Reforesting and managing ecosystems have been proposed as ways to mitigate global warming and offset anthropogenic carbon emissions. Photo by: Pixabay

Natural solutions have been proposed to stop and reverse the steady rise in CO2 in the atmosphere. Theses natural solutions nclude planting a tree in our back yard or buying carbon credits, that finance the planting of millions of trees and restoring ecosystems

In a new study in the journal Global Change Biology authors provide their perspective on how well plants and ecosystems sequester carbon. Their analyses is based on 1163 site-years of direct eddy covariance measurements of gross and net carbon fluxes from 155 sites across the globe. The ability of individual plants and ecosystems to mine carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as defined by rates and cumulative amounts, are limited by laws of physics and ecological principles. “Consequently, the rates and amount of net carbon uptake are slow and low compared to the rates and amounts of carbon dioxide we release by fossil fuels combustion. Furthermore, managing ecosystems to sequester carbon can also cause unintended consequences to arise”, said Prof. Dennis Baldocchi from University of California, Berkeley.

In this opinion piece, authors articulate a series of key take-home points:

– First, the potential amount of carbon an ecosystem can assimilate on an annual basis scales with absorbed sunlight, which varies with latitude, leaf area index and available water.

– Second, efforts to improve photosynthesis will come with the cost of more respiration.

– Third, the rates and amount of net carbon uptake are relatively slow and low, compared to the rates and amounts and rates of carbon dioxide we release by fossil fuels combustion.

– Fourth, huge amounts of land area for ecosystems will be needed to be an effective carbon sink to mitigate anthropogenic carbon emissions.

– Fifth, the effectiveness of using this land as a carbon sink will depend on its ability to remain as a permanent carbon sink.

– Sixth, converting land to forests or wetlands may have unintended costs that warm the local climate, such a changing albedo and soil moisture, increasing surface roughness or releasing other greenhouse gases.

Authors point out that they do not argue that planting forests and deep-rooted perennial grasslands or restoring peatlands and wetlands should not be part of the climate mitigation portfolio. Prof. Penuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona argues that “Given the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the relatively low potential of converting solar energy to stored carbon, the vast amount of land needed to be significant carbon sinks and the risk for unintended consequences, we want the reader to consider that political capital and resources may be better aimed towards more effective and immediate solutions, like reducing and eliminating carbon emissions that are associated with fossil fuel combustion”.

Reference: Baldocchi, D., Peñuelas, J. 2019. The Physics and Ecology of Mining Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere by Ecosystems. Global Change Biology 2019

The 2015 climate summit in Paris galvanized global commitments to an ambitious yet vaguely defined goal of climate stabilization. The Paris Agreement is based on emission scenarios that move from a sluggish phase-out of fossil fuels to largescale late-century negative emissions. At the same time, some scientists argue that the model based scenarios with 1.5 °C and even 2 °C temperature change targets seem unattainable and detached from current political realities. Alternative pathways of early deployment of negative emission technologies need to be considered to ensure that climate targets are reached safely and sustainably

In a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change, authors scrutinize the dominant climate mitigation scenario archetype that projects low global decarbonization rates in the first half of this century followed by large negative emissions in the second half, thanks to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies. Authors call this approach to mitigation the ‘Late- Century CDR’ scenario archetype.

This archetype is consistent with nearly all of 2 °C scenarios covered by the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), 87% of which deploy CDR technologies in the second half of the century. The authors consider that, following this predominant archetype might not only turn out to be a risky strategy, but may lead to significant environmental damages and may also be economically inefficient. In Late-Century CDR scenarios, CDR mostly in the form of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) typically removes the equivalent of 20 years of current GHG emissions to reverse the temporary GHG budget overshoot that is tolerated earlier on. The authors point out that the challenges and uncertainties associated with CDR are well described in the scientific literature, yet the scientific and political debate addressing the consequences of large-scale and late deployment of CDR as a backstop strategy is only at an early stage.

