Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events.

Increasing extreme climatic events threaten the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Because soil microbes govern key biogeochemical processes, understanding their response to climate extremes is crucial in predicting the consequences for ecosystem functioning. Here we subjected soils from 30 grasslands across Europe to four contrasting extreme climatic events under common controlled conditions (drought, flood, freezing and heat), and compared the response of soil microbial communities and their functioning with those of undisturbed soils.

Co-located ecological data for exploring top- and subsoil carbon dynamics across grassland-woodland contrasts.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a soil health indicator and understanding dynamics changing SOC stocks will help achieving net zero goals. Here we present four datasets featuring 11,750 data points covering co-located aboveground and below-ground metrics for exploring ecosystem SOC dynamics. Five sites across England with an established land use contrast, grassland and woodland next to each other, were rigorously sampled for aboveground (n = 109), surface (n = 33 soil water release curves), topsoil, and subsoil metrics.

The performance and persistence of transitional justice and its ways of knowing atrocity.

Transitional justice, like other peacebuilding endeavours, strives to create change in the world and to produce knowledge that is useful. However, the politics of how this knowledge is produced, shared and rendered legitimate depends upon the relationships between different epistemic communities, the way in which transitional justice has developed as a field and the myriad contexts in which it is embedded at local, national and international levels. In particular, forms of 'expert' knowledge tend to be legal, foreign and based on models to be replicated elsewhere.