| 1. |
- Kattge, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:1, s. 119-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.
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| 2. |
- Björkman, Anne, 1981, et al.
(författare)
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Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 562:7725, s. 57-62
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The tundra is warming more rapidly than any other biome on Earth, and the potential ramifications are far-reaching because of global feedback effects between vegetation and climate. A better understanding of how environmental factors shape plant structure and function is crucial for predicting the consequences of environmental change for ecosystem functioning. Here we explore the biome-wide relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits both across space and over three decades of warming at 117 tundra locations. Spatial temperature–trait relationships were generally strong but soil moisture had a marked influence on the strength and direction of these relationships, highlighting the potentially important influence of changes in water availability on future trait shifts in tundra plant communities. Community height increased with warming across all sites over the past three decades, but other traits lagged far behind predicted rates of change. Our findings highlight the challenge of using space-for-time substitution to predict the functional consequences of future warming and suggest that functions that are tied closely to plant height will experience the most rapid change. They also reveal the strength with which environmental factors shape biotic communities at the coldest extremes of the planet and will help to improve projections of functional changes in tundra ecosystems with climate warming.
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| 3. |
- Cornelissen, Johannes H C, et al.
(författare)
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Global negative vegetation feedback to climate warming responses of leaf litter decomposition rates in cold biomes
- 2007
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 10:7, s. 619-627
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Whether climate change will turn cold biomes from large long-term carbon sinks into sources is hotly debated because of the great potential for ecosystem-mediated feedbacks to global climate. Critical are the direction, magnitude and generality of climate responses of plant litter decomposition. Here, we present the first quantitative analysis of the major climate-change-related drivers of litter decomposition rates in cold northern biomes worldwide.Leaf litters collected from the predominant species in 33 global change manipulation experiments in circum-arctic-alpine ecosystems were incubated simultaneously in two contrasting arctic life zones. We demonstrate that longer-term, large-scale changes to leaf litter decomposition will be driven primarily by both direct warming effects and concomitant shifts in plant growth form composition, with a much smaller role for changes in litter quality within species. Specifically, the ongoing warming-induced expansion of shrubs with recalcitrant leaf litter across cold biomes would constitute a negative feedback to global warming. Depending on the strength of other (previously reported) positive feedbacks of shrub expansion on soil carbon turnover, this may partly counteract direct warming enhancement of litter decomposition.
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| 4. |
- Alejandre, Elizabeth M., et al.
(författare)
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Characterization Factors to Assess Land Use Impacts on Pollinator Abundance in Life Cycle Assessment
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 57:8, s. 3445-3454
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance estimates were obtained with the use of a Delphi assessment, during which 25 experts, covering 16 nationalities and 45 countries of expertise, provided scores for low, typical, and high expected abundance associated with 24 land use categories. Based on these estimates, this study presents a set of globally generic characterization factors (CFs) that allows translating land use into relative impacts to wild pollinator abundance. The associated uncertainty of the CFs is presented along with an illustrative case to demonstrate the applicability in LCA studies. The CFs based on estimates that reached consensus during the Delphi assessment are recommended as readily applicable and allow key differences among land use types to be distinguished. The resulting CFs are proposed as the first step for incorporating pollinator impacts in LCA studies, exemplifying the use of expert elicitation methods as a useful tool to fill data gaps that constrain the characterization of key environmental impacts.
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| 5. |
- Cornwell, William K., et al.
(författare)
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Plant species traits are the predominant control on litter decomposition rates within biomes worldwide
- 2008
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 11:10, s. 1065-1071
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Worldwide decomposition rates depend both on climate and the legacy of plant functional traits as litter quality. To quantify the degree to which functional differentiation among species affects their litter decomposition rates, we brought together leaf trait and litter mass loss data for 818 species from 66 decomposition experiments on six continents. We show that: (i) the magnitude of species-driven differences is much larger than previously thought and greater than climate-driven variation; (ii) the decomposability of a species' litter is consistently correlated with that species' ecological strategy within different ecosystems globally, representing a new connection between whole plant carbon strategy and biogeochemical cycling. This connection between plant strategies and decomposability is crucial for both understanding vegetation-soil feedbacks, and for improving forecasts of the global carbon cycle.