Authors argue that a new set of scenarios needs to be generated and analysed to inform the policy process on robust timing of climate mitigation, with the aim of avoiding negative side effects. “Essentially, three attributes characterize such budget-constrained scenarios: the timing and magnitude of global peak net emissions and the speed of decline thereafter; the maximum amount of allowable deployment of biomass-based CDRs; and an admissible risk threshold associated with a temperature overshoot”, noted Prof. Obersteiner from the Ecosystems Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Laxenburg, Austria.

The study concludes that the timing of mitigation actions, in particular of negative emission technologies, needs to be urgently revisited in the analyses of ambitious climate targets. They argue that considerations of both intergenerational equity and climate/environment safety motivate early and moderate — rather than extreme — deployment of negative emission technologies as well as a timely peak in net carbon emissions as early as 2020. As a consequence all of the near-term and mid-century net emission reduction, targets should be, according to the authors, reformulated to include targets of early action on CDR technology portfolios.

“Transforming the 570 million farms to be climate smart and incentivizing 1.6 billion people who economically depend on forests to become early movers in No Overshoot and Minimize CDR scenarios is a formidable global policy challenge. We call for a discourse on effective strategies, starting with more detailed global gap assessments of the archetypes, and then mainstreaming the gained insights into Nationally Determined Contributions and implementation plans”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Journal Reference: Obersteiner, M., Bednar, J., Wagner, F., Gasser, T., Ciais, P., Forsell, N., Frank, S., Havlik, P., Valin, H., Janssens, I.A., Peñuelas, J., Schmidt-Traub, G. 2018. How to spend a dwindling greenhouse gas budget. Nature Climate Change 8, 7-10. doi: 10.1038/s41558-017-0045-1

Natural ecosystems currently remove on average each year an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to about one third of human-caused carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production. There are numerous evidences which show that the efficiency of natural land ecosystems to absorb the increasing fossil fuel and cement emissions does not keep their path.

In a new study in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution authors hypothesize that the progressive long term weakening of the natural land sink relative to fossil fuel CO₂ emissions marks the beginning of a transition from a vegetation fertilization-dominated period to a period dominated by nutrient and climate constraints on plant growth, and larger climate change impacts (e.g., heatwaves).

There are many unknowns in the timing of this transition, so in light of the recent Paris COP21 agreement, a better understanding of climate change impacts on carbon stocks remains paramount to understand the level of climate mitigation required to achieve agreed temperature goals, indicates Prof Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Human fertilization changes productivity and carbon residence in ecosystems

Human activities result in increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, N inputs to ecosystems and temperature. This leads to enhanced metabolism of organism and lengthening the growing seasons. Plants can consequently grow more. The magnitude of carbon sinks and their duration depend both on the rate of increase of carbon inputs and on the residence time of the carbon being taken up by ecosystems explain Drs Shilong Piao from Academy of Sciences in Pekin and Jordi Sardans from CREAF in Barcelona.

Authors point out that several studies realized at global scale, in all biomes, suggest that trends of increasing sinks may be slowing down. A remaining question is whether in regions where carbon sinks may be slowing down, this is due to stalling productivity or to reducing residence times.

Likely limitations for enhancement of carbon sinks

The anthropogenic increases in CO₂ and atmospheric nitrogen deposition are not matched by a similar increase in the inputs of other key nutrients such as phosphorus (P) and/or potassium (K). Current evidence suggests an overall shortage of P which will act as a limiting factor to meet the increasing demand for plant growth. “A better understanding of the factors that regulate exchanges between pools of “available” and “unavailable” soil P is critically needed”, said Prof. Ivan Janssens from University of Antwerp.

The higher nocturnal temperatures enhance night respiration, Prof. Josep Canadell pointed out. Moreover, severe regional heatwaves are also likely to become more frequent in a changing climate, and their negative impact on terrestrial carbon sequestration may thus also become important. “For example, the 2003 heatwave decreased European gross primary productivity by 30%, which resulted in a strong anomalous net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; this effect is the equivalent of reversing four years of net ecosystem carbon sequestration in the European continent”, said Prof. Philippe Ciais from LSCE Paris.

In recent decades large-scale droughts have reduced seasonal NPP in the Southern and Northern hemispheres and weakened the terrestrial carbon sink. However, as Drs Marcos Fernandez-Martinez and Jofre Carnicer from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona point out, there is an inherent difficulty in quantifying the response of NPP to drought because it depends on the timing of drought during the growing season, and on ecosystem properties of resistance to drought.

