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AbstractConversion of semi-natural habitats, such as field margins, fallows, hedgerows, grassland, woodlots and forests, to agricultural land could increase agricultural production and help meet rising global food demand. Yet, the extent to which such habitat loss would impact biodiversity and wild species is unknown. Here we survey species richness for four taxa (vascular plants, earthworms, spiders, wild bees) and agricultural yield across a range of arable, grassland, mixed, horticulture, permanent crop, for organic and non-organic agricultural land on 169 farms across 10 European regions. We find that semi-natural habitats currently constitute 23% of land area with 49% of species unique to these habitats. We estimate that conversion of semi-natural land that achieves a 10% increase in agricultural production will have the greatest impact on biodiversity in arable systems and the least impact in grassland systems, with organic practices having better species retention than non-organic practices. Our findings will help inform sustainable agricultural development.

Impacts in the form of innovation and commercialization are essential components of publicly funded research projects. PHUSICOS ("According to nature" in Greek), an EU Horizon 2020 program (H2020) Innovation Action project, aims to demonstrate the use of nature-based solutions (NBS) to mitigate hydrometeorological hazards in rural and mountainous areas. The work program is built around key innovation actions, and each Work Package (WP) leader is specifically responsible for nurturing innovation processes, maintaining market focus, and ensuring relevance for the intended recipients of the project results. Key success criteria for PHUSICOS include up-scaling and mainstream implementation of NBS to achieve broader market access. An innovation strategy and supporting tools for implementing this within PHUSICOS has been developed and key concepts forming the basis for this strategy are presented in this research note.

International journal of hygiene and environmental health 219(3), 252-260 (2016). doi:10.1016/j.ijheh.2016.01.007 Published by Elsevier, München

Abstract Soil microbial communities regulate global biogeochemical cycles and respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions. However, understanding how soil microbial communities respond to climate change, and how this influences biogeochemical cycles, remains a major challenge. This is especially pertinent in alpine regions where climate change is taking place at double the rate of the global average, with large reductions in snow cover and earlier spring snowmelt expected as a consequence. Here, we show that spring snowmelt triggers an abrupt transition in the composition of soil microbial communities of alpine grassland that is closely linked to shifts in soil microbial functioning and biogeochemical pools and fluxes. Further, by experimentally manipulating snow cover we show that this abrupt seasonal transition in wide-ranging microbial and biogeochemical soil properties is advanced by earlier snowmelt. Preceding winter conditions did not change the processes that take place during snowmelt. Our findings emphasise the importance of seasonal dynamics for soil microbial communities and the biogeochemical cycles that they regulate. Moreover, our findings suggest that earlier spring snowmelt due to climate change will have far reaching consequences for microbial communities and nutrient cycling in these globally widespread alpine ecosystems.

Abstract Increasing global food demand will require more food production without further exceeding the planetary boundaries, while at the same time adapting to climate change. We used an ensemble of wheat simulation models, with sink-source improved traits from the highest-yielding wheat genotypes to quantify potential yield gains and associated N requirements. This was explored for current and climate change scenarios across representative sites of major world wheat producing regions. The sink-source traits emerged as climate neutral with 16% yield increase with current N fertilizer applications under both current climate and mid-century climate change scenarios. To achieve the full yield potential, a 52% increase in global average yield under a mid-century RCP8.5 climate scenario, fertilizer use would need to increase fourfold over current use, which would unavoidably lead to higher environmental impacts from wheat production. Our results show the need to improve soil N availability and N use efficiency, along with yield potential.

AbstractHere we assess the impact of geographically dependent (latitude, longitude, and altitude) changes in bioclimatic (temperature, precipitation, and primary productivity) variability on fungal fruiting phenology across Europe. Two main nutritional guilds of fungi, saprotrophic and ectomycorrhizal, were further separated into spring and autumn fruiters. We used a path analysis to investigate how biogeographic patterns in fungal fruiting phenology coincided with seasonal changes in climate and primary production. Across central to northern Europe, mean fruiting varied by approximately 25 d, primarily with latitude. Altitude affected fruiting by up to 30 d, with spring delays and autumnal accelerations. Fruiting was as much explained by the effects of bioclimatic variability as by their large‐scale spatial patterns. Temperature drove fruiting of autumnal ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic groups as well as spring saprotrophic groups, while primary production and precipitation were major drivers for spring‐fruiting ectomycorrhizal fungi. Species‐specific phenology predictors were not stable, instead deviating from the overall mean. There is significant likelihood that further climatic change, especially in temperature, will impact fungal phenology patterns at large spatial scales. The ecological implications are diverse, potentially affecting food webs (asynchrony), nutrient cycling and the timing of nutrient availability in ecosystems.

"Omics" technologies provide coverage of gene, protein and metabolite analysis that is unsurpassed compared with traditional targeted approaches. There are a growing number of examples indicating that profiling approaches can be used to expose significant sources of variation in the composition of crop and model plants caused by genetic background, breeding method, growing environment (site, season), genotype × environment interactions and crop cultural practices to name but a few. Whilst breeders have long been aware of such variation from tried and tested targeted analytical approaches, the broad-scale, so called "unbiased" analysis of the metabolome now possible, offers a major upside to our understanding of the true extent of variation in a plethora of metabolites relevant to human and animal health and nutrition. Metabolomics is helping to provide targets for plant breeding by linking gene expression, and allelic variation to variation in metabolite complement (functional genomics), and is also being deployed to better assess the potential impacts of climate change and reduced input agricultural systems on crop composition. This review will provide examples of the factors driving variation in the metabolomes of crop species.