| 1. |
- Adler, Anneli
(författare)
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Breeding process and preparedness for mass-scale deployment of perennial ligno-cellulosic biomass crops switchgrass, miscanthus, willow and poplar
- 2019
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 11, s. 118-151
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Genetic improvement through breeding is one of the key approaches to increasing biomass supply. This paper documents the breeding progress to date for four perennial biomass crops (PBCs) that have high output-input energy ratios: namely Panicum virgatum (switchgrass), species of the genera Miscanthus (miscanthus), Salix (willow) and Populus (poplar). For each crop, we report on the size of germplasm collections, the efforts to date to phenotype and genotype, the diversity available for breeding and on the scale of breeding work as indicated by number of attempted crosses. We also report on the development of faster and more precise breeding using molecular breeding techniques. Poplar is the model tree for genetic studies and is furthest ahead in terms of biological knowledge and genetic resources. Linkage maps, transgenesis and genome editing methods are now being used in commercially focused poplar breeding. These are in development in switchgrass, miscanthus and willow generating large genetic and phenotypic data sets requiring concomitant efforts in informatics to create summaries that can be accessed and used by practical breeders. Cultivars of switchgrass and miscanthus can be seed-based synthetic populations, semihybrids or clones. Willow and poplar cultivars are commercially deployed as clones. At local and regional level, the most advanced cultivars in each crop are at technology readiness levels which could be scaled to planting rates of thousands of hectares per year in about 5 years with existing commercial developers. Investment in further development of better cultivars is subject to current market failure and the long breeding cycles. We conclude that sustained public investment in breeding plays a key role in delivering future mass-scale deployment of PBCs.
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| 2. |
- Anthony, Kenneth R. N., et al.
(författare)
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Operationalizing resilience for adaptive coral reef management under global environmental change
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21:1, s. 48-61
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cumulative pressures from global climate and ocean change combined with multiple regional and local-scale stressors pose fundamental challenges to coral reef managers worldwide. Understanding how cumulative stressors affect coral reef vulnerability is critical for successful reef conservation now and in the future. In this review, we present the case that strategically managing for increased ecological resilience (capacity for stress resistance and recovery) can reduce coral reef vulnerability (risk of net decline) up to a point. Specifically, we propose an operational framework for identifying effective management levers to enhance resilience and support management decisions that reduce reef vulnerability. Building on a system understanding of biological and ecological processes that drive resilience of coral reefs in different environmental and socio-economic settings, we present an Adaptive Resilience-Based management (ARBM) framework and suggest a set of guidelines for how and where resilience can be enhanced via management interventions. We argue that press-type stressors (pollution, sedimentation, overfishing, ocean warming and acidification) are key threats to coral reef resilience by affecting processes underpinning resistance and recovery, while pulse-type (acute) stressors (e.g. storms, bleaching events, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks) increase the demand for resilience. We apply the framework to a set of example problems for Caribbean and Indo-Pacific reefs. A combined strategy of active risk reduction and resilience support is needed, informed by key management objectives, knowledge of reef ecosystem processes and consideration of environmental and social drivers. As climate change and ocean acidification erode the resilience and increase the vulnerability of coral reefs globally, successful adaptive management of coral reefs will become increasingly difficult. Given limited resources, on-the-ground solutions are likely to focus increasingly on actions that support resilience at finer spatial scales, and that are tightly linked to ecosystem goods and services.
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| 3. |
- Audet, Joachim
(författare)
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Eutrophication effects on greenhouse gas fluxes from shallow-lake mesocosms override those of climate warming
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21, s. 4449-4463
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fresh waters make a disproportionately large contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with shallow lakes being particular hot spots. Given their global prevalence, how GHG fluxes from shallow lakes are altered by climate change may have profound implications for the global carbon cycle. Empirical evidence for the temperature dependence of the processes controlling GHG production in natural systems is largely based on the correlation between seasonal temperature variation and seasonal change in GHG fluxes. However, ecosystem-level GHG fluxes could be influenced by factors, which while varying seasonally with temperature are actually either indirectly related (e.g. primary producer biomass) or largely unrelated to temperature, for instance nutrient loading. Here, we present results from the longest running shallow-lake mesocosm experiment which demonstrate that nutrient concentrations override temperature as a control of both the total and individual GHG flux. Furthermore, testing for temperature treatment effects at low and high nutrient levels separately showed only one, rather weak, positive effect of temperature (CH4 flux at high nutrients). In contrast, at low nutrients, the CO2 efflux was lower in the elevated temperature treatments, with no significant effect on CH4 or N2O fluxes. Further analysis identified possible indirect effects of temperature treatment. For example, at low nutrient levels, increased macrophyte abundance was associated with significantly reduced fluxes of both CH4 and CO2 for both total annual flux and monthly observation data. As macrophyte abundance was positively related to temperature treatment, this suggests the possibility of indirect temperature effects, via macrophyte abundance, on CH4 and CO2 flux. These findings indicate that fluxes of GHGs from shallow lakes may be controlled more by factors indirectly related to temperature, in this case nutrient concentration and the abundance of primary producers. Thus, at ecosystem scale, response to climate change may not follow predictions based on the temperature dependence of metabolic processes.