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| 6. |
- Keuper, Frida, et al.
(författare)
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A frozen feast : thawing permafrost increases plant-available nitrogen in subarctic peatlands
- 2012
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 18:6, s. 1998-2007
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many of the world's northern peatlands are underlain by rapidly thawing permafrost. Because plant production in these peatlands is often nitrogen (N)-limited, a release of N stored in permafrost may stimulate net primary production or change species composition if it is plant-available. In this study, we aimed to quantify plant-available N in thawing permafrost soils of subarctic peatlands. We compared plant-available N-pools and -fluxes in near-surface permafrost (010cm below the thawfront) to those taken from a current rooting zone layer (515cm depth) across five representative peatlands in subarctic Sweden. A range of complementary methods was used: extractions of inorganic and organic N, inorganic and organic N-release measurements at 0.5 and 11 degrees C (over 120days, relevant to different thaw-development scenarios) and a bioassay with Poa alpina test plants. All extraction methods, across all peatlands, consistently showed up to seven times more plant-available N in near-surface permafrost soil compared to the current rooting zone layer. These results were supported by the bioassay experiment, with an eightfold larger plant N-uptake from permafrost soil than from other N-sources such as current rooting zone soil or fresh litter substrates. Moreover, net mineralization rates were much higher in permafrost soils compared to soils from the current rooting zone layer (273mgNm-2 and 1348mgNm-2 per growing season for near-surface permafrost at 0.5 degrees C and 11 degrees C respectively, compared to -30mgNm-2 for current rooting zone soil at 11 degrees C). Hence, our results demonstrate that near-surface permafrost soil of subarctic peatlands can release a biologically relevant amount of plant available nitrogen, both directly upon thawing as well as over the course of a growing season through continued microbial mineralization of organically bound N. Given the nitrogen-limited nature of northern peatlands, this release may have impacts on both plant productivity and species composition.
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| 7. |
- Keuper, Frida, et al.
(författare)
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Experimentally increased nutrient availability at the permafrost thaw front selectively enhances biomass production of deep-rooting subarctic peatland species
- 2017
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : WILEY. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 23:10, s. 4257-4266
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate warming increases nitrogen (N) mineralization in superficial soil layers (the dominant rooting zone) of subarctic peatlands. Thawing and subsequent mineralization of permafrost increases plant-available N around the thaw-front. Because plant production in these peatlands is N-limited, such changes may substantially affect net primary production and species composition. We aimed to identify the potential impact of increased N-availability due to permafrost thawing on subarctic peatland plant production and species performance, relative to the impact of increased N-availability in superficial organic layers. Therefore, we investigated whether plant roots are present at the thaw-front (45 cm depth) and whether N-uptake (N-15-tracer) at the thaw-front occurs during maximum thaw-depth, coinciding with the end of the growing season. Moreover, we performed a unique 3-year belowground fertilization experiment with fully factorial combinations of deep-(thaw-front) and shallow-fertilization (10 cm depth) and controls. We found that certain species are present with roots at the thaw-front (Rubus chamaemorus) and have the capacity (R. chamaemorus, Eriophorum vaginatum) for N-uptake from the thaw-front between autumn and spring when aboveground tissue is largely senescent. In response to 3-year shallow-belowground fertilization (S) both shallow-(Empetrum hermaphroditum) and deep-rooting species increased aboveground biomass and N-content, but only deep-rooting species responded positively to enhanced nutrient supply at the thaw-front (D). Moreover, the effects of shallow-fertilization and thaw-front fertilization on aboveground biomass production of the deep-rooting species were similar in magnitude (S: 71%; D: 111% increase compared to control) and additive (S + D: 181% increase). Our results show that plant-available N released from thawing permafrost can form a thus far overlooked additional N-source for deep-rooting subarctic plant species and increase their biomass production beyond the already established impact of warming-driven enhanced shallow N-mineralization. This may result in shifts in plant community composition and may partially counteract the increased carbon losses from thawing permafrost.
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| 8. |
- Keuper, Frida, et al.
