Species-specific responses of canopy greenness to the extreme droughts of 2018 and 2022 for four abundant tree species in Germany.

Germany experienced extreme drought periods in 2018 and 2022, which significantly affected forests. These drought periods were natural experiments, providing valuable insights into how different tree species respond to drought. The quantification of species-specific drought responses may help to identify the most climate-change-resilient tree species, thereby informing effective forest regeneration strategies.

Spatiotemporal Monitoring of Cropland Soil Organic Carbon Changes From Space.

Soil monitoring requires accurate and spatially explicit information on soil organic carbon (SOC) trends and changes over time. Spatiotemporal SOC models based on Earth Observation (EO) satellite data can support large-scale SOC monitoring but often lack sufficient temporal validation based on long-term soil data. In this study, we used repeated SOC samples from 1986 to 2022 and a time series of multispectral bare soil observations (Landsat and Sentinel-2) to model high-resolution cropland SOC trends for almost four decades.

Diverse and larger tree islands promote native tree diversity in oil palm landscapes.

In monoculture-dominated landscapes, recovering biodiversity is a priority, but effective restoration strategies have yet to be identified. In this study, we experimentally tested passive and active restoration strategies to recover taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of woody plants within 52 tree islands established in an oil palm landscape. Large tree islands and higher initial planted diversity catalyzed diversity recovery, particularly functional diversity at the landscape level.

Farmers' Willingness to Participate in a Carbon Sequestration Program - A Discrete Choice Experiment.

Farmers can counteract global warming by drawing carbon dioxide from the air into agricultural soils by building up humus. Humus programs were developed to motivate farmers for even more humus formation (= carbon sequestration) through an additional financial incentive. These programs are still at an early stage of development, which is why the number of participating farmers and research work is still low.

German yield and area data for 11 crops from 1979 to 2021 at a harmonized spatial resolution of 397 districts.

Long time series with spatially highly resolved crop data are important for research projects on numerous future challenges in the environment and food sector. In this publication, we describe a dataset with crop-yield and area data for Germany from 1979 to 2021. The data are spatially resolved to 397 districts, which have an average size of 900 km, and include the crops spring barley, winter barley, grain maize, silage maize, oats, potatoes, winter rape, rye, sugarbeet, triticale and winter wheat.

How much can farmers pay for weeding robots? A Monte Carlo simulation study.

Unlabelled: This paper investigates the Maximum Acquisition Values (MAVs) of weeding robots and their determinants in both organic and conventional sugar beet farming in Germany. The MAV is defined in this paper as the price of the weeding robot that renders the same net profit as the current weeding methods. For our analysis, a Monte Carlo simulation approach is used, combined with empirical data and data collected from weeding robot companies.

Is animal welfare better on smaller dairy farms? Evidence from 3,085 dairy farms in Germany.

The structural change toward larger (dairy) farms is often criticized because it supposedly has a negative effect on farm animal welfare. We investigated this criticism using cross-sectional survey data from 3,085 German dairy farms. Even though our sample was a convenience sample, it closely resembled the diverse structures of dairy farming in Germany and covered a wide range of dairy farm sizes (7 to 2,900 cows per farm, mean 122).

Agroecological practices in combination with healthy diets can help meet EU food system policy targets.

Agroecology has been proposed as a strategy to improve food system sustainability, but has also been criticised for using land inefficiently. We compared five explorative storylines, developed in a stakeholder process, for future food systems in the EU to 2050. We modelled a range of biophysical (e.

Recycling Nutrients and Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Baltic Sea Region-Sustainable or Economically Infeasible?

Ecotechnologies have the potential to reduce the use of finite resources while providing a variety of co-benefits to society, though they often lack in market competitiveness. In this study, we investigate the sustainability of ecotechnologies for recovering carbon and nutrients, and demonstrate how a so-called "bottom-up" approach can serve as a decision-making instrument. Based on three case study catchments with a focus on domestic wastewater in Sweden and Poland, and on manure, grass and blackwater substrates in Finland, we apply a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) on system alternatives derived from a participatory process.

Introducing the World's First Global Producer Price Indices for Beef Cattle and Sheep.

