During an investigation on the effects of bottom trawling, we found that otter boards which keep nets open bury surface sediment at a few centimeters of sediment depth. This is also done by animals living in the sediment (bioturbation), a process that is considered very important for sediment ecosystem integrity. We try to differentiate between the two and estimate that natural bioturbation is much more likely than otter board sediment reversal in our investigation area.

We conducted experimental manipulations of light level on microbial communities from the primary nitrite maximum. Overall, while individual microbial processes have different directions and magnitudes in their response to increasing light, the net community response is a decline in nitrite production with increasing light. We conclude that while increased light may decrease net nitrite production, high-light conditions alone do not exclude nitrification from occurring in the surface ocean.

This study explores year-round forest-floor greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in a Swiss spruce forest. Soil temperature and snow depth affected forest-floor respiration, while CH₄ uptake was linked to snow cover. Negligible N₂O fluxes were observed. In 2022, a warm year, CO₂ emissions notably increased. The study suggests rising forest-floor GHG emissions due to climate change, impacting carbon sink behavior. Thus, for future forest management, continuous year-round GHG flux measurements are crucial.

Time series studies show that CH₄ is highly dynamic on the coastal ocean surface and planktonic communities are linked to CH₄ accumulation, as found in coastal upwelling off Chile. We have identified the crucial role of picoplankton (> 3 µm) in CH₄ recycling, especially with the addition of methylated substrates (trimethylamine and methylphosphonic acid) during upwelling and non-upwelling periods. These insights improve understanding of surface ocean CH₄ recycling, aiding CH₄ emission estimates.

Porous materials are known to reversibly trap water from the air, even at low humidity. However, this behavior is poorly understood for soils. In this analysis, we test whether eddy covariance is able to measure the so-called adsorption of atmospheric water vapor by soils. We find that this flux occurs frequently during dry nights in a Mediterranean ecosystem, while EC detects downwardly directed vapor fluxes. These results can help to map moisture uptake globally.

The health of the Baltic and North seas is threatened due to high anthropogenic pressure; thus, different methods to assess the status of these regions are urgently needed. Here, we validated a novel model simulating the ocean dynamics and biogeochemistry of the Baltic and North seas that can be used to create future climate and nutrient scenarios, contribute to European initiatives on de-eutrophication, and provide water quality advice and support on nutrient load reductions for both seas.

Plant sexual systems are important to understanding the evolution and maintenance of plant diversity. We quantified region effects on their proportions while incorporating local climate factors and evolutionary history. We found regional processes and climate effects both play important roles in shaping the geographic distribution of sexual systems, providing a baseline for predicting future changes in forest communities in the context of global change.

This work shows that, under a high-emission scenario, oxygen concentration in deep water of parts of the North Sea and Celtic Sea can become critically low (hypoxia) towards the end of this century. The extent and frequency of hypoxia depends on the intensity of climate change projected by different climate models. This is the result of a complex combination of factors like warming, increase in stratification, changes in the currents and changes in biological processes.

Measurements of ocean carbon are limited in time and space. Machine learning algorithms are therefore used to reconstruct ocean carbon where observations do not exist. Improving these reconstructions is important in order to accurately estimate how much carbon the ocean absorbs from the atmosphere. In this study, we find that a small addition of observations from the Southern Ocean, obtained by autonomous sampling platforms, could significantly improve the reconstructions.