(författare)
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Tundra in the rain : Differential vegetation responses to three years of experimentally doubled summer precipitation in Siberian shrub and Swedish bog tundra
- 2012
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Netherlands. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 41:Suppl. 3, s. 269-280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Precipitation amounts and patterns at high latitude sites have been predicted to change as a result of global climatic changes. We addressed vegetation responses to three years of experimentally increased summer precipitation in two previously unaddressed tundra types: Betula nana-dominated shrub tundra (northeast Siberia) and a dry Sphagnum fuscum-dominated bog (northern Sweden). Positive responses to approximately doubled ambient precipitation (an increase of 200 mm year(-1)) were observed at the Siberian site, for B. nana (30 % larger length increments), Salix pulchra (leaf size and length increments) and Arctagrostis latifolia (leaf size and specific leaf area), but none were observed at the Swedish site. Total biomass production did not increase at either of the study sites. This study corroborates studies in other tundra vegetation types and shows that despite regional differences at the plant level, total tundra plant productivity is, at least at the short or medium term, largely irresponsive to experimentally increased summer precipitation.
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| 9. |
- Sperl, L, et al.
(författare)
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EDUCATIONAL NEEDS AMONG HEALTH PROFESSIONALS IN RHEUMATOLOGY: LOW AWARENESS OF EULAR OFFERINGS AND UNFAMILIARITY WITH COURSE CONTENT AS A MAJOR BARRIER - A EULAR FUNDED EUROPEAN SURVEY
- 2022
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Ingår i: ANNALS OF THE RHEUMATIC DISEASES. - : BMJ. - 0003-4967 .- 1468-2060. ; 81, s. 139-140
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Health professionals in rheumatology (HPRs) should participate in post-graduate or continuous education to update and advance their knowledge and skills. This can improve patient outcomes and increase quality of care.1 EULAR aims to become a leading provider of postgraduate education for HPRs.ObjectivesThe aims of this study were to evaluate the current motivations for participating in postgraduate education of HPRs, identify barriers and facilitators for participation in postgraduate education, and evaluate participation in the current educational offerings of EULAR for HPRs across Europe.MethodsAn online survey was developed and distributed in collaboration with the EULAR Standing Committee of Education and Training (ESCET) and the Paediatric Rheumatology European Society (PReS). The questionnaire was translated by national HPR representatives in 24 languages to cover the 25 national member organisations. Barriers were assessed using 5-point Likert scales, higher scores representing higher barriers. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics. In addition, we ran the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) on the answers to the open questions. LDA is an unsupervised probabilistic topic modelling technique that extracts the meanings of a pre-defined number of topics. Design of the survey and reporting of results were done according to the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES).ResultsThe online questionnaire was accessed 3,589 times but only 667 complete responses were recorded. HPRs from 34 European countries responded to the survey; 80% of whom were women. The highest-ranked educational need was prevention, including lifestyle interventions and professional development. Although EULAR was well known among HPRs, only 32.1% of HPRs in adult care and 18.6% of HPRs in paediatric care have ever heard of the EULAR School of Rheumatology (Table 1 A).Table 1.A: Feedback on EULAR. Data are presented separately for HPRs in adult and paediatric care; except for the filter questions, no mandatory questions were included in the survey. To clarify the number of responses per question, the number of valid answers for each question was reported.VariablesHPRs in adult careHPRs in paediatric careHave you ever heard of the EULAR School of Rheumatology?61443 I am not sure, n(%)62 (10.1%)7 (16.3%) No, n(%)355 (57.8%)28 (65.1%) Yes, n(%)197 (32.1%)8 (18.6%)Are you aware of courses offered by the EULAR School of Rheumatology? (sub question)1978 I am not sure, n(%)30 (15.2%)2 (25.0%) No, n(%)63 (32.0%)5 (62.5%) Yes, n(%)104 (52.8%)1 (12.5%)Have you ever attended one of the EULAR School of Rheumatology courses? (sub question)1031 I am not sure, n(%)1 (1.0%)0 No, n(%)47 (45.6%)0 