Furthermore, it should be taken into account that most land use changes, fires, and harvests, which are expected to increase in the future reduce residence times, thereby reducing the sink capacity of the land biosphere as noticed by Prof Michael Obersteiner from IIASA Vienna.

Due to the above, the potential saturation or slower increase of the sink capacity of terrestrial ecosystems, or even its transition into a source of CO₂, could be expected. Moreover, for Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona, current climate models do not necessarily well represent extreme events due to coarse resolution (eg. extreme precipitation, wind storms and tropical cyclones) or to insufficiently constrained soil-atmosphere interactions. At this point, authors point out that these models could improve its prediction capacity through the addition of factors outlined above. “Such improved models could then help understanding the responses to different levels of global warming (especially in the range 1.5-3°C according to the Paris agreement and current intended policies)”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Shift from a fertilization to a warming period

This study presents multiple evidences suggesting limits to the buffering capacity of the biosphere. Thus, Prof. Josep Peñuelas indicates that a slowdown of the CO₂ and N fertilization effects on ecosystem carbon sequestration and the rapid emergence of negative ecosystem impacts from global climate change might drive a shift from an Anthropocene period dominated by fertilization to another period characterized by saturated fertilization and strong climate change.

For Prof. Peñuelas, although the climate has not yet changed dramatically in the Anthropocene, the coming decades will undoubtedly be different. Prof. Vautard from LSCE Paris explains that “A warming of 2 °C would slightly increase the frequency of 2003-like heatwaves in Northern France, but a warming of 3 °C would instead produce very different conditions, with one summer like that of 2003 occurring every three or four years, which would therefore affect the forests carbon sink in Europe much more than in the past”.

There is also the possibility of low probability but high impact phenomena which would lead to rapid positive feedbacks to the climate system (e.g. massive dieback of Amazon rainforest because of reduced rainfall or a dramatic temperature drop in the North Atlantic because of the collapse of the ocean current). “The occurrence of this phenomena is highly uncertain, particularly for low temperature scenarios. However, it is much more certain that we are currently entering a new warming period where ecosystems are put under increasing stresses”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

This study was funded by the European Research Council Synergy grant ERC-2013-SyG-610028

Journal Reference: Peñuelas, P., Ciais, P., Canadell, J., Janssens, I., Fernandez-Martinez, M., Carnicer, J., Obersteiner, M., Piao, S., Vautard, R., Sardans, J. 2017. Shifting from a fertilization-dominated to a warming-dominated period. Nature Ecology and Evolution.

For several billion years, microorganisms and the genes they carry have mainly been moved by physical forces such as air and water currents. These forces generated biogeographic patterns for microorganisms that are similar to those of animals and plants.

In a new study in the journal Science authors note that humans and animals now move on an unprecedented scale, and this movement actively transports and enriches a specific subset of microorganisms.

“Humans in the past 100 years have changed these natural dynamics by transporting large numbers of cells to new locations through waste disposal, tourism, and global transport and by modifying selection pressures at those locations. As a consequence, we are substantially altering microbial biogeography”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Dissemination through wastewater

Wastewater carries high densities of microorganisms and their cargo genes. It should be noted that, globally, some 359,000 km² of croplands depend on irrigation with urban wastewater, 80% of which undergoes little or no treatment. Therefore, the use of wastewater or manure in agriculture contaminates fruits, vegetables, and farm animals which in turn are distributed globally. Wastewater also contains pollutants with biological effects (as metals, antibiotics or disinfectants). These compounds stimulate bacterial stress response systems that increase mutation rates which, in turn, confer adaptive advantages on at least a subset of cells arriving at a new location.

For a sense of the importance of this adaptive advantage, authors consider the clinical class 1 integron. This DNA element acquires foreign genes from the environment and has played a central role in spreading antibiotic resistance among bacterial pathogens. DNA sequencing data show that it had the origin in a single cell, in the early 20th century. Millions to billions of copies of this element now exists in every gram of feces from human and domestic animals. This remarkable increase in its abundance and distribution has been driven by antibiotic selection, increases in human population, and dissemination via global transport.

