We modelled different water table scenarios in drained agricultural peatlands to investigate the impact of water management on greenhouse gas emissions. Our results show that raising the water table reduces emissions, even in fields with thinner peat layers and conservative water management practices. Carbon dioxide emissions were more affected than nitrous oxide emissions. This study sheds light on the role of peatlands in mitigating emissions. Simulations were run using a process-based model.

Predicting soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in forests is crucial to determining the C balance, yet drivers of SOC stocks remain uncertain at large scales. Across a broad environmental gradient in Switzerland, we compared measured SOC stocks with those modeled by Yasso, which is commonly used for greenhouse gas budgets. We show that soil mineral properties and climate are the main controls of SOC stocks, indicating that better accounting of these processes will advance the accuracy of SOC stock predictions.

A novel approach for evaluating individual and combined impacts of drought and salinity in real-life settings is proposed using Sentinel-2. We found that crop responses to drought and salinity differ between growth stages. Compared to salinity, crop growth is most strongly affected by drought stress and is, in general, further exacerbated when co-occurring with salinity stress. Our approach facilitates a way to monitor crop health under multiple stresses with potential large-scale applications.

Soils account for the largest share of carbon found in terrestrial ecosystems, and accurate depiction of soil carbon decomposition is essential in understanding how permanent these carbon storages are. We present a straightforward way to include carbon isotope concentrations into soil decomposition and carbon storages for the Yasso model, which enables the model to use ¹³C as a natural tracer to track changes in the underlying soil organic matter decomposition.

In subarctic grassland on a geothermal warming gradient, we found large reductions in topsoil carbon stocks, with carbon stocks linearly declining with warming intensity. Most importantly, however, we observed that soil carbon stocks stabilised within 5 years of warming and remained unaffected by warming thereafter, even after > 50 years of warming. Moreover, in contrast to the large topsoil carbon losses, subsoil carbon stocks remained unaffected after > 50 years of soil warming.