Yes, n(%)55 (53.4%)1 (100%)Have you ever participated in a EULAR annual congress meeting?61843 I am not sure, n(%)11 (1.8%)0 No, n(%)457 (73.9%)39 (90.7%) Yes, n(%)150 (24.3%)4 (9.3%)The main barriers to participation in EULAR’s educational offerings were identified by HPRs in adult care and in paediatric care (respectively) as: the unfamiliarity with the course content (3.48 [±1.50]; 3.92 [±1.46]), the associated costs (3.44 [±1.35]; 3.69 [±1.28]) and English language (2.59 [±1.50]; 2.80 [±1.34]).ConclusionEULAR is well-known by HPRs in Europe, however, awareness of educational offerings is low and barriers to participation are numerous. To become the leading provider of postgraduate training by 2023, EULAR could use a “franchise” model that can be tailored to local conditions. This could be achieved by strengthening national organizations by actively involving them in the development of training programs and disseminating these programs and offerings through their networks.References[1]World Health Organization. Health workforce: Education and training: World Health Organization; 2019 [Available from: https://www.who.int/hrh/education/en/ accessed November, 2019 2019.Disclosure of InterestsLisa Sperl: None declared, Tanja Stamm Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, and Takeda, Consultant of: AbbVie and Sanofi Genzyme, Grant/research support from: AbbVie and Roche, Margaret Renn Andrews: None declared, Mathilda Bjork: None declared, Carina Boström: None declared, Jeannette Cappon: None declared, Jenny de la Torre-Aboki: None declared, Annette de Thurah: None declared, Andrea Domjan: None declared, Razvan Dragoi Speakers bureau: Received speaker fees last year from: Pfizer, Elly Lilly, Sandoz, Abbvie, Secom, EwoPharma, Fernando Estevez-Lopez: None declared, Ricardo J. O. Ferreira: None declared, George E. Fragoulis: None declared, Jolanta Grygielska: None declared, Katti Korve: None declared, Marja Leena Kukkurainen: None declared, Christel Madelaine-Bonjour: None declared, Andrea Marques: None declared, Jorit Meesters: None declared, Rikke Helene Moe: None declared, Ellen Moholt: None declared, Erika Mosor: None declared, Claudia Naimer-Stach: None declared, Mwidimi Ndosi: None declared, Polina Pchelnikova: None declared, Jette Primdahl: None declared, Polina Putrik: None declared, Anne-Kathrin Rausch Osthoff: None declared, Hana Smucrova: None declared, Sinisa Stefanac: None declared, Marco Testa: None declared, Leti van Bodegom-Vos: None declared, Wilfred Peter: None declared, Heidi A. Zangi: None declared, Olena Zimba: None declared, T.P.M. Vliet Vlieland: None declared, Valentin Ritschl: None declared
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| 10. |
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| 11. |
- Franklin, Oskar, et al.
(författare)
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Organizing principles for vegetation dynamics
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature plants. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2055-026X .- 2055-0278. ; 6:5, s. 444-453
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plants and vegetation play a critical-but largely unpredictable-role in global environmental changes due to the multitude of contributing processes at widely different spatial and temporal scales. In this Perspective, we explore approaches to master this complexity and improve our ability to predict vegetation dynamics by explicitly taking account of principles that constrain plant and ecosystem behaviour: natural selection, self-organization and entropy maximization. These ideas are increasingly being used in vegetation models, but we argue that their full potential has yet to be realized. We demonstrate the power of natural selection-based optimality principles to predict photosynthetic and carbon allocation responses to multiple environmental drivers, as well as how individual plasticity leads to the predictable self-organization of forest canopies. We show how models of natural selection acting on a few key traits can generate realistic plant communities and how entropy maximization can identify the most probable outcomes of community dynamics in space- and time-varying environments. Finally, we present a roadmap indicating how these principles could be combined in a new generation of models with stronger theoretical foundations and an improved capacity to predict complex vegetation responses to environmental change. Integrating natural selection and other organizing principles into next-generation vegetation models could render them more theoretically sound and useful for earth system applications and modelling climate impacts.
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| 12. |
- Keuper, Frida, et al.
