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Peat formation is the key process responsible for carbon sequestration in peatlands. In rich fens, peat is formed by brown mosses and belowground biomass of vascular plants. However, the impact of ecohydrological settings on the contribution of mosses and belowground biomass to peat formation remains an open question. We established seven transects in well-preserved fens in NE Poland along an ecohydrological gradient from mesotrophic sedge-moss communities with stable water levels, to more eutrophic tall sedge communities with higher water level fluctuations. In each transect, we measured the production of brown mosses (using the plug method), aboveground vascular plant biomass (one year after cutting) and belowground biomass (using ingrowth cores). Decomposition rates of all biomass fractions were assessed using litter bags. The first-year surplus of potentially peat-forming fractions, i.e., mosses and belowground biomass, decreased with increasing water level fluctuations and along a vegetation gradient from sedge-moss to tall sedge communities. Moss production was highest in the sedge-moss fen with a stable water level at the ground surface. We did not detect any difference in belowground biomass production across the gradient but found it to be consistently higher in the upper 0-5 cm than in the deeper layers. The decomposition rate also showed no response to the gradient, but differed between biomass types, with aboveground biomass of vascular plants decomposing 2.5 times faster than belowground biomass and mosses. Pattern of peat formation potential along the ecohydrological gradient in rich fen was strongly driven by brown moss production. Sedge-moss fens with a stable water level at the ground surface have the highest peat formation capacity compared to other vegetation types. In the part of the gradient that is poorer in nutrients, vascular plants invest in belowground production, and mosses dominate the aboveground layer., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The EU Nature Restoration Law (NRL) is critical for the restoration of degraded ecosystems and active afforestation of degraded peatlands has been suggested as a restoration measure under the NRL. Here, we discuss the current state of scientific evidence on the climate mitigation effects of peatlands under forestry. Afforestation of drained peatlands without restoring their hydrology does not fully restore ecosystem functions. Evidence on long-term climate benefits is lacking and it is unclear whether CO 2 sequestration of forest on drained peatland can offset the carbon loss from the peat over the long-term. While afforestation may offer short-term gains in certain cases, it compromises the sustainability of peatland carbon storage. Thus, active afforestation of drained peatlands is not a viable option for climate mitigation under the EU Nature Restoration Law and might even impede future rewetting/restoration efforts. Instead, restoring hydrological conditions through rewetting is crucial for effective peatland restoration., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Paludiculture, the productive use of wet or rewetted peatlands, offers an option for continued land use by farmers after rewetting formerly drained peatlands, while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from peat soils. Biodiversity conservation may benefit, but research on how biodiversity responds to paludiculture is scarce. We conducted a multi-taxon study investigating vegetation, breeding bird and arthropod diversity at six rewetted fen sites dominated by Carex or Typha species. Sites were either unharvested, low- or high-intensity managed, and were located in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in northeastern Germany. Biodiversity was estimated across the range of Hill numbers using the iNEXT package, and species were checked for Red List status. Here we show that paludiculture sites can provide biodiversity value even while not reflecting historic fen conditions; managed sites had high plant diversity, as well as Red Listed arthropods and breeding birds. Our study demonstrates that paludiculture has the potential to provide valuable habitat for species even while productive management of the land continues., (© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

The importance of air purifiers has increased in recent years, especially with the "coronavirus disease 2019" pandemic. The efficacy of air purifiers is usually determined under laboratory conditions before widespread application. The standard procedure for testing depends on virus cultivation and titration on cell culture. This, however, requires several days to deliver results. The aim of this study was to establish a rapid molecular assay which can differentiate between intact infectious and distorted non-infectious virus particles. Feline Coronavirus was selected as model for screening. First the samples were pretreated with enzymes (universal nuclease and RNase cocktail enzyme mixture) or viability dye (propidium monoazide) to eliminate any free nucleic acids. The ribonucleic acid (RNA) from intact virus was released via magnetic beads-based extraction, then the amount of the RNA was determined using real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or reverse transcription recombinase-aided amplification (RT-RAA). All results were compared to the infectivity assay based on the calculation of the 50% tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50). The nuclease has eliminated 100% of the free Feline Coronavirus RNA, while propidium monoazide underperformed (2.3-fold decrease in free RNA). Both RT-RAA and real-time RT-PCR produced similar results to the infectivity assay on cell culture with limit of detection of 102 TCID50/mL. Two UV-C air purifiers with prosperities of 100% inactivation of the viruses were used to validate the