How much can we intensify? A first assessment of the effects of land management on the links between biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are crucial for human well-being and they depend on a well-functioning ecosystem and complex interactions among many organisms. However, human activities are resulting in biodiversity loss and changes to ecosystems, which threatens the supply of key services. An international team of 32 scientists, from 22 institutions, led by Dr Maria Felipe-Lucia (UFZ, iDiv) and…

New publication: a clearer picture of the sequence of glacial and interglacial periods During the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s climate has altered between glacial and interglacial states. As such, there have been times in which the transition between the two climate states appeared with either regular or irregular periodicity. AWI researcher Peter Köhler has now discovered that the irregular appearance of interglacials has been more frequent than previously thought. His study makes a significant contribution to our understanding…

Research team led by University of Göttingen investigates agroforestry systems in Madagascar. The cultivation of vanilla in Madagascar provides a good income for small-holder farmers, but without trees and bushes the plantations can lack biodiversity. Agricultural ecologists from the University of Göttingen, in cooperation with colleagues from the University in Antananarivo (Madagascar), have investigated the interaction between prey and their predators in these cultivated areas. To do this, they experimentally released dummy prey in order to determine the activity of…

TU Graz researchers discover new sediment archive for historical climate research. Geological investigations of low-temperature young deposits on the Styrian Erzberg provide paleoclimatology with new data on the earth’s history and its development. How has the climate changed in the course of the earth’s history? Which climatic processes have influenced the earth and its atmosphere? Paleoclimatology seeks answers to such questions in order to better understand climate changes and to derive forecasts for future climate scenarios. So-called sedimentary archives serve…

MIPT researchers Leopold Lobkovsky and Raissa Mazova, and their young colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University have created a model of landslide-induced tsunamis that accounts for the initial location of the landslide body. Reported in Landslides, the model reveals that tsunami height is affected by the coastal slope and the position of the land mass before slipping. The highest and most devastating waves result from onshore landslide masses. This realization will make future predictions of tsunamis more accurate, as…

Use of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture causes an increase in nitrous oxide concentration in the atmosphere – Comprehensive study with KIT participation in Nature. Concentration of dinitrogen oxide – also referred to as nitrous oxide – in the atmosphere increases strongly and speeds up climate change. In addition to CO2 and methane, it is the third important greenhouse gas emitted due to anthropogenic activities. Human-made nitrous oxide emissions are mainly caused by the use of fertilizers in agriculture. Growing demand…

AWI long-term time series shows: due to changed winds and currents in the Southern Ocean, more heat is transported from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the depths of the Weddell Sea Over the past three decades, the depths of the Antarctic Weddell Sea have warmed five times faster than the rest of the ocean at depths exceeding 2,000 metres. This was the main finding of an article just published by oceanographers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar…

Two open-ocean hydrographic stations record 40 years of change in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. New research published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment uses data from two sustained open-ocean hydrographic stations in the North Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda to demonstrate recent changes in ocean physics and chemistry since the 1980s. The study shows decadal variability and recent acceleration of surface warming, salinification, deoxygenation, and changes in carbon dioxide (CO2)-carbonate chemistry that drives ocean acidification. The study utilized datasets from…

A soil scientist from RUDN University discovered the effect of fertilization on the ability of the soil to retain carbon. To understand this mechanism, he and his team studied the movement of organic carbon in the soil of rice paddies. The results of the study can help increase the fertility of the paddies while at the same time reducing the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. An article about the study was published in the Soil Biology and Biochemistry…

Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and international collaborators demonstrated a new method for mapping the location and size of trees growing outside of forests, discovering billions of trees in arid and semi-arid regions and laying the groundwork for more accurate global measurement of carbon storage on land. Using powerful supercomputers and machine learning algorithms, the team mapped the crown diameter – the width of a tree when viewed from above – of more than 1.8…

The entire endemic megafauna of Madagascar and the Mascarene islands Mauritius and Rodrigues was eliminated during the past millennium. To investigate possible drivers of this extinction, an international team of scientists constructed an 8000-year record of the islands’ past climate. Their findings imply that the ecosystem was resilient to prior climate stress but ultimately collapsed with an increase in human activities. The results have now been published in Science Advances. Nearly all of Madagascan megafauna – including the famous Dodo…

The stable fly (Stomoxys calcitrans) is abundantly found worldwide and resembles the common housefly. The biggest difference is that the stable fly has a bayonet-like proboscis for blood sucking. While feeding, these flies can transmit diseases to the host animals, including humans. A Vetmeduni Vienna study has now investigated the extent to which pigs are at risk of disease transmitted by the stable fly. The stable fly is frequently found in animal farms. The blood-sucking insect is anything but harmless,…

Climate change poses a threat to the world’s subsistence crops. Heatwaves, which are likely to intensify according to climate evolution predictions, are generating levels of heat stress that are damaging to agricultural production. Identifying resistant crop varieties is therefore crucial to ensuring people’s food security and farmers’ resilience. To date, many studies have been conducted on varietal improvement, which involves developing and selecting plants with the required characteristics. Few, however, have examined intraspecific diversity, which is defined as the degree…

Despite being championed by a host of celebrity chefs, crayfish ‘trapping’ is not helping to control invasive American signal crayfish, according to new research by UCL and King’s College London. There have been grave concerns within the science community and amongst conservationists that American signal crayfish are wiping out other species of crayfish across Europe – including Britain’s only native crayfish, the endangered white-clawed crayfish. In their new study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the researchers find that…

International MOSAiC expedition successfully completed Researchers from TROPOS and Leipzig University contribute to the success of the largest Arctic expeditio. With the return of the Polarstern, the largest Arctic expedition of all times has come to a successful end. For more than a year, the German research icebreaker travelled in 5 cruise legs with more than 400 people from 20 countries to investigate the epicentre of climate change more precisely than ever before. At the end of the expedition, which…

Pioneering new research has helped geologists solve a long-standing puzzle that could help pinpoint new, untapped concentrations of some the most valuable rare earth deposits. A team of geologists, led by Professor Frances Wall from the Camborne School of Mines, have discovered a new hypothesis to predict where rare earth elements neodymium and dysprosium could be found. The elements are among the most sought after, because they are an essential part of digital and clean energy manufacturing, including magnets in…