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Tropical biodiversity is threatened by the expansion of oil-palm plantations. Reduced-impact farming systems such as agroforests, have been proposed to increase biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In regions where oil-palm plantations already dominate the landscape, this increase can only be achieved through systematic ecological restoration. However, our knowledge about the underlying ecologi
Important intermediate ecosystem services (ES) such as crop pollination and biological control of pests, which underpin the final ES agricultural yields, are mediated by mobile organisms that depend on availability of habitat and its arrangement in the landscape. It has been suggested that landscape-scale management (LSM) of habitat in a multi-farm setting results in higher provisioning of such ES
Plant size has been hypothesized to be a major driver of biotic interactions. However, it is little understood how plant size affects plant mutualists vs. antagonists and the plant's resulting reproductive success. We established a common garden experiment covering an interspecific plant size gradient (from 10 to 130 cm height) across 21 annual Brassicaceae species, thereby standardizing features
Oil palm expansion results in a loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. However, there are factors that influence the severity of these impacts and enhancing biodiversity within plantations is important. In the present study, we examined the role of epiphytes for supporting arthropod communities in oil palm plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. We considered the effects of landscape c
Aim The impact of multiple stressors on biodiversity is one of the most pressing questions in ecology and biodiversity conservation. Here we critically assess how often and efficiently two main drivers of global change have been simultaneously integrated into research, with the aim of providing practical solutions for better integration in the future. We focus on the integration of climate change
Forest degradation, forest fires, and wildlife poaching have devastated biodiversity in Indonesia. To assess the impact of forest degradation and the potential for recovery, we used birds as a proxy for biodiversity and assessed density estimates (hereafter density) in the degraded lowland forest of Harapan Rainforest Ecosystem Restoration Concession (HRF) in Sumatra. In this study, a total of 149
We argue that the current system of agri-environment management in the European Common Agricultural Policy is ineffective at conserving biodiversity in part because it promotes fragmentation instead of collaboration of actors, thus hindering coordinated biodiversity management. Actor fragmentation is reinforced by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in three ways: (1) through targeting individual
Bumblebees are important pollinators for a wide range of crops and wild plants. Performance of their colonies depends on pollen and nectar as food resources, but flowering plants are scarce in modern agricultural landscapes. It is well-known that semi-natural habitats can enhance floral resources and bumblebee abundance, but the impact of different crop types and their heterogeneity at the landsca
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) affects about half of the land area of the EU and allocates close to 40% of the EU’s budget. Consequently, CAP has great potential to guide land management decisions towards multifunctional agricultural landscapes supporting both commodity production and biodiversity. The 2015 “greening” reform was an attempt to increase the multifunctionality of agricultural l
Context: The current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union includes three greening measures, which are partly intended to benefit farmland biodiversity. However, the relative biodiversity effects of the greening measures, including joint effects of landscape context, are not well understood. Objectives: We studied the effects of increasing crop diversity, proportions of production
Context Agricultural transformation and increased land use intensity often lead to simplified landscapes and biodiversity loss. For animals, one possible mechanism underpinning biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes is the disruption of movements. The disruption of movements may explain, for example, why butterfly communities in agricultural landscapes are often dominated by generalist speci
Since the 1960s, product designers, architects, lighting planners, gamers and scientific visualizaiton specialists have craved the ability to work in real-time three-dimensional photorealistic virtual worlds. The authors, one specializing in making computer graphics more convincing and the other focusing on making them faster, present the achievements and challenges in the race for real-time photo
Tropical agroforests are diverse systems where several predator groups shape animal communities and plant-arthropod interactions. Ants, birds and bats in particular can reduce herbivore numbers and thereby increase crop yield. However, the relative importance of these groups, whether they interact, and how this interaction is affected by management and landscape context, is poorly understood. We j
We investigated fungal growth and community composition in buried meshbags, amended with apatite, biotite or hornblende, in Norway spruce (Picea abies) forests of varying nutrient status. Norway spruce needles and soil collected from forests overlying serpentinite had low levels of potassium and phosphorus, those from granite had low levels of magnesium, whereas those from amphibolite had comparab
Tropical forest loss and transformation to agroecosystems have serious impacts on biodiversity, associated ecosystem services and the livelihood of local people. The high crop plant biodiversity and low intensity management in many homegardens could play an important role in the preservation of biodiversity in modified landscapes, as well as sustain food security of low income households. In this
The critical levels for ozone effects on vegetation have been reviewed and revised by the LRTAP Convention. Eight new or revised critical levels based on the accumulated stomatal flux of ozone (POD gamma, the Phytotoxic Ozone Dose above a threshold flux of Y nmol m(-2) PLA s(-1), where PLA is the projected leaf area) have been agreed. For each receptor, data were combined from experiments conducte
Political institutions are keen to use the best available scientific knowledge in decision-making. For environmental policy, relevant scientific evidence can be complex and extensive, so expert judgment is frequently relied upon, without clear links to the evidence itself. We propose a new transparent process for incorporating research evidence into policy decisions, involving independent synopsis
Large plants are often more conspicuous and more attractive for associated animals than small plants, e.g. due to their wider range of resources. Therefore, plant size can positively affect species richness of associated animals, as shown for single groups of herbivores, but studies usually consider intraspecific size differences of plants in unstandardised environments. As comprehensive tests of
The integrated model WORLD and Hubbert's model were used for assessment of future supply for different metals: iron, nickel, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, tantalum, niobium, rhenium, zir- conium, tungsten, cobalt, copper, zinc, lead, aluminium and the technology metals derived from copper ezinc mining (tellurium, selenium, gallium, indium, antimony, bismuth, tin, germanium, selenium). The conne