(författare)
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A race for space? : How Sphagnum fuscumstabilizes vegetation composition during long-termclimate manipulations
- 2011
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Blackwell. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 17:6, s. 2162-2171
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Strong climate warming is predicted at higher latitudes this century, with potentially major consequences forproductivity and carbon sequestration. Although northern peatlands contain one-third of the world’s soil organiccarbon, little is known about the long-term responses to experimental climate change of vascular plant communities inthese Sphagnum-dominated ecosystems.We aimed to see how long-term experimental climate manipulations, relevantto different predicted future climate scenarios, affect total vascular plant abundance and species composition whenthe community is dominated by mosses. During 8 years, we investigated how the vascular plant community of aSphagnum fuscum-dominated subarctic peat bog responded to six experimental climate regimes, including factorialcombinations of summer as well as spring warming and a thicker snow cover. Vascular plant species composition inour peat bog was more stable than is typically observed in (sub)arctic experiments: neither changes in total vascularplant abundance, nor in individual species abundances, Shannon’s diversity or evenness were found in response tothe climate manipulations. For three key species (Empetrum hermaphroditum, Betula nana and S. fuscum) we alsomeasured whether the treatments had a sustained effect on plant length growth responses and how these responsesinteracted. Contrasting with the stability at the community level, both key shrubs and the peatmoss showed sustainedpositive growth responses at the plant level to the climate treatments. However, a higher percentage of mossencroachedE. hermaphroditum shoots and a lack of change in B. nana net shrub height indicated encroachment byS. fuscum, resulting in long-term stability of the vascular community composition: in a warmer world, vascular speciesof subarctic peat bogs appear to just keep pace with growing Sphagnum in their race for space. Our findings contributeto general ecological theory by demonstrating that community resistance to environmental changes does notnecessarily mean inertia in vegetation response.
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| 13. |
- Krause, Sascha, et al.
(författare)
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Trait-based approaches for understanding microbial biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
- 2014
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Microbiology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-302X. ; 5, s. 251-
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- In ecology, biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEE) research has seen a shift in perspective from taxonomy to function in the last two decades, with successful application of trait-based approaches. This shift offers opportunities for a deeper mechanistic understanding of the role of biodiversity in maintaining multiple ecosystem processes and services. In this paper, we highlight studies that have focused on BEE of microbial communities with an emphasis on integrating trait-based approaches to microbial ecology. In doing so, we explore some of the inherent challenges and opportunities of understanding BEE using microbial systems. For example, microbial biologists characterize communities using gene phylogenies that are often unable to resolve functional traits. Additionally, experimental designs of existing microbial BEE studies are often inadequate to unravel BEE relationships. We argue that combining eco-physiological studies with contemporary molecular tools in a trait-based framework can reinforce our ability to link microbial diversity to ecosystem processes. We conclude that such trait-based approaches are a promising framework to increase the understanding of microbial BEE relationships and thus generating systematic principles in microbial ecology and more generally ecology.
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| 14. |
- Weedon, James T., et al.
(författare)
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Community adaptation to temperature explains abrupt soil bacterial community shift along a geothermal gradient on Iceland
- 2023
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Ingår i: Soil Biology and Biochemistry. - : Elsevier BV. - 0038-0717. ; 177
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding how and why soil microbial communities respond to temperature changes is important for understanding the drivers of microbial distribution and abundance. Studying soil microbe responses to warming is often made difficult by concurrent warming effects on soil and vegetation and by a limited number of warming levels preventing the detection of non-linear effects. A unique area in Iceland, where soil temperatures have recently increased due to geothermic activity, created a stable warming gradient in both grassland (dominated by Agrostis capillaris) and forest (Picea sitchensis) vegetation. By sampling soils which had been subjected to four years of temperature elevation (ambient (MAT 5.2 °C) to +40 °C), we investigated the shape of the response of soil bacterial communities to warming, and their associated community temperature adaptation. We used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to profile bacterial communities, and bacterial growth-based assays (3H-Leu incorporation) to characterize community adaptation using a temperature sensitivity index (SI, log (growth at 40 °C/4 °C)). Despite highly dissimilar bacterial community composition between the grassland and forest, they adapted similarly to warming. SI was 0.6 (equivalent to a minimum temperature for growth of between −6 and −7 °C) in both control plots. Both diversity and community composition, as well as SI, showed similar threshold dynamics along the soil temperature gradient. There were no significant changes up to soil warming of 6–9 °C above ambient, beyond which all indices shifted in parallel, with SI increasing from 0.6 to 1.5. The consistency of these responses provide evidence for an important role for temperature as a direct driver of bacterial community shifts along soil temperature gradients.
