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There is an increasing interest in landscape-scale perspectives of ecosystem functioning to inform policy and conservation decisions. However, we need a better understanding of the stability of ecosystem functioning (e.g. plant productivity) at the landscape scale to inform policy around topics such as global food security. We investigate the role of the ecological and environmental context on lan
Cities are experiencing numerous challenges, adversely affecting human health and wellbeing. Urban green space provides ecosystem services that are important to meet urban challenges. One type of urban green space is private gardens (yards) that make up an essential part of many urban areas. Gardens can support urban biodiversity and provide cultural ecosystem services (CES) to its owner. However,
Lower diversity of plant and animal farmland species are usually reported where cropland has been aggregated into larger fields, which raises prospects of curbing declines in European farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services by halting trends to field size increases associated to agricultural intensification, without having to set aside arable land for conservation. Here, we conside
Pollination is a key ecosystem service for global agriculture but evidence of pollinator population declines is growing. Reliable spatial modelling of pollinator abundance is essential if we are to identify areas at risk of pollination service deficit and effectively target resources to support pollinator populations. Many models exist which predict pollinator abundance but few have been calibrate
Good knowledge on how increasing urbanization affects biodiversity is essential in order to preserve biodiversity in urban green spaces. We examined how urban development affects species richness and total abundance of butterflies as well as the occurrence and abundance of individual species within the Helsinki metropolitan area in Northern Europe. Repeated butterfly counts in 167 separate 1-km-lo
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
Ungulate trampling modifies soils and interlinked ecosystem functions across biomes. Until today, most research has focused on temperate ecosystems and mineral soils while trampling effects on cold and organic matter-rich tundra soils remain largely unknown. We aimed to develop a general model of trampling effects on soil structure, biota, microclimate and biogeochemical processes, with a particul
The cognitive buffer hypothesis poses that brain size evolves to buffer individuals from environmental changes, increasing survival. Jiménez-Ortega et al. (2020) explored this hypothesis using a phylogenetic path analysis and showed that there is a direct causal link between brain size and longevity in birds, even when allometric effects are taken into account. Furthermore, a synergistic model was
Diversified farming systems, for example those that incorporate agroforestry elements, have been proposed as a solution that could maintain and improve multiple ecosystem services. However, habitat diversification in and around arable fields has complex and inconsistent effects on invertebrate crop pests and their natural enemies. This hinders the development of policy recommendations to promote t
In this presentation, I will summarize our findings on the effects of reindeer-induced vegetation transitions on carbon cycling processes and storage. These are monitored in subarctic Northern Norway alongside reindeer pasture rotation fences. At these sites, a yearly pulse of intensive reindeer grazing has turned the vegetation from shrub-dominated towards graminoid-dominated. We monitor the deve
In France, illegal hunting of the endangered ortolan bunting Emberiza hortulana has been defended for the sake of tradition and gastronomy. Hunters argued that ortolan buntings trapped in southwest France originate from large and stable populations across the whole of Europe. Yet, the European Commission referred France to the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) in December 2016 for infrin
The use of coal, oil and gas, and land use change, has caused emissions of carbon dioxide which equals to about 550 billion tons of carbon. Half of these have accumulated in the atmosphere, which warms our climate with profound effects on natural and human systems. The other half has been absorbed by the oceans and the biosphere. Climate change affects the strength of these ‘ carbon sinks’. Knowle
This book is meant as a guide to the evidence available for different conservation interventions and as a starting point in assessing their effectiveness. The assessments are based on the available evidence for the target group of species for each intervention. The assessment may therefore refer to different species or habitat to the one(s) you are considering. Before making any decisions about im
Next generation targeted sequencing of HLA-DRB1, -DRB3, -DRB4 and -DRB5 (abbreviated as DRB345) provides high resolution of functional variant positions to investigate their associations with type 1 diabetes risk and with autoantibodies against insulin (IAA), GAD65 (GADA), IA-2 (IA-2A) or ZnT8 (ZnT8A). To overcome exceptional DR sequence complexity due to high polymorphisms and extended linkage-di
Since 1995, agri-environmental support partly funded by the EU has formed the core of Finland’s agri-environmental policy. This system has had a variety of impacts on the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Today’s agri-environmental support is one of the packages included in the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland (2007–2013/2014), which both in itself and through
Looking into the topic of cloud sourcing, at first glance it might be seen as an off the shelf pay per use service that is easy and fast to adopt for most companies. Although in practice not all companies succeed with cloud sourcing. Previous research shows that cloud sourcing entails risks especially in the adoption phase in terms of security, trust, data loss, and transparency among others. The
Agricultural landscape homogenization has detrimental effects on biodiversity and key ecosystem services. Increasing agricultural landscape heterogeneity by increasing seminatural cover can help to mitigate biodiversity loss. However, the amount of seminatural cover is generally low and difficult to increase in many intensively managed agricultural landscapes. We hypothesized that increasing the h
The Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol display a broad international consensus for biodiversity conservation and equitable benefit sharing. Yet, the Aichi biodiversity targets show a lack of progress and thus indicate a need for additional action such as enhanced and better targeted financial resource mobilization. To date, no global financial burden-sharing instrument has