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| 4. |
- Auffret, Alistair
(författare)
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Synergistic and antagonistic effects of land use and non-native species on community responses to climate change
- 2019
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 25, s. 4303-4314
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change, land-use change and introductions of non-native species are key determinants of biodiversity change worldwide. However, the extent to which anthropogenic drivers of environmental change interact to affect biological communities is largely unknown, especially over longer time periods. Here, we show that plant community composition in 996 Swedish landscapes has consistently shifted to reflect the warmer and wetter climate that the region has experienced during the second half of the 20th century. Using community climatic indices, which reflect the average climatic associations of the species within each landscape at each time period, we found that species compositions in 74% of landscapes now have a higher representation of warm-associated species than they did previously, while 84% of landscapes now host more species associated with higher levels of precipitation. In addition to a warmer and wetter climate, there have also been large shifts in land use across the region, while the fraction of non-native species has increased in the majority of landscapes. Climatic warming at the landscape level appeared to favour the colonization of warm-associated species, while also potentially driving losses in cool-associated species. However, the resulting increases in community thermal means were apparently buffered by landscape simplification (reduction in habitat heterogeneity within landscapes) in the form of increased forest cover. Increases in non-native species, which generally originate from warmer climates than Sweden, were a strong driver of community-level warming. In terms of precipitation, both landscape simplification and increases in non-natives appeared to favour species associated with drier climatic conditions, to some extent counteracting the climate-driven shift towards wetter communities. Anthropogenic drivers can act both synergistically and antagonistically to determine trajectories of change in biological communities over time. Therefore, it is important to consider multiple drivers of global change when trying to understand, manage and predict biodiversity in the future.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Bergström, Ann-Kristin, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Light and nutrient control phytoplankton biomass responses to global change in northern lakes
- 2019
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 25:6, s. 2021-2029
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global change affects terrestrial loadings of colored dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nutrients to northern lakes. Still, little is known about how phytoplankton respond to changes in light and nutrient availability across gradients in lake DOC. In this study, we used results from whole-lake studies in northern Sweden to show that annual mean phytoplankton biomass expressed unimodal curved relationships across lake DOC gradients, peaking at threshold DOC levels of around 11 mg/L. Whole-lake single nutrient enrichment in selected lakes caused elevated biomass, with most pronounced effect at the threshold DOC level. These patterns give support to the suggested dual control by DOC on phytoplankton via nutrient (positively) and light (negatively) availability and imply that the lakes' location along the DOC axis is critical in determining to what extent phytoplankton respond to changes in DOC and/or nutrient loadings. By using data from the large Swedish Lake Monitoring Survey, we further estimated that 80% of northern Swedish lakes are below the DOC threshold, potentially experiencing increased phytoplankton biomass with browning alone, and/or combined with nutrient enrichment. The results support the previous model results on effects of browning and eutrophication on lake phytoplankton, and provide important understanding of how northern lakes may respond to future global changes.
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| 7. |
- Binzer, Amrei, et al.
(författare)
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Interactive effects of warming, eutrophication and size structure: impacts on biodiversity and food-web structure
- 2016
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : WILEY-BLACKWELL. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 22:1, s. 220-227
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Warming and eutrophication are two of the most important global change stressors for natural ecosystems, but their interaction is poorly understood. We used a dynamic model of complex, size-structured food webs to assess interactive effects on diversity and network structure. We found antagonistic impacts: Warming increases diversity in eutrophic systems and decreases it in oligotrophic systems. These effects interact with the community size structure: Communities of similarly sized species such as parasitoid-host systems are stabilized by warming and destabilized by eutrophication, whereas the diversity of size-structured predator-prey networks decreases strongly with warming, but decreases only weakly with eutrophication. Nonrandom extinction risks for generalists and specialists lead to higher connectance in networks without size structure and lower connectance in size-structured communities. Overall, our results unravel interactive impacts of warming and eutrophication and suggest that size structure may serve as an important proxy for predicting the community sensitivity to these global change stressors.