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| 15. |
- Barceló, Milagros, et al.
(författare)
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Mycorrhizal tree impacts on topsoil biogeochemical properties in tropical forests
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0022-0477 .- 1365-2745. ; 110:6, s. 1271-1282
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In tropical regions, the patterns of carbon (C) and nutrient properties among ecosystems dominated by distinct mycorrhizal associations are unknown. We aim to reveal whether the dynamics differ and the ecological drivers and ecosystem functioning implications of such differences. Based on a dataset of 97 tropical forest sites, we related EcM trees abundance (as a proxy for the transition from AM to EcM trees dominance) to different topsoil properties, climatic conditions and microbial abundance proxies through Generalized Additive Models. Higher abundances of EcM trees were correlated with higher topsoil concentrations of total nitrogen and C, extractable phosphorus and potassium, δ13C, mean annual temperature, precipitation, microbial (bacterial and fungal) biomass and the relative abundance of saprotrophic fungi. Synthesis. Our results reveal consistent differences in carbon and nutrient content between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM-) and EcM-dominated vegetation across the tropical biome, pointing to lower soil fertility and lower rates of C and nutrient transformation processes in EcM-dominated forests. These patterns associate with lower topsoil C accumulation when compared to AM vegetation, which contrasts with patterns reported for temperate forests. We suggest that different mechanisms of soil organic matter accumulation explain the contrasting impacts of EcM dominance on topsoil properties of temperate and tropical biomes. Global vegetation and C models should account for the contrasting impacts of distinct mycorrhizal vegetation in different climatic zones.
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| 16. |
- Pöyry, Juha, et al.
(författare)
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The effects of soil eutrophication propagate to higher trophic levels
- 2017
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Ingår i: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-822X .- 1466-8238. ; 26:1, s. 18-30
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- AimNitrogen deposition is a major global driver of change in plant communities, but its impacts on higher trophic levels are insufficiently understood. Here, we introduce and test a novel conceptual trait-based model describing how the effects of soil eutrophication cascade to higher trophic levels across differential plant–herbivore interactions.LocationNorthern Europe.MethodsWe synthesize previous literature on the effects of nitrogen on plants and herbivorous insects as well as relevant multispecies patterns of insect communities concerning species dietary breadth, body size, dispersal propensity and voltinism in order to derive the model. We empirically evaluate the proposed, hitherto untested, four main model pathways using statistical modelling and data on 1064 northern European butterfly and moth species, their life-history traits, phylogeny and population trends.ResultsWe show that across all species: (1) larval dietary breadth and host plant foliar nitrogen content are positively and equally strongly related to insect body size, and that (2) multivoltinism, host plant preferences for soil nitrogen, body size and larval dietary breadth are positively related to population trends of butterflies and moths as predicted by the model. Positive relationships between plant foliar nitrogen content and body size as well as multivoltinism and population trends are the first multispecies demonstrations for these patterns.Main conclusionsSoil nitrogen enrichment amplifies the diverging trends of herbivorous insects feeding on nitrophilous versus nitrophobous plants through differential plant–herbivore interactions, causing predictable changes in community composition at higher trophic levels. A positive foliar nitrogen–insect body size relationship, now empirically supported, is the integrating link within this cascade. As nitrogen deposition is a global driver, our model suggests that a major future trend may be an increased dominance of insects that are large, dispersive, multivoltine, dietary generalists or specialized on nitrophilous plant species at the expense of species preferring oligotrophic environments.
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| 17. |
- Ritschl, Valentin, et al.