established procedure. Both real-time RT-PCR and RT-RAA were able to differentiate between intact virus particles and free RNA. To conclude, this study revealed a promising rapid method to validate the efficacy of air purifiers by combining enzymatic pretreatment and molecular assays., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Rausch et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objectives: The aim of this in vitro study was to investigate viruses' stabilities on manual toothbrushes using feline coronavirus (FeCoV) as representative of coronaviruses and an Avian influenza A virus H1N1 for influenza viruses., Material and Methods: Two viruses, FeCoV (Strain Munich; titer 107.5 TCID50/ml) and H1N1 (RE 230/90; titer 106.5 TCID50/ml), were used in this study. Manual toothbrushes were disassembled into bristles, bristle fixation, and back of the toothbrush head, contaminated with the viruses and air-dried for 24 h. In a second experiment, whole toothbrush heads were contaminated, rinsed with water (5 ml for 15 s) and then air-dried., Results: For FeCoV, immediately after contamination, the following average titers were recovered: fixation: 10 6.41 , back of head: 10 6.81 and bristles: 10 6.63 TCID 50 /ml. Following air-drying of 12 (fixation) and 24 h, titers of ≤ 10 2.5 , 10 3.75 , and 10 2.72 TCID 50 /ml were found in the respective groups, with a detection limit of 10 2.5 TCID 50 /ml. For H1N1, immediately after contamination, the following average titers could be recovered: fixation: 10 5.53 , back of head: 10 5.97 and bristles: 10 5.75 TCID 50 /ml. Following air-drying of 8 (fixation) and 24 h, titers were ≤ 10 2.5 , 10 3.63 , and 10 3.53 TCID 50 /ml in the respective group, again with 10 2.5 TCID 50 /ml being the detection limit. In case of water rinse, no infectious virus could be recovered after 12 h., Conclusion: Viral load of both viruses is reduced by air-drying, especially following water rinsing. Clinical relevance The toothbrush itself plays an insignificant role in the self-transmission of coronavirus and influenza virus., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km 2 resolution for 0-5 and 5-15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km 2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (-0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications., (© 2022 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) causes Johne's disease in animals with zoonotic potential; it has been linked to many chronic diseases in humans, especially gastrointestinal diseases (GID). MAP has been extensively studied in Europe and America, but little reports were published from Africa. Sudan is a unique country with close contact between humans and livestock. Despite such interaction, the one health concept is neglected in dealing with cases of humans with GID. In this study, patients admitted to the reference GID hospital in the Sudan over a period of 8 months were screened for presence of MAP in their faeces or colonic biopsies. A total of 86 patients were recruited for this study, but only 67 were screened for MAP, as 19 did not provide the necessary samples for analysis. Both real-time PCR and culture were used to detect MAP in the collected samples and the microbial diversity in patients´ faecal samples was investigated using 16S rDNA nanopore sequencing. In total, 27 (40.3%) patients were MAP positive: they were 15 males and 12 females, of ages between 21 and 80 years. Logistic regression analysis revealed no statistical significance for all tested variables in MAP positive patients (occupation, gender, contact with animal, milk consumption, chronic disease, etc.). A unique microbiome profile of MAP-positive patients in comparison to MAP-negative was found. These findings suggest that a considerable proportion of the population could be MAP infected or carriers. Therefore, increase awareness at community level is urgently needed to decrease the risk of MAP at human/animal interface. This study represents the first report of MAP in humans in the Sudan; nevertheless, a better view of the situation of MAP in humans in the country requires a larger study including patients with other conditions., Competing Interests: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Since September 2020, Germany has experienced the first ever outbreak of African swine fever (ASF). The first known cases occurred exclusively in wild boar in forest areas in Brandenburg and Saxony; in July 2021, infected domestic pigs were also confirmed for the first time. As wild boar are considered the main reservoir for the virus in the European region, an effective interruption of this infection chain is essential. In particular, the removal and safe disposal of infected carcasses and the direct disinfection of contaminated, unpaved ground are priorities in this regard. For the disinfection, highly potent as well as environmentally compatible disinfectants must be used, which are neither influenced in their effectiveness by the soil condition nor by increased organic contamination. Thus, in this study, slaked lime, milk of lime and quicklime (1% to 10% solutions) were selected for efficacy testing against the test virus recommended by the German Veterinary Society (DVG), Modified Vaccinia Ankara virus (MVAV), and ASF virus (ASFV) in conjunction with six different forest soils from Saxony in two different soil layers (top soil and mineral soil) each. In summary, 10% of any tested lime type is able to inactivate both MVAV and ASFV under conditions of high organic load and independent of the water content of the soil. At least a 4 log reduction of the virus titer in all tested forest soil types and layers and by all applied lime types was observed. In conclusion, the high efficacy and suitability of all tested lime products against both viruses and in the presence of high organic load in forest soil can be confirmed and will help to control ASF spread.

