Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a greenhouse gas that is also capable of destroying the ozone layer. Agricultural soil is the largest source of N2O. Soybean is a globally important leguminous crop, and hosts symbiotic nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria (rhizobia) that can also produce N2O. In agricultural soil, N2O is emitted from fertilizer and soil nitrogen. In soybean ecosystems, N2O is also emitted from the degradation of the root nodules. Organic nitrogen inside the nodules is mineralized to NH4+, followed by nitrification and denitrification that produce N2O.

China is to introduce a national emissions trading system based on regional pilot projects despite structural hurdles ahead.

Estimating the trajectory of CO2 emissions, an important part of planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation, depends in part on understanding how these emissions are influenced by the economy. Although researchers have developed sophisticated models of the connections between the economy and CO2 emissions, prominently used modelling approaches implicitly assume that the effect on emissions of declining GDP per capita is symmetrical with the effect of growth in GDP per capita1, 2.

Increased atmospheric CO2 and rising temperatures are expected to affect rice yields and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from rice paddies. This is important, because rice cultivation is one of the largest human-induced sources of the potent GHG methane (CH4) and rice is the world’s second-most produced staple crop.

Rising ocean temperatures have reduced rates of coral calcification and increased rates of coral mortality, thereby negatively impacting the health of coral reef ecosystems. Nevertheless, the response of corals to thermal stress seems to vary spatially across the reef environment. Here, we show that between 1982 and 2008 in the western Caribbean Sea, skeletal extension within forereef colonies of the reef-building coral Siderastrea siderea declined with increasing seawater temperature, whereas extension rates of backreef and nearshore colonies were not impacted.

Arid and semi-arid ecosystems cover ~40% of Earth’s terrestrial surface, but we know little about how climate change will affect these widespread landscapes. Like many drylands, the Colorado Plateau in southwestern United States is predicted to experience elevated temperatures and alterations to the timing and amount of annual precipitation. We used a factorial warming and supplemental rainfall experiment on the Colorado Plateau to show that altered precipitation resulted in pronounced mortality of the widespread moss Syntrichia caninervis.

Climate change is predicted to alter global species diversity, the distribution of human pathogens and ecosystem services. Forecasting these changes and designing adequate management of future ecosystem services will require predictive models encompassing the most fundamental biotic responses. However, most present models omit important processes such as evolution and competition. Here we develop a spatially explicit eco-evolutionary model of multi-species responses to climate change.

Grasslands are structured by climate and soils and are increasingly affected by anthropogenic changes, including rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. CO2 enrichment can alter grassland ecosystem function both directly and through indirect, soil-specific effects on moisture, nitrogen availability and plant species composition, potentially leading to threshold change in ecosystem properties. Here we show that the increase in aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) with CO2 enrichment depends strongly on soil type.

Climate-driven changes in glacier-fed streamflow regimes have direct implications on freshwater supply, irrigation and hydropower potential. Reliable information about current and future glaciation and runoff is crucial for water allocation, a complex task in Central Asia, where the collapse of the Soviet Union has transformed previously interdependent republics into autonomous upstream and downstream countries.

The deliberate injection of particles into the stratosphere has been suggested as a possible geoengineering scheme to mitigate the global warming aspect of climate change. Injected particles scatter solar radiation back to space and thus reduce the radiative balance of Earth. Previous studies investigating this scheme have focused primarily on sulphuric acid particles to mimic volcanic injections of stratospheric aerosol. However, the composition and size of volcanic sulphuric acid particles are far from optimal for scattering solar radiation.