The role of human and material movement

This study points out that humans and agricultural animals now comprise 35 times as much biomass as wild terrestrial mammals. The bacteria shed in feces, therefore, mainly represent the gut microbiota of humans and agricultural animals (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens) and they have vastly increased in both abundance and distribution, particularly in the last century. “Efficiency of dispersal is enhanced by the 1.2 billion international tourist movements per year, as evidenced by the rapid spread of bacterial clones and antibiotic resistance genes between continents”, emphasizes Prof. Micahel Gillings from Macquarie University, Sydney .

The study also points out that humans additionally promote dispersal of microbial cells via mass movement of materials. In this regard it should be noted that human activities now move more soil, sand, and rock than all natural processes combined. As an example, natural fluvial erosion is 21 gigatons (Gt) per year, much lower than the75 Gt per year eroded by agriculture. “This erosion transports very large numbers of bacteria, given that soil can contain more than a billion microbial cells per gram. Movements on this scale have consequences for human health, agriculture, and ecosystem functions, such as increasing the spread of human pathogens and threatening sustainable food productivity”, said Prof. Yong-Guan Zhu from Chinese Academy of Science.

Changes to biogeochemical cycles

According to this study, changes in the distribution and abundance of microorganisms, and the resultant changes in microbial ecosystems will affect biogeochemical cycles driven by microbial activity. “Knowledge of the connections between microbial biodiversity and landscape-scale biogeochemical processes, as well as below-ground ecosystems, will be essential to predict the magnitude and direction of these changes”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Linking the rapidly expanding databases generated by environmental genomics with biogeochemical models could reveal changes in nutrient cycles. “This fusion of genomics and Earth system science is a first step to understanding how the biochemical functions of microorganisms could be altered, temporally and spatially, by global change”, said Prof. Yong-Guan Zhu from Chinese Academy of Science.

Unlocking the complexity

There is a recent growing trend for monitoring the environmental dissemination of genes, particularly those that confer phenotypes of direct relevance to human and animal health. In this sense, Prof. Josep Peñuelas points to the high importance of understanding how human activities cause systematic changes in ecosystems and highlight the priority of investigating microbial invasions, microbial extinctions, and perturbations to microbial ecosystems.

Journal Reference: Zhu, Y.G., Gillings, M., Simonet, P., Stekel, D., Banwart, S., Penuelas, J. 2017. Microbial mass movements. Science 357 (6356), 1099-1100.

Water stored underground in the saturated and subsurface zones below the soil are important sources of water for plants in water-limited ecosystems. Arid and seasonally dry ecosystems contain the deepest root systems, and some species grow roots to depths of more than 4 m, even in temperate and tropical ecosystems. The presence of deep-rooted plants worldwide, however, suggests that the use of groundwater is not restricted to arid and seasonally dry ecosystems.

In a new study in the journal Scientific Reports authors compiled the available data (71 species) on the relative contribution of groundwater to plant water estimated using stable isotopes and mixing models, which provided information about relative groundwater use, and analysed their variation across different climates, seasons, plant types, edaphic conditions, and landscape positions.

Plant use of groundwater was more likely at sites with a pronounced dry season, and represented on average 49 per cent of transpired water in dry seasons and 28 per cent in wet seasons. The relative contribution of groundwater to plant-water uptake was higher on rocky substrates (saprolite, fractured bedrock), which had reduced groundwater uptake when this source was deep belowground.

Notably, authors found that the connectivity between groundwater pools and plant water is quantitatively larger and more widespread than reported by recent global estimations based on isotopic averaged values. Thus, “in order to improve the representation of groundwater-surface interactions in models, a quantification of the relative contribution of groundwater to transpiration and its variability across environmental gradients was required”, said Dr. Adrià Barbeta from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona, now in INRA Bourdeaux

Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona claims also that “further research on plant-water sources in boreal, polar regions and tropical rainforests would help our understanding of the global patterns of groundwater uptake and may substantially improve the biosphere-atmosphere models by a realistic representation of this important component of the water cycle”.