(författare)
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Educational readiness among health professionals in rheumatology: low awareness of EULAR offerings and unfamiliarity with the course content as major barriers-results of a EULAR-funded European survey
- 2023
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Ingår i: RMD Open. - : BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP. - 2056-5933. ; 9:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundOngoing education of health professionals in rheumatology (HPR) is critical for high-quality care. An essential factor is education readiness and a high quality of educational offerings. We explored which factors contributed to education readiness and investigated currently offered postgraduate education, including the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) offerings.Methods and participantsWe developed an online questionnaire, translated it into 24 languages and distributed it in 30 European countries. We used natural language processing and the Latent Dirichlet Allocation to analyse the qualitative experiences of the participants as well as descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression to determine factors influencing postgraduate educational readiness. Reporting followed the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys guideline.ResultsThe questionnaire was accessed 3589 times, and 667 complete responses from 34 European countries were recorded. The highest educational needs were professional development, prevention and lifestyle intervention. Older age, more working experience in rheumatology and higher education levels were positively associated with higher postgraduate educational readiness. While more than half of the HPR were familiar with EULAR as an association and the respondents reported an increased interest in the content of the educational offerings, the courses and the annual congress were poorly attended due to a lack of awareness, comparatively high costs and language barriers.ConclusionsTo promote the uptake of EULAR educational offerings, attention is needed to increase awareness among national organisations, offer accessible participation costs, and address language barriers.
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| 18. |
- Sigurdsson, Bjarni D., et al.
(författare)
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Geothermal ecosystems as natural climate change experiments : The ForHot research site in Iceland as a case study
- 2016
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Ingår i: Icelandic Agricultural Sciences. - 1670-567X. ; 29:1, s. 53-71
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article describes how natural geothermal soil temperature gradients in Iceland have been used to study terrestrial ecosystem responses to soil warming. The experimental approach was evaluated at three study sites in southern Iceland one grassland site that has been warm for at least 50 years (GO), and another comparable grassland site (GN) and a Sitka spruce plantation (FN) site that have both been warmed since an earthquake took place in 2008. Within each site type, five ca. 50 m long transects, with six permanent study plots each, were established across the soil warming gradients, spanning from unwarmed control conditions to gradually warmer soils. It was attempted to select the plots so the annual warming levels would be ca. +1, +3, +5, +10 and +20 °C within each transect. Results of continuous measurements of soil temperature (Ts) from 2013-2015 revealed that the soil warming was relatively constant and followed the seasonal Ts cycle of the unwarmed control plots. Volumetric water content in the top 5 cm of soil was repeatedly surveyed during 2013-2016. The grassland soils were wetter than the FN soils, but they had sometimes some significant warming-induced drying in the surface layer of the warmest plots, in contrast to FN. Soil chemistry did not show any indications that geothermal water had reached the root zone, but soil pH did increase somewhat with warming, which was probably linked to vegetation changes. As expected, the potential decomposition rate of organic matter increased significantly with warming. It was concluded that the natural geothermal gradients at the ForHot sites in Iceland offered realistic conditions for studying terrestrial ecosystem responses to warming with minimal artefacts.
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| 19. |
- Verbrigghe, Niel, et al.
(författare)
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Soil carbon loss in warmed subarctic grasslands is rapid and restricted to topsoil
- 2022
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Ingår i: Biogeosciences. - : Copernicus. - 1726-4170 .- 1726-4189. ; 19:14, s. 3381-3393
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global warming may lead to carbon transfers from soils to the atmosphere, yet this positive feedback to the climate system remains highly uncertain, especially in subsoils . Using natural geothermal soil warming gradients of up to +6.4 °C in subarctic grasslands , we show that soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks decline strongly and linearly with warming (-2.8tha-1 °C-1). Comparison of SOC stock changes following medium-term (5 and 10 years) and long-term (>50 years) warming revealed that all SOC stock reduction occurred within the first 5 years of warming, after which continued warming no longer reduced SOC stocks. This rapid equilibration of SOC observed in Andosol suggests a critical role for ecosystem adaptations to warming and could imply short-lived soil carbon-climate feedbacks. Our data further revealed that the soil C loss occurred in all aggregate size fractions and that SOC stock reduction was only visible in topsoil (0-10cm). SOC stocks in subsoil (10-30cm), where plant roots were absent, showed apparent conservation after >50 years of warming. The observed depth-dependent warming responses indicate that explicit vertical resolution is a prerequisite for global models to accurately project future SOC stocks for this soil type and should be investigated for soils with other mineralogies.
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