Socioecology Research Today

Protected forests are sometimes encroached by surrounding communities. But patterns of cover change can vary even within one given setting – understanding these complexities can offer insights into the effective maintenance of forest cover. Using satellite image analyses together with historical information, population census data and interviews with local informants, we analysed the drivers of [...]

The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable management, and enhancement of carbon [...]

There is growing recognition that humans are faced with a critical and narrowing window of opportunity to halt or reverse some of the key indicators involved in the environmental crisis. Given human activities’ scale and impact, as well as the overly narrow perspectives of environmental research’s dominant natural sciences, a major effort is necessary to [...]

A literature survey of studies reporting nitrous oxide uptake in the soils of natural ecosystems is used to suggest that the median uptake potential is 4 μg m−2 hr−1. The highest values are nearly all associated with soils of wetland and peatland ecosystems. Globally, the consumption of nitrous oxide in soils is not likely to [...]

Here, Nature takes a look at three pressing questions: are GM crops fuelling the rise of herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’? Are they driving farmers in India to suicide? And are the foreign transgenes in GM crops spreading into other plants? These controversial case studies show how blame shifts, myths are spread and cultural insensitivities can inflame debate. [...]

This study presents a novel way of enhancing plant growth through the use of a non-petroleum based product. We report here that exposing either roots or seeds of multicellular plants to extremely low concentrations of dissolved hydrogen sulfide at any stage of life causes statistically significant increases in biomass including higher fruit yield. Individual cells [...]

Recent metaanalyses suggest biodiversity loss affects the functioning of ecosystems to a similar extent as other global environmental change agents. However, the abundance and functioning of soil organisms have been hypothesized to be much less responsive to such changes, particularly in plant diversity, than aboveground variables, although tests of this hypothesis are extremely rare. We [...]

The rapid application of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a much heralded means to tackle emissions from both existing and future sources that, however, simply may not deliver the expected benefits. Apart from some doubts about the efficacy of the geological storage, the present stall in deploying carbon capture and storage (no fossil-fuel power [...]

Biomass burning produces 40 to 250 million tons of charcoal per year worldwide. Much of this is preserved in soils and sediments for thousands of years. However, the estimated production rate of charcoal is significantly larger than that of decomposition, and researchers have calculated that a large fraction of the charcoal produced by fires is [...]

In 2011, Lake Erie experienced the largest harmful algal bloom in its recorded history, with a peak intensity over three times greater than any previously observed bloom. Here we show that long-term trends in agricultural practices are consistent with increasing phosphorus loading to the western basin of the lake, and that these trends, coupled with [...]