This study was funded by the European Research Council Synergy grant ERC-2013-SyG-610028, the Spanish Government project CGL2016-79835-P and the Catalan Government grant FI-2013

Journal Reference: Barbeta, A., Peñuelas, J. 2017. Relative contribution of groundwater to plant transpiration estimated with stable isotopes. Scientific Reports

All agricultural production is vulnerable to climate change including wheat, rice, maize and soybean that provide two-thirds of human caloric intake. Assessing the impact of global temperature increase on production of these major crops is therefore critical to maintain global food supply.

In a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences authors investigated the impacts of temperature on yields of the four crops by compiling extensive published results from four analytical methods: global grid-based and local point-based models, statistical regressions and field-warming experiments.

“By combining four different methods, our comprehensive assessment of the impacts of increasing temperatures on major global crops shows substantial risks for agricultural production, already stagnating in some parts of the world”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

The study shows that results from the different methods consistently indicate negative temperature impacts on crop yield at the global scale, generally underpinned by similar impacts at country and site scales. Without CO₂ fertilization, effective adaptation and genetic improvement, each degree Celsius increase in global mean temperature would on average reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4% and soybean by 3.1%. In any case, researchers point out that results are highly heterogeneous across crops and geographical areas with some positive impact estimates.

Multi-method analyses improved the confidence in assessments of future climate impacts on global major crops, and suggest crop- and region-specific adaptation strategies to ensure food security for an increasing world population.

Journal Reference: Zhao, C., Liu, B., Piao, S., Wang, X., Lobell, D., Huang, Y., Huang, M., Yao, Y., Bassu, S., Ciais, P., Durand, J-L., Elliott, L., Ewert, F., Janssens, I., Li, T., Lin, E., Liu, Q., Martre, P., Müller, C., Peng, S., Peñuelas, J., Ruane, A., Wallach, D., Wang, T., Wu, D., Liu, Z., Zhu, Y., Zhu, Z., Asseng, S. 2017. Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The rapidly growing human population in sub-Saharan Africa generates increasing demand for agricultural land and forest products, which presumably leads to deforestation. Conversely, a greening of African drylands has been reported, but this has been difficult to associate with changes in woody vegetation. There is thus an incomplete understanding of how woody vegetation responds to socio-economic and environmental change.

Deforestation in Africa has been high on the environmental agenda for decades. In a new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers used a passive microwave Earth observation data set to demonstrate that the realities are more complex.

Many earlier studies have overlooked that woody cover has actually increased over the past 20 years in large parts (~30%) of Africa, and in particular in drylands. This increase explains the observed ‘greening’ of drylands, both north and south the Equator. Authors further find that much of this increase may be explained by changes in rainfall and the growing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In humid parts of Africa trends in woody cover are more diverse. Negative trends dominate where population density is high, and often in areas with dense forests with high ecological and economic value. The agreement between the map showing woody cover changes and the one with human population growth is so striking that statistics are almost needless to transport the message:

The findings thus contradict, on one hand, generally held views of loss of woody cover in drylands, e.g. in the Sahel-belt across Africa, yet on the other hand it supports the concerns for deforestation, due to agricultural expansion in more densely populated regions, and due to logging in the sparsely populated Congo basin.

The positive and negative impacts of observed trends are difficult to balance (increase in carbon stocks, lower albedo due to greater woody cover in drylands may have a positive effect on rainfall, the loss of forests in certain humid areas may imply serious losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services…).”At continental scale, it is thus impossible to draw final conclusions, and difficult to state if positive and negative effects are balanced. Local and regional scaled studies have to be evaluated and combined with these continental scale attempts”, said Dr. Martin Brandt from University of Copenhagen.

“Given that Africa’s population is expected to continue growing throughout much of this century, there is a clear need to sharpen natural resource management strategies to counter losses while taking advantage of increases in woody cover in drylands which are large enough to act as a carbon sink” said Dr. Aleixandre Verger from CREAF-CSIC.

“The great new thing is that we are now able to localize and quantify areas of change and we are working hard to quantify the amount of carbon which is affected by observed changes. This knowledge is critical in the fight against climate change”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CSIC-CREAF.

