Biodiversity in European agricultural landscapes: transformative societal changes needed.

Reversing the decline of biodiversity in European agricultural landscapes is urgent. We suggest eight measures addressing politics, economics, and civil society to instigate transformative changes in agricultural landscapes. We emphasize the need for a well-informed society and political measures promoting sustainable farming by combining food production and biodiversity conservation.

High emissions of greenhouse gases from grasslands on peat and other organic soils.

Drainage has turned peatlands from a carbon sink into one of the world's largest greenhouse gas (GHG) sources from cultivated soils. We analyzed a unique data set (12 peatlands, 48 sites and 122 annual budgets) of mainly unpublished GHG emissions from grasslands on bog and fen peat as well as other soils rich in soil organic carbon (SOC) in Germany. Emissions and environmental variables were measured with identical methods.

Setting priorities for land management to mitigate climate change.

Background: No consensus has been reached how to measure the effectiveness of climate change mitigation in the land-use sector and how to prioritize land use accordingly. We used the long-term cumulative and average sectorial C stocks in biomass, soil and products, C stock changes, the substitution of fossil energy and of energy-intensive products, and net present value (NPV) as evaluation criteria for the effectiveness of a hectare of productive land to mitigate climate change and produce economic returns. We evaluated land management options using real-life data of Thuringia, a region representative for central-western European conditions, and input from life cycle assessment, with a carbon-tracking model.

Regaining momentum for international climate policy beyond Copenhagen.

The 'Copenhagen Accord' fails to deliver the political framework for a fair, ambitious and legally-binding international climate agreement beyond 2012. The current climate policy regime dynamics are insufficient to reflect the realities of topical complexity, actor coalitions, as well as financial, legal and institutional challenges in the light of extreme time constraints to avoid 'dangerous' climate change of more than 2 degrees C. In this paper we analyze these stumbling blocks for international climate policy and discuss alternatives in order to regain momentum for future negotiations.

Characteristics of dissolved organic matter following 20years of peatland restoration.

The changes in the amounts and composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) following long-term peat restoration are unknown, although this fraction of soil organic matter affects many processes in such ecosystems. We addressed this lack of knowledge by investigating a peatland in south-west Germany that was partly rewetted 20 years ago. A successfully restored site and a moderately drained site were compared, where the mean groundwater levels were close to the soil surface and around 30 cm below surface, respectively.

Europe's terrestrial biosphere absorbs 7 to 12% of European anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Most inverse atmospheric models report considerable uptake of carbon dioxide in Europe's terrestrial biosphere. In contrast, carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems increase at a much smaller rate, with carbon gains in forests and grassland soils almost being offset by carbon losses from cropland and peat soils. Accounting for non-carbon dioxide carbon transfers that are not detected by the atmospheric models and for carbon dioxide fluxes bypassing the ecosystem carbon stocks considerably reduces the gap between the small carbon-stock changes and the larger carbon dioxide uptake estimated by atmospheric models.