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Agricultural intensification has been vital for meeting global food demand but has caused environmental degradation. This has disrupted the ability of soil to provide vital ecosystem services. Organic farming is often thought to conserve and utilise soil ecosystem services, and thus be a more sustainable method of food production than conventional farming. However, evidence for this is equivocal,
Background: Soils contain the largest stock of organic carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystems and changes in soil C stocks may significantly affect atmospheric CO2. A significant part of soil C is present in cultivated soils that occupy about 35 % of the global land surface. Agricultural intensification has led to practices that may decrease soil organic carbon (SOC), and agricultural management has
Recent research has shown that agricultural management affects microbial biomass and community composition. We investigated the functional implications of such effects in terms of barley biomass production and nutrient acquisition, and whether changes in barley nutrient status affected aphid fecundity. Soils were collected from conventional, ley and organic arable fields and used as inocula in a g
In this paper, a novel method for analysing a bird’s song is presented. The song of male great reed warblers is used for developing and testing the methods. A robust method for detecting syllables is proposed and a classification of those syllables as compared to reference syllables is done. The extraction of classification features are based on the use of singular vectors in different time-freque
While addition of managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) improves pollination of many entomophilous crops, it is unknown if it simultaneously suppresses the densities of wild insects through competition. To investigate this, we added 624 honeybee hives to 23 fields of oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) over 2 years and made sure that the areas around 21 other fields were free from honeybee hives. We dem
The majority of terrestrial plants associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which typically facilitate the uptake of limiting mineral nutrients by plants in exchange for plant carbon. However, hundreds of non-photosynthetic plant species—mycoheterotrophs—depend entirely on AM fungi for carbon as well as mineral nutrition. Mycoheterotrophs can provide insight into the operation and regulat
The extent of remediation of contaminated industrial sites depends on spatial heterogeneity of contaminant concentration and spatially explicit risk characterization. We used sequential Gaussian simulation (SGS) and indicator kriging (IK) to describe the spatial distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pH, electric conductivity, particle aggregate distribution, water holding capaci
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, paved the way for a new hybrid global climate governance architecture with both bottom-up and top-down elements. While governments can choose individual climate goals and actions, a global stocktake and a ratcheting-up mechanism have been put in place with the overall aim to ensure that collective efforts will prevent increasing adverse impacts of climate chan
Neonicotinoid insecticides applied to flowering crops can have negative impacts on bees, with implications for crop pollination. To assess if exposure to the neonicotinoid clothianidin via a treated crop (rapeseed) affected bee behaviour, pollination performance (to strawberry), and bee reproduction, we provided each of 12 outdoor cages with rapeseed (autumn-sown plants complemented with a few spr
Globally, biodiversity offsetting is used to balance negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services caused by exploitation. In Sweden, there is an increasing interest in biodiversity offsetting in urban planning. However, there is limited understanding about the use of the concept in a municipal context. This study aims to examine and critically reflect on the uptake and use of biodiversi
Bacteria and fungi, representing two major soil microorganism groups, play an important role in global nutrient biogeochemistry. Biogeographic patterns of bacterial and fungal biomass are of fundamental importance for mechanistically understanding nutrient cycling. We synthesized 1323 data points of phospholipid fatty acid-derived fungal biomass C (FBC), bacterial biomass C (BBC), and fungi:bacter
A common migratory pattern in birds is that northerly breeding populations migrate to more southerly non-breeding sites compared to southerly breeding populations (leap-frog migration). Not only do populations experience differences in migration distances, but also different environmental conditions, which may vary spatiotemporally within their annual cycles, creating distinctive selective pressur
There is a consensus in previous research that economic sanctions have a low level of effectiveness in reaching objectives. Despite this, economic sanctions are consistently used to reach different international goals. In later years, economic sanctions have become one of the most common actions in response to foreign conflict and terrorism. As prior research has stated that economic sanctions wer
This essay deals with the question to which degree the notice of a general meeting of shareholders limits the meetings powers to make decisions. According to the Companies Act (hereinafter referred to as “ABL”) chapter 7 section 24 the notice must propose, in an agenda, the items which are meant to be dealt with at the general meeting. As a general rule the meeting does not have the power to make
Background: Changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks significantly influence the atmospheric C concentration. Agricultural management practices that increase SOC stocks thus may have profound effects on climate mitigation. Additional benefits include higher soil fertility since increased SOC stocks improve the physical and biological properties of the soil. Intensification of agriculture and la
Agricultural soils contribute to human welfare through their generation of manifold ecosystem services such as food security, water quality and climate regulation, but these are degraded by common farming practices. We have developed a roadmap for evaluating the contribution of both private- and public-good ecosystem services generated by agricultural soils to societal welfare. The approach consid