Citation: Brandt, M., Rasmussen, K., Penuelas, J., Tian, F., Schurgers, G., Verger, A., Mertz, O., Palmer, J., Fensholt, R. 2017. Human population growth offsets climate driven woody vegetation increase in sub-Saharan Africa. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 1, 0081 (2017), doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0081.

The European Research Council turns 10 in 2017 – Congratulations!

The following video prepared by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) commemorates this anniversary

The functional traits of plants in regions of the world with a Mediterranean climate have been shaped to tolerate periods of water deficit. These species are adapted to summer droughts but may not be able to cope with future increases in drought intensity, duration, and/or frequency.

In a new study published in Plant Ecology & Diversity researchers review the mechanisms and traits of drought resistance and recovery of the holm oak (Quercus ilex), which they propose as a model species for Mediterranean-type ecosystems. The aim of the study was to understand the differences and links between the responses of Q. ilex to summer droughts, extreme droughts, and long-term drought experiments. A main goal was to provide an integral picture of drought responses across organizational and temporal scales for identifying the most relevant processes that are likely to contribute to determining the future of Mediterranean vegetation. Evidence from long-term drought experiments showed that acclimation processes from the molecular (e.g. epigenetic changes) to the ecosystem level (e.g. reductions in stand density) mitigate the effects of drought.

Changes in leaf morphology and hydraulics, leaf-to-shoot allometry, and root functioning are among the key mechanisms for overcoming increasing drought. The duration of drought determines its severity in terms of canopy loss and stem mortality. Although Q. ilex can vigorously resprout after such episodes, its resilience may be subsequently reduced. In the future, higher frequency of return of extreme droughts will challenge thus the capacity of these forests to recover. The insights provided by this review of the complex interplay of processes that determine the response of trees to droughts of different duration, intensity, and frequency will also help to understand the likely responses of other resprouting angiosperms in seasonally dry ecosystems that share similar functional traits with Q. ilex.

“The limits of plasticity in primary and secondary growth in relation to future drier and warmer conditions may be determinants for the persistence of some populations in their current structure and function”, said Dr. Adrià Barbeta from CSIC-CREAF.

“We recommend that future research should keep on addressing the combined effect of consecutive extreme droughts and drier average conditions on the structure and function of plant communities, but with a special emphasis on the resilience after crown damage and on the access to the vital long-lasting deep water pools”, said Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CSIC-CREAF.

Citation: Barbeta, A., Peñuelas, J. 2016. Sequence of plant responses to droughts of different timescales: lessons from holm oak (Quercus ilex) forests. Plant Ecology & Diversity, 9:4, 321-338, doi: 10.1080/17550874.2016.1212288

 Pharmaceutical and personal-care products (PPCPs) for human and animal use are increasingly released into the environment.

Plants act as excellent tracers of global pollution because they are present in almost all areas of the planet and accumulate chemical compounds present in the atmosphere, in the water with which they are irrigated, and in the soil on which they grow.

PPCP removal from plants for waste water treatment is incomplete, and the dispersal of these compounds into the environment and accumulation in plants mostly occurs from irrigating with reused water and from the application of biosolids and manure to land.

In a featured article in the journal Trends in Plant Science, UVIC and CREAF-CSIC researchers highlighted the potential of plants as biomonitors of PPCPs in the environment and the risk that the dietary intake of these PPCP-contaminated plants could have on the entire biosphere including on human health, even at low concentrations.

“Plants accumulate PPCP at concentrations that can be toxic to plants, plant microbiota, and soil microorganisms and thus affect nutrient cycling, food webs and ecosystem functioning. Furthermore, the risk to humans from dietary intake of these PPCP-contaminated plants (mostly crops) is uncertain but warrants deep consideration”, said Dr. Mireia Bartrons from Universitat de Vic, Barcelona.

“Further attention has recently been given to the effects of human and veterinary antibiotics. They dramatically affect the structure and function of soil microbial communities and promote the emergence of multidrug-resistant human pathogens that increasingly threaten successful anti-biotic treatment of bacterial infections”, said Prof. Josep Penuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Citation: Bartrons, M., Peñuelas, J. 2017. Pharmaceuticals and Personal-Care Products in Plants. Trends in Plant Science, (2017) 22, Issue 3, 194–203. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2016.12.010.

