• Energy Research
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Although renewable energy production is widely accepted as clean, it is not necessarily environmental neutral since, for example, wind turbines kill large numbers of airborne animals such as bats. Consequently, stakeholders involved in the planning and operation of wind turbines are often in conflict when trying to reconcile both goals, namely, promoting wind energy production and protecting bats. We report the responses to an online questionnaire sent out to stakeholders to assess this conflict. More than 80% of stakeholders acknowledged the conflict between bat conservation and wind energy production; yet, the majority was confident about solutions and all desired an ecologically sustainable energy transition. All groups, except members of the wind energy sector, disagreed with the statements that wind energy production is of higher priority than biodiversity protection and that global warming is more critical than the biodiversity crisis. All groups agreed that more measures have to be taken to make wind energy production ecologically sustainable and that the society should be included to pay for the implementation of these measures. All stakeholders except for members of the wind energy sector agreed on that revenue losses from wind energy production and delays in the transition process should be acceptable to resolve the green–green dilemma. Among offered choices, most stakeholders suggested engaging in more research, improving the efficiency of energy use and implementing context dependent cut-in speed during wind turbine operation. The suggestion to weaken the legal protection of wildlife species was dismissed by all, underlining the consensus to protect biodiversity.

AbstractAs evidenced by past climatic refugia, locations projected to harbor remnants of present‐day climates may serve as critical refugia for current biodiversity in the face of modern climate change. We mapped potential climatic refugia in the future across North America, defined as locations with increasingly rare climatic conditions. We identified these locations by tracking projected changes in the size and distribution of climate analogs over time. We used biologically derived thresholds to define analogs and tested the impacts of dispersal limitation with 4 distances to limit analog searches. We identified at most 12% of North America as potential climatic refugia. Refugia extent varied depending on the analog threshold, dispersal distance, and climate projection. However, in all cases refugia were concentrated at high elevations and in topographically complex regions. Refugia identified using different climate projections were largely nested, suggesting that identified refugia were relatively robust to climate‐projection selection. Existing conservation areas cover approximately 10% of North America and yet protected up to 25% of identified refugia, indicating that protected areas disproportionately include refugia. Refugia located at lower latitudes (≤40°N) and slightly lower elevations (approximately 2500 m) were more likely to be unprotected. Based on our results, a 23% expansion of the protected‐area network would be sufficient to protect the refugia present under all 3 climate projections we explored. We believe these refugia are high conservation priorities due to their potential to harbor rare species in the future. However, these locations are simultaneously highly vulnerable to climate change over the long term. These refugia contracted substantially between the 2050s and the 2080s, which supports the idea that the pace of climate change will strongly determine the availability and effectiveness of refugia for protecting today's biodiversity.

AbstractRelatively little is known about how plant–soil feedbacks (PSFs) may affect plant growth in field conditions where factors such as herbivory may be important. Using a potted experiment in a grassland, we measured PSFs with and without aboveground insect herbivory for 20 plant species. We then compared PSF values to plant landscape abundance. Aboveground herbivory had a large negative effect on PSF values. For 15 of 20 species, PSFs were more negative with herbivory than without. This occurred because plant biomass on “home” soils was smaller with herbivory than without. PSF values with herbivory were correlated with plant landscape abundance, whereas PSF values without herbivory were not. Shoot nitrogen concentrations suggested that plants create soils that increase nitrogen uptake, but that greater shoot nitrogen values increase herbivory and that the net effect of positive PSF and greater aboveground herbivory is less aboveground biomass. Results provided clear evidence that PSFs alone have limited power in explaining species abundances and that herbivory has stronger effects on plant biomass and growth on the landscape. Our results provide a potential explanation for observed differences between greenhouse and field PSF experiments and suggest that PSF experiments need to consider important biotic interactions, like aboveground herbivory, particularly when the goal of PSF research is to understand plant growth in field conditions.

Shifts in rainfall patterns and increasing temperatures associated with climate change are likely to cause widespread forest decline in regions where droughts are predicted to increase in duration and severity. One primary cause of productivity loss and plant mortality during drought is hydraulic failure. Drought stress creates trapped gas emboli in the water transport system, which reduces the ability of plants to supply water to leaves for photosynthetic gas exchange and can ultimately result in desiccation and mortality. At present we lack a clear picture of how thresholds to hydraulic failure vary across a broad range of species and environments, despite many individual experiments. Here we draw together published and unpublished data on the vulnerability of the transport system to drought-induced embolism for a large number of woody species, with a view to examining the likely consequences of climate change for forest biomes. We show that 70% of 226 forest species from 81 sites worldwide operate with narrow (<1 megapascal) hydraulic safety margins against injurious levels of drought stress and therefore potentially face long-term reductions in productivity and survival if temperature and aridity increase as predicted for many regions across the globe. Safety margins are largely independent of mean annual precipitation, showing that there is global convergence in the vulnerability of forests to drought, with all forest biomes equally vulnerable to hydraulic failure regardless of their current rainfall environment. These findings provide insight into why drought-induced forest decline is occurring not only in arid regions but also in wet forests not normally considered at drought risk.

AbstractIntraspecific variation in genotypically determined traits can influence ecosystem processes. Therefore, the impact of climate change on ecosystems may depend, in part, on the distribution of plant genotypes. Here we experimentally assess effects of climate warming and excess nitrogen supply on litter decomposition using 12 genotypes of a cosmopolitan foundation species collected across a 2100 km latitudinal gradient and grown in a common garden. Genotypically determined litter‐chemistry traits varied substantially within and among geographic regions, which strongly affected decomposition and the magnitude of warming effects, as warming accelerated litter mass loss of high‐nutrient, but not low‐nutrient, genotypes. Although increased nitrogen supply alone had no effect on decomposition, it strongly accelerated litter mass loss of all genotypes when combined with warming. Rates of microbial respiration associated with the leaf litter showed nearly identical responses as litter mass loss. These results highlight the importance of interactive effects of environmental factors and suggest that loss or gain of genetic variation associated with key phenotypic traits can buffer, or exacerbate, the impact of global change on ecosystem process rates in the future.

Since the Paris Agreement entered into force, climate neutrality and associated compensation schemes are even more on the agenda of politics and companies. Challenges of existing offsetting schemes include the rather theoretical saving scenario and the limited scope of considered impacts. To address some of these limitations, this paper proposes the Circular Ecosystem Compensation (CEC) approach based on monetization of LCA results and Ecosystem Valuation. CEC consists of six steps: i) carrying out a life cycle assessment, ii) reducing the environmental impacts, iii) determining environmental costs applying monetization methods, iv) deriving the environmental value based on restoration costs methods, v) implementing the ecological restoration of ecosystems and vi) monitoring of the renaturation measures. Thus, CEC allows to offset a broad set of environmental impacts beyond climate change (e.g., acidification, eutrophication, land use, water use) in a real ecosystem by renaturation of degraded ecosystems. Environmental burdens and environmental benefits are balanced on a monetary basis, as the renaturation measures are monetized and used to compensate the monetized LCA results, e.g., of a product, organization or individual. In a case study, the implementation of the approach is presented to show the practical implementation of the CEC. The challenges of CEC include the integration of further impact categories, the availability of up-to-date and reliable monetization methods, the asynchrony and time-lag of the compensation from an ecosystem and biodiversity perspective and the proof of cost-efficiency of the renaturation measures. It is further discussed, if CEC can be a step beyond “climate neutrality” towards “environmental neutrality”. The proposed approach should be further tested and is intended to foster progress in more comprehensive and robust offsetting of environmental impacts beyond climate change.