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The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, cultural change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18), led by Caroline Malone (Queens University Belfast) has explored issues of environmental fragility and Neolithic social resilience and sustainability during the Holocene period in the Maltese Islands. This, the first volume of three, presents the palaeo-environmental story of early Maltese landscapes. The project employed a programme of high-resolution chronological and stratigraphic investigations of the valley systems on Malta and Gozo. Buried deposits extracted through coring and geoarchaeological study yielded rich and chronologically controlled data that allow an important new understanding of environmental change in the islands. The study combined AMS radiocarbon and OSL chronologies with detailed palynological, molluscan and geoarchaeological analyses. These enable environmental reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes and the changing resources exploited by the islanders between the seventh and second millennia bc. The interdisciplinary studies combined with excavated economic and environmental materials from archaeological sites allows Temple landscapes to examine the dramatic and damaging impacts made by the first farming communities on the islands’ soil and resources. The project reveals the remarkable resilience of the soil-vegetational system of the island landscapes, as well as the adaptations made by Neolithic communities to harness their productivity, in the face of climatic change and inexorable soil erosion. Neolithic people evidently understood how to maintain soil fertility and cope with the inherently unstable changing landscapes of Malta. In contrast, second millennium bc Bronze Age societies failed to adapt effectively to the long-term aridifying trend so clearly highlighted in the soil and vegetation record. This failure led to severe and irreversible erosion and very different and short-lived socio-economic systems across the Maltese islands.

Seagrass systems of the Western Pacific region are biodiverse habitats, providing vital services to ecosystems and humans over a vast geographic range. SeagrassNet is a worldwide monitoring program that collects data on seagrass habitats, including the ten locations across the Western Pacific reported here where change at various scales was rapidly detected. Three sites remote from human influence were stable. Seagrasses declined largely due to increased nutrient loading (4 sites) and increased sedimentation (3 sites), the two most common stressors of seagrass worldwide. Two sites experienced near-total loss from of excess sedimentation, followed by partial recovery once sedimentation was reduced. Species shifts were observed at every site with recovering sites colonized by pioneer species. Regulation of watersheds is essential if marine protected areas are to preserve seagrass meadows. Seagrasses in the Western Pacific experience stress due to human impacts despite the vastness of the ocean area and low development pressures.

This dataset currently consists of a single excel file which contains the Scottish Social Accounting Matrix for 2013, with households being disaggregated into quintiles based on their weekly income. The dataset has been used to study the impact of Energy Efficient Scotland programme and associated work that explored how the anticipated impacts may change due to Brexit

Data was either measured in situ in the field (N2O flux, soil moisture, rainfall and air temperature) or samples were taken, processed, and analysed in the laboratory (soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), ammonium, nitrate, microbial community composition and crop yield). N2O flux data was measured on a mobile gas chromatograph (GC) system and integrated to obtain peak areas on Peak490Win10Canabis programme. The times, peak areas and sample ID were then exported into a .CHR file and imported into Flux.NET.3.3 which calculated N2O flux as an output in Excel which was exported as .csv file for deposit in EIDC. N2O flux was used to calculate cumulative N2O flux using trapezoidal integration in Excel and saved in a separate .csv file for deposit in EIDC. Soil moisture was measured on Accilmas with data stored as a .csv on a DataSnap that was downloaded and sorted by treatment and saved as a .csv file. Rainfall and air temperature were downloaded from the weather station as .csv file. Soil pH and EC were recorded manually into a notebook and input into an Excel spreadsheet and exported as a .csv file. Soil ammonium and nitrate content was measured using the microplate method using a programme called Gen5. Date was exported into an Excel spreadsheet and absorbance units used to calculate ammonium/nitrate content in milligrams per kilogram using a calibration curve from a set of standards in an Excel spreadsheet. This was exported as a .csv file. Crop growth data was recorded in the field in a notebook and input into an Excel spreadsheet and exported as a .csv file. Crop yield was recorded in a notebook and input into an Excel spreadsheet and exported as a .csv file. Microbial community composition was measured using 16S gene sequencing on an Illumina MiSeq. This generated raw sequencing reads which were processed using Python and filtered using QIIME v1.3.1. creating asv.count.table.csv of counts of each Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) per sample and taxa.table.csv of the taxonomic lineage for each ASVs. This dataset contains field data on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, microbial community composition, crop yield and growth and soil biochemical properties. The field trial consisted of three different treatments of control, conventional microplastic addition and biodegradable microplastic addition where winter barley was grown. The data presented are from field and laboratory measurements. Data was collected by the data authors. The field trial was carried out from September 2020 to July 2021 at Henfaes Field Centre, UK. Research was funded through NERC Grant NE/V005871/1. Do agricultural microplastics undermine food security and sustainable development in developing countries?