Human activities have drastically accelerated Earth’s major biogeochemical cycles, altering the the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles.

Combined effects of cumulative nutrient inputs and biogeochemical processes that occur in freshwater under anthropogenic eutrophication could lead to myriad shifts in N:P stoichiometry in global freshwater ecosystems, but this was not yet well-assessed.

In a new study in the journal Ecology Letters researchers from Peking University and CREAF-CSIC evaluated the characteristics of N and P stoichiometries in bodies of freshwater and their herbaceous macrophytes across human-impact levels, regions and periods.

Freshwater and its macrophytes had higher N and P concentrations and lower N:P ratios in heavily than lightly human-impacted environments, further evidenced by spatiotemporal comparisons across eutrophication gradients. N and P concentrations in freshwater ecosystems were positively correlated and N:P ratio was negatively correlated with population density in China.

“Our findings indicate that anthropogenic eutrophication might thus shift aquatic ecosystems from a state of predominant P limitation to being potentially limited or co-limited by N, or by other factors such as light, especially in rapidly developing regions such as China” said Zhengbing Yan, researcher from Peking University.

“These results indicate a faster accumulation of P than N in human-impacted freshwater ecosystems, which could have large effects on the trophic webs and biogeochemical cycles of estuaries and coastal areas by freshwater loadings, and reinforces the importance of rehabilitating these ecosystems”, said Prof. Josep Penuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

Citation: Yan, Z., Han, W., Penuelas, J., Sardans, J., Elser, J.J., Du, E., Fang, J. 2016. Phosphorus accumulates faster than nitrogen globally in freshwater ecosystems under anthropogenic impacts. Ecology Letters 19, (2016), 1237-1246. doi: 10.1111/ele.12658

This photo shows measurements of carbon flux from soil at Toolik Field Station in Arctic Alaska. Credit: Jianwu Tang

 WOODS HOLE, Mass. — While scientists and policy experts debate the impacts of global warming, the Earth’s soil is releasing roughly nine times more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than all human activities combined. This huge carbon flux from soil, which is due to the natural respiration of soil microbes and plant roots, begs one of the central questions in climate change science. As the global climate warms, will soil respiration rates increase, adding even more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and accelerating climate change?

Previous experimental studies of this question have not produced a consensus, prompting Marine Biological Laboratory scientists Joanna Carey, Jianwu Tang and colleagues to synthesize the data from 27 studies across nine biomes, from the desert to the Arctic. Their analysis is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This represents the world’s largest dataset to date of soil respiration response to experimental warming.

One prediction from the synthesis is that rising global temperatures result in regionally variable responses in soil respiration, with colder climates being considerably more responsive. “Consistently across all biomes, we found that soil respiration increased with soil temperature up to about 25° C (77° F),” says Carey, a postdoctoral scientist in the MBL Ecosystems Center. Above the 25° C threshold, respiration rates decreased with further increases in soil temperature.

“That means the Arctic latitudes, where soil temperatures rarely, if ever, reach 25° C , will continue to be most responsive to climate warming. Because there is so much carbon stored in frozen soils of the Arctic, this has really serious repercussions for future climate change,” Carey says.

Soil scientists are struggling to find evidences of soil acclimation to warming, as indicated by some individual field experiments, but the current study found limited evidence of it.

“The occurrence of acclimation would provide some relieve on the positive feedback between warming and CO2 release by respiration from soil” says Marc Estiarte, a member of the research teams at CREAF.

The information provided by the study will be critical to improve the soil-atmosphere interactions in the Earth-system models. The results of the study “will greatly improve our mechanistic understanding of how carbon dynamics change with climate warming”, in the words of Josep Peñuelas, a member of the research teams at CREAF

To understand how global carbon in soils will respond to climate change, the authors stress, more data are needed from under- and non-represented regions, especially the Arctic and the tropics.

Citation:

Carey, Joanna A. et al (2016) Temperature response of soil respiration largely unaltered with experimental warming. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1605365113