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| 8. |
- Bokhorst, Stef Frederik
(författare)
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Climatic and biotic extreme events moderate long-term responses of above- and belowground sub-Arctic heathland communities to climate change
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21, s. 4063-4075
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change impacts are not uniform across the Arctic region because interacting factors causes large variations in local ecosystem change. Extreme climatic events and population cycles of herbivores occur simultaneously against a background of gradual climate warming trends and can redirect ecosystem change along routes that are difficult to predict. Here, we present the results from sub-Arctic heath vegetation and its belowground micro-arthropod community in response to the two main drivers of vegetation damage in this region: extreme winter warming events and subsequent outbreaks of the defoliating autumnal moth caterpillar (Epirrita autumnata). Evergreen dwarf shrub biomass decreased (30%) following extreme winter warming events and again by moth caterpillar grazing. Deciduous shrubs that were previously exposed to an extreme winter warming event were not affected by the moth caterpillar grazing, while those that were not exposed to warming events (control plots) showed reduced (23%) biomass from grazing. Cryptogam cover increased irrespective of grazing or winter warming events. Micro-arthropods declined (46%) following winter warming but did not respond to changes in plant community. Extreme winter warming and caterpillar grazing suppressed the CO2 fluxes of the ecosystem. Evergreen dwarf shrubs are disadvantaged in a future sub-Arctic with more stochastic climatic and biotic events. Given that summer warming may further benefit deciduous over evergreen shrubs, event and trend climate change may both act against evergreen shrubs and the ecosystem functions they provide. This is of particular concern given that Arctic heath vegetation is typically dominated by evergreen shrubs. Other components of the vegetation showed variable responses to abiotic and biotic events, and their interaction indicates that sub-Arctic vegetation response to multiple pressures is not easy to predict from single-factor responses. Therefore, while biotic and climatic events may have clear impacts, more work is needed to understand their net effect on Arctic ecosystems.
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| 9. |
- Bruder, Andreas, et al.
(författare)
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Biotic interactions modify multiple-stressor effects on juvenile brown trout in an experimental stream food web
- 2017
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 23:9, s. 3882-3894
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural land use results in multiple stressors affecting stream ecosystems. Flow reduction due to water abstraction, elevated levels of nutrients and chemical contaminants are common agricultural stressors worldwide. Concurrently, stream ecosystems are also increasingly affected by climate change. Interactions among multiple co-occurring stressors result in biological responses that cannot be predicted from single-stressor effects (i.e. synergisms and antagonisms). At the ecosystem level, multiple-stressor effects can be further modified by biotic interactions (e.g. trophic interactions). We conducted a field experiment using 128 flow-through stream mesocosms to examine the individual and combined effects of water abstraction, nutrient enrichment and elevated levels of the nitrification inhibitor dicyandiamide (DCD) on survival, condition and gut content of juvenile brown trout and on benthic abundance of their invertebrate prey. Flow velocity reduction decreased fish survival (−12% compared to controls) and condition (−8% compared to initial condition), whereas effects of nutrient and DCD additions and interactions among these stressors were not significant. Negative effects of flow velocity reduction on fish survival and condition were consistent with effects on fish gut content (−25% compared to controls) and abundance of dominant invertebrate prey (−30% compared to controls), suggesting a negative metabolic balance driving fish mortality and condition decline, which was confirmed by structural equation modelling. Fish mortality under reduced flow velocity increased as maximal daily water temperatures approached the upper limit of their tolerance range, reflecting synergistic interactions between these stressors. Our study highlights the importance of indirect stressor effects such as those transferred through trophic interactions, which need to be considered when assessing and managing fish populations and stream food webs in multiple-stressor situations. However, in real streams, compensatory mechanisms and behavioural responses, as well as seasonal and spatial variation, may alter the intensity of stressor effects and the sensitivity of trout populations.
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| 10. |
- Brunet, Jörg
(författare)
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Drivers of temporal changes in temperate forest plant diversity vary across spatial scales
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21, s. 3726-3737
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global biodiversity is affected by numerous environmental drivers. Yet, the extent to which global environmental changes contribute to changes in local diversity is poorly understood. We investigated biodiversity changes in a meta-analysis of 39 resurvey studies in European temperate forests (3988 vegetation records in total, 17-75years between the two surveys) by assessing the importance of (i) coarse-resolution (i.e., among sites) vs. fine-resolution (i.e., within sites) environmental differences and (ii) changing environmental conditions between surveys. Our results clarify the mechanisms underlying the direction and magnitude of local-scale biodiversity changes. While not detecting any net local diversity loss, we observed considerable among-site variation, partly explained by temporal changes in light availability (a local driver) and density of large herbivores (a regional driver). Furthermore, strong evidence was found that presurvey levels of nitrogen deposition determined subsequent diversity changes. We conclude that models forecasting future biodiversity changes should consider coarse-resolution environmental changes, account for differences in baseline environmental conditions and for local changes in fine-resolution environmental conditions.
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