Alongside being a media for plant growth soils provide many other essential ecosystem services, such as: storing carbon, regulating greenhouse gases, recycling nutrients, buffering pollutants and purifying waters. Many of these services are carried out by microorganisms yet there are uncertainties as to how biodiversity itself contributes to soil service provision. With increasing pressures on […]
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The decline of Afro-Palearctic migrant bird populations is a major challenge facing European biodiversity. Avian population trends are important indicators of environmental change and used by the UK government to measure ‘quality of life’, so reversing these declines is high on scientific and political agendas. Migrants are more vulnerable to environmental change than residents because […]
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In the last decade, polar regions have seen rapid climate change. From the sea ice loss and impact on polar bears in the Arctic to rising Antarctic sea level and temperatures and the calving of continent-sized chunks of Antarctic ice sheets. The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctic is a major source of heat for the region […]
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Now that humanity has cleared or damaged at least three-quarters of the world’s primary forests, the regrowth of tropical forests play a key role in global biogeochemical cycles and climate. For example, secondary forests accounts for approximately 66% of the total fluxes of the carbon sink worldwide. While it has been estimated that 20% of […]
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We mostly enjoy the coast by visiting the beach, which, apart from the waves and tides, can seem quite static. Viewed from the air, however, the coastline is dynamic and complex, exhibiting many curious shapes, for no apparent reason. One feature quite common on our coasts is a sort of blunt spit, usually composed of […]
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Tropical forests are a major global carbon sink and account for a third of the carbon fixed globally by photosynthesis. Recent research in South America shows that these forests are changing, including increases in abundance and biomass of lianas (woody vines), which may be a results of changing climatic conditions. Lianas reduce growth and increase […]
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Global circulation models predict that severe and widespread drought will occur throughout Europe. Soil is the largest carbon pool of the terrestrial biosphere and is an ofter-overlooked carbon pool that can be highly susceptible to climate change. At one of the UK’s longest running climate change experiments we have found that repeated summer drought has […]
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Global warming poses grave risks for society and ecosystems. To date, mitigation efforts have been insufficient to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from continuing to rise. Solar radiation management geoengineering has been proposed as a means to slow or reverse global warming by reflecting incoming sunlight back to space. Solar radiation management is receiving growing attention […]
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Why is this research exciting? The relationship between plants and mycorrhizal fungi is central to the maintenance of plant growth and ecosystem productivity worldwide. Mycorrhizal fungi also play an important role in ecosystem carbon dynamics, but the contributions of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and ectomycorrhizal fungi to soil carbon storage can differ substantially. Recent evidence suggests […]
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This project brings together the paleoclimate data and modelling communities to test ways of comparing data on past climate change with modelled scenarios of that climate. The studentship will involve i) the production of new proxy time series for climate change in the UK over the last 2000 years using lake isotope records ii) the […]
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