbon (C) cycle feedbacks requires better understanding and an improved representation of the C cycle in permafrost regions in the current generation of Earth system models. Here we evaluated 10 terrestrial ecosystem models for their estimates of net primary productivity (NPP) and responses to historical climate change in permafrost regions in the Northern H
Northern peatlands store nearly one-third of terrestrial carbon (C) stocks while covering only 3% of the global landmass; nevertheless, the drivers of C cycling in these often-waterlogged ecosystems are different from those that control C dynamics in upland forested soils. To explore how multiple abiotic and biotic characteristics of bogs interact to shape microbial activity in a northern, foreste
The Black Death (1347–1352 ce) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources avai
Precise synchronization of paleoclimate records is essential for inferring the dynamics and past evolution of the climate system. For the last glacial period, the time scales of ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been synchronized by the use of cosmogenic radionuclides, atmospheric gas concentrations, and traces of large volcanic eruptions. Here we identify the sulfate depo
This chapter summarizes the processes that are responsible for cosmogenic radionuclide variations in ice cores and the results that can be inferred from these records. The chapter starts with the production in the atmosphere caused by the influx of galactic cosmic ray particles and its modulation by the solar and geomagnetic field. Subsequently, the geochemical behavior of cosmogenic radionuclides
Rapid urbanization in Guangdong Province has severely impacted river systems due to limited understanding of the sustainability of river connectivity and functions. This study applies the Minimum Cumulative Resistance Model (MCRM) to quantify expansion costs of natural and social processes, with their difference defined as the River Ecological Sensitivity (RES) index. Higher RES values indicate th
Large stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulated in the Northern Hemisphere permafrost regions may be vulnerable to climatic warming, but global estimates of SOC distribution and magnitude in permafrost regions still have large uncertainties. Based on multiple high-resolution environmental variables and a compiled soil sample dataset (>3000 soil profiles), we used machine-learning methods to
Future Arctic tundra primary productivity and vegetation community composition will partly be determined by nitrogen (N) availability in a warmer climate. N mineralization rates are predicted to increase in both winter and summer, but because N demand and –mobility varies across seasons, the fate of mineralized N remains uncertain. N mineralized in winter is released in a “pulse” upon snowmelt and
Warmer or cooler spring in northern high latitudes will, for the most part, directly impact gross primary productivity (GPP) of ecosystems, but also carry consequences for the upcoming seasonal GPP. Spatiotemporal patterns of these legacy effects are still largely unknown but important for improving our understanding of how plant phenology is associated with vegetation dynamics. In this study, imp
Winter warming events (WWE) are abrupt and short-lasting (hours-to-days) events of extraordinarily warm weather occurring during wintertime, sometimes accompanied by rainfall (rain on snow events; ROS). Through direct heat transfer and changes in the snowpack properties, these events cause changes in the below-ground thermal regime that, in turn, controls a suite of ecosystem processes ranging fro
This study focuses on the trends and the causes of variation in actual evapotranspiration (AET) around the warming hiatus over China by a comprehensive analysis applying various temporal–spatial methods. It is observed that the annual AET showed a different trend around 2000 for China as a whole. By employing segmented regression analysis for detecting warming hiatus points, high temporal inconsis
Increased wealth and per capita energy use have transformed lives and shaped societies, but energy poverty remains a global challenge. Previous research has shown positive relationships among metrics of health and happiness and economic indices such as income and gross domestic product and between energy use and human development. To our knowledge, however, no comprehensive assessment has examined
Our study aims to increase the understanding about the impacts of potential drivers of pollen richness by using a pollen-vegetation modelling approach. We used the Sutton-Prentice dispersal model implemented in the HUMPOL software suite to explore the effects of factors commonly associated with pollen richness: vegetation diversity (plant richness and evenness), land-cover characteristics (patch r
Tropical mountain cloud forests (TMCF) harbour a high bryophyte (mosses and liverworts) biomass and diversity. Furthermore, the high air humidity makes these forests well suited for bryophyte-associated nitrogen (N2) fixation by cyanobacteria, providing a potentially important source of N input to the ecosystem. However, few studies have assessed bryophyte-associated N input in these ecosystems, a
In this article, we present the first demonstration of the FengYun-3E (FY3E) Global Navigation Satellite System Occultation Sounder II-Reflectometry (GNOS-R) payload's capacity to detect near-surface soil freeze/thaw (F/T) states. This study offers an initial analysis of the F/T retrieval algorithm applied to data collected from the Arctic Circle, underscoring the GNOS-R's potential to deliver lon
Quantitatively assessing the impact of irrigation and groundwater management strategies is crucial for improving water productivity and soil salinity control in cold arid areas with shallow groundwater tables (CAASGT). However, existing studies often focus on specific periods, either the crop growth period or the freeze–thaw period, due to the lack of appropriate models that can accurately represe
Airborne mineral dust is sensitive to climatic changes, but its response to orbital forcing is still not fully understood. Here, we present a reconstruction of dust input to the Subarctic Pacific Ocean covering the past 190 kyr. The dust composition record is indicative of source moisture conditions, which were dominated by precessional variations. In contrast, the dust flux record is dominated by