While international beef and sheep meat price developments are usually measured with meat trade prices (provided by FAO), no comparable information exists on world average of national prices that producers receive for livestock. This paper aims to fill this gap by introducing a set of global producer price indices representing cattle, lambs, and sheep prices as received by producers: the agri benchmark of weaner cattle, finished cattle, lambs and lambs and sheep price indices. These Laspeyres, production-weighted indices measure changes in global farm gate prices as provided annually by the agri benchmark Beef and Sheep Network, with this paper covering prices between 2000 and 2019.

The effects of farming systems (organic vs. conventional) on dairy cow welfare, based on the Welfare Quality® protocol.

Animal welfare in livestock production is of great interest to consumers. The organic farming approach strives to ensure animal welfare based on preventive measures, but there are very few scientific studies that compare the actual differences in animal welfare between organic and conventional farms. Those studies that have been carried out frequently focus on specific aspects of animal welfare, mostly health issues.

A Results-Oriented Approach for the Animal Welfare Measure of the European Union's Rural Development Programme.

Farm animal welfare is a major concern to the European Union's citizens, addressed in the Rural Development Programmes by a specific animal welfare support measure. Previous evaluation results reveal that the implemented action-oriented measures fail when it comes to improving animal health, an important dimension of animal welfare. Results-oriented measures could compensate for this deficiency, but little is known about their design.

Modelling the productivity of Siberian larch forests from Landsat NDVI time series in fragmented forest stands of the Mongolian forest-steppe.

The monitoring of the spatial and temporal dynamics of vegetation productivity is important in the context of carbon sequestration by terrestrial ecosystems from the atmosphere. The accessibility of the full archive of medium-resolution earth observation data for multiple decades dramatically improved the potential of remote sensing to support global climate change and terrestrial carbon cycle studies. We investigated a dense time series of multi-sensor Landsat Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data at the southern fringe of the boreal forests in the Mongolian forest-steppe with regard to the ability to capture the annual variability in radial stemwood increment and thus forest productivity.

Nutrient mitigation under the impact of climate and land-use changes: A hydro-economic approach to participatory catchment management.

Excessive nutrient loadings into rivers are a well-known ecological problem. Implemented mitigation measures should ideally be cost-effective, but perfectly ranking alternative nutrient mitigation measures according to cost-effectiveness is a difficult methodological challenge. Furthermore, a particularly practical challenge is that cost-effective measures are not necessarily favoured by local stakeholders, and this may impede their successful implementation in practice.

Current situation and future prospects for beef production in Europe - A review.

The European Union (EU) is the world's third largest producer of beef. This contributes to the economy, rural development, social life, culture and gastronomy of Europe. The diversity of breeds, animal types (cows, bulls, steers, heifers) and farming systems (intensive, extensive on permanent or temporary pastures, mixed, breeders, feeders, etc) is a strength, and a weakness as the industry is often fragmented and poorly connected.

The Baltic Sea as a time machine for the future coastal ocean.

Coastal global oceans are expected to undergo drastic changes driven by climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressures in coming decades. Predicting specific future conditions and assessing the best management strategies to maintain ecosystem integrity and sustainable resource use are difficult, because of multiple interacting pressures, uncertain projections, and a lack of test cases for management. We argue that the Baltic Sea can serve as a time machine to study consequences and mitigation of future coastal perturbations, due to its unique combination of an early history of multistressor disturbance and ecosystem deterioration and early implementation of cross-border environmental management to address these problems.

Analysis of the influences on plumage condition in laying hens: How suitable is a whole body plumage score as an outcome?

An important indicator of the health and behavior of laying hens is their plumage condition. Various scoring systems are used, and various risk factors for feather damage have been described. Often, a summarized score of different body parts is used to describe the overall condition of the plumage of a bird.

"Why some consumers don't care": Heterogeneity in household responses to a food scandal.

In the aftermath of food scandals, household perceptions about the health risks posed by failures in food safety play a central role in determining their mitigating behavior. A stream of literature has shown that factors including media coverage of a scandal, risk perceptions, trust in food safety information, and consumption habits matter. This paper deviates from the standard assumption of a homogeneous response to media information across all households exposed to a food scandal.