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The article aims to illustrate the multifaceted interlink between climate change, heat, and human rights and discuss in what ways international human rights law may be used to support the development and implementation of policy at various levels to limit adverse effects of climate change on humans in general and right to health in particular. This is done by overviewing the possibilities and limi
Local biodiversity can be expected to be similar worldwide if environmental conditions are similar. Here, we hypothesize that tropical ant communities with different types of regional species pools but at similar habitat types in Brazil and Indonesia show similar diversity patterns at multiple spatial scales, when comparing (1) the relative contribution of alpha and beta diversity to gamma diversi
The ecosystem services (ES) concept refers to benefits that humanity receives from nature. Investigating how this concept has been embraced within urban planning is important when assessing the awareness of human dependence on natural functions and the potential for the ES concept to increase this awareness. We analyzed planning documents from three small and three large municipalities in southern
The conversion of tropical rainforest to agricultural systems such as oil palm alters biodiversity across a large range of interacting taxa and trophic levels. Yet, it remains unclear how direct and cascading effects of land-use change simultaneously drive ecological shifts. Combining data from a multi-taxon research initiative in Sumatra, Indonesia, we show that direct and cascading land-use effe
Presence of insects in agricultural habitat is affected by the surrounding circumstances such as the complexity and structure of landscape. Landscape structure is often formed as a consequence of the fragmentation of semi-natural habitat, which can negatively affect species richness and abundance of insects. This study was aimed to study the effect of complexity and structure of landscape on the d
Farmers are exposed to substantial weather and market related risks. Rational farmers seek to avoid large losses. Future climate change and energy price fluctuations therefore make adaptating to increased risks particularly important for them. Managing soil natural capital—the capacity of the soil to generate ecosystem services of benefit to farmers—has been proven to generate the double dividend:
The climate impact of deforestation depends on the relative strength of several biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects. In addition to affecting the exchange of carbon dioxide (CO2) and moisture with the atmosphere and surface albedo, vegetation emits biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that alter the formation of short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), which include aerosol, ozone and met
Herbivory on liverworts is rarely reported. We studied the effects of feeding by larvae of the sciarid fly Scatopsciara cunicularius on the growth of the thalloid liverwort Marchantia polymorpha at two different constant temperatures, 12°C and 22°C. Larvae reared at the lower temperature fed slower and over a longer period of time, which resulted in more damage and a greater reduction in the growt
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
Tropical lowland rainforests are increasingly threatened by the expansion of agriculture and the extraction of natural resources. In Jambi Province, Indonesia, the interdisciplinary EFForTS project focuses on the ecological and socio-economic dimensions of rainforest conversion to jungle rubber agroforests and monoculture plantations of rubber and oil palm. Our data confirm that rainforest transfo
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
Agricultural landscapes are characterised by dynamic crop mosaics changing in composition and configuration over space and time. Although semi-natural habitat has been often shown to contribute to pest biological control, the effects of increasing landscape heterogeneity with cropland have been disregarded. Here, we examine how cereal aphids, their enemies and biological control are affected by th
Ants are abundant in natural and managed tropical ecosystems and can have an impact on herbivorous arthropods, as well as plant pathogens. Although it has been shown for plants that the diversity of communities can result in improved ecosystem functioning, it remains uncertain how the species richness of ants affects multiple ecosystem services and disservices. In the present study, we used experi
Several aspects describing the state of the atmosphere in the North Sea region are considered in this chapter. These include large-scale circulation, means and extremes in temperature and precipitation, cyclones and winds, and radiation and clouds. The climate projections reveal several pronounced future changes in the state of the atmosphere in the North Sea region, both in the free atmosphere an
Atmospheric pollution has implications for the health and diversity of temperate forests covering large parts of central Europe. Long-term elevated anthropogenic deposition of nitrogen (N) is driving forest ecosystems from the limitation by N to other nutrients and is found to affect tree health and ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF), which most trees depend on for nutrient uptake. However, the consequen
Ongoing global warming not only involves changes in temperature and the global mean; it affects more or less every part of the climate. Regional temperature changes are often greater or smaller than corresponding changes in the global mean. In some cases the direction of change may also be different. For example, temperature changes are higher over land than over the ocean. Precipitation increases
We present extensions to the agent-based agricultural policy simulator (AgriPoliS) model that make it possible to simulate the consequences of agricultural policy reform on farmers' land use decisions and concomitant impacts on landscape mosaic, biodiversity and ecosystem services in a real agricultural region. An observed population of farms is modelled as a multi-agent system where individual fa
Iron (Fe) is a key element, strongly influencing the biogeochemistry of soils, sediments and waters, but the knowledge about the variety of Fe species present in these systems is still limited. In this work we have used X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to study the speciation of Fe in soils and waters from a boreal catchment in northern Sweden. The aim was to better understand the controls of F
Owing to complex direct and indirect effects, impacts of higher trophic levels on plants is poorly understood. In tropical agroecosystems, ants interact with crop mutualists and antagonists, but little is known about how this integrates into the final ecosystem service, crop yield. We combined ant exclusion and introduction of invasive and native-dominant species in cacao agroecosystems to test wh