Project: Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) datasets - These data have been generated as part of the internationally-coordinated Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6; see also GMD Special Issue: http://www.geosci-model-dev.net/special_issue590.html). The simulation data provides a basis for climate research designed to answer fundamental science questions and serves as resource for authors of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR6). CMIP6 is a project coordinated by the Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) as part of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). Phase 6 builds on previous phases executed under the leadership of the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and relies on the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) along with numerous related activities for implementation. The original data is hosted and partially replicated on a federated collection of data nodes, and most of the data relied on by the IPCC is being archived for long-term preservation at the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (IPCC DDC) hosted by the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). The project includes simulations from about 120 global climate models and around 45 institutions and organizations worldwide. Summary: These data include the subset used by IPCC AR6 WGI authors of the datasets originally published in ESGF for 'CMIP6.CMIP.CSIRO-ARCCSS.ACCESS-CM2.historical' with the full Data Reference Syntax following the template 'mip_era.activity_id.institution_id.source_id.experiment_id.member_id.table_id.variable_id.grid_label.version'. The Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator Climate Model Version 2 climate model, released in 2019, includes the following components: aerosol: UKCA-GLOMAP-mode, atmos: MetUM-HadGEM3-GA7.1 (N96; 192 x 144 longitude/latitude; 85 levels; top level 85 km), land: CABLE2.5, ocean: ACCESS-OM2 (GFDL-MOM5, tripolar primarily 1deg; 360 x 300 longitude/latitude; 50 levels; top grid cell 0-10 m), seaIce: CICE5.1.2 (same grid as ocean). The model was run by the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Aspendale, Victoria 3195, Australia), ARCCSS (Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science). Mailing address: CSIRO, c/o Simon J. Marsland, 107-121 Station Street, Aspendale, Victoria 3195, Australia (CSIRO-ARCCSS) in native nominal resolutions: aerosol: 250 km, atmos: 250 km, land: 250 km, ocean: 100 km, seaIce: 100 km.

Abstract. An improved understanding of present-day climate variability and change relies on high-quality data sets from the past 2 millennia. Global efforts to model regional climate modes are in the process of being validated against, and integrated with, records of past vegetation change. For South America, however, the full potential of vegetation records for evaluating and improving climate models has hitherto not been sufficiently acknowledged due to an absence of information on the spatial and temporal coverage of study sites. This paper therefore serves as a guide to high-quality pollen records that capture environmental variability during the last 2 millennia. We identify 60 vegetation (pollen) records from across South America which satisfy geochronological requirements set out for climate modelling, and we discuss their sensitivity to the spatial signature of climate modes throughout the continent. Diverse patterns of vegetation response to climate change are observed, with more similar patterns of change in the lowlands and varying intensity and direction of responses in the highlands. Pollen records display local-scale responses to climate modes; thus, it is necessary to understand how vegetation–climate interactions might diverge under variable settings. We provide a qualitative translation from pollen metrics to climate variables. Additionally, pollen is an excellent indicator of human impact through time. We discuss evidence for human land use in pollen records and provide an overview considered useful for archaeological hypothesis testing and important in distinguishing natural from anthropogenically driven vegetation change. We stress the need for the palynological community to be more familiar with climate variability patterns to correctly attribute the potential causes of observed vegetation dynamics. This manuscript forms part of the wider LOng-Term multi-proxy climate REconstructions and Dynamics in South America – 2k initiative that provides the ideal framework for the integration of the various palaeoclimatic subdisciplines and palaeo-science, thereby jump-starting and fostering multidisciplinary research into environmental change on centennial and millennial timescales.