Ecosystem markets are proliferating around the world in response to increasing demand for climate change mitigation and provision of other public goods. However, this may lead to perverse outcomes, for example where public funding crowds out private investment or different schemes create trade-offs between the ecosystem services they each target. The integration of ecosystem markets could address some of these issues but to date there have been few attempts to do this, and there is limited understanding of either the opportunities or barriers to such integration. This paper reports on a comparative analysis of eleven ecosystem markets in operation or close to market in Europe, based on qualitative analysis of 25 interviews, scheme documentation and two focus groups. Our results indicate three distinct types of markets operating from the regional to national scale, with different modes of operation, funding and outcomes: regional ecosystem markets, national carbon markets and green finance. The typology provides new insights into the operation of ecosystem markets in practice, which may challenge traditionally held notions of Payment for Ecosystem Services. Regional ecosystem markets, in particular, represent a departure from traditional models, by using a risk-based funding model and aggregating both supply and demand to overcome issues of free-riding, ecosystem service trade-offs and land manager engagement. Central to all types of market were trusted intermediaries, brokers and platforms to aggregate supply and demand, build trust and lower transaction costs. The paper outlines six options for blending public and private funding for the provision of ecosystem services and proposes a framework for integrating national carbon markets and green finance with regional ecosystem markets. Such integration may significantly increase funding for regenerative agriculture and conservation across multiple habitats and services, whilst addressing issues of additionality and ecosystem service trade-offs between multiple schemes., Competing Interests: MR is Research Lead for IUCN UK Peatland Programme and sits on the Executive Board for the Peatland Code. TC is a founding partner of 3Keel and helped develop Landscape Enterprise Networks. MH is a Project Manager and SP is co-founder of Forest Carbon Ltd. DH is founding owner of Environment Bank Ltd. AG and SPA are employees of the Institute for European Environmental Policy. SA is an employee of Collingwood Investments Ltd and Project Maya CIC. AO is an employee of Forest Stewardship Council. RF is an employee of Finance Earth. Authors’ commercial affiliations do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare.

Peatlands cover 3% of the land, occur in 169 countries, and have-by sequestering 600 Gt of carbon-cooled the global climate by 0.6 °C. After a general review about peatlands worldwide, this paper describes the importance of the Great Vasyugan Mire and presents suggestions about its protection and future research. The World's largest peatland, the Great Vasyugan Mire in West-Siberia, forms the border between the Taiga and the Forest-Steppe biomes and harbours rare species and mire types and globally unique self-organizing patterns. Current oil and gas exploitation may arguably be largely phased out by 2050, which will pave the way for a stronger focus on the mire's role in buffering climate change, maintaining ecosystem diversity, and providing other ecosystem services. Relevant new research lines will benefit from the extensive data sets that earlier studies have gathered for other purposes. Its globally unique character as the 'largest life form on land' qualifies the Great Vasyugan Mire in its entirety to be designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance., (© 2021. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.)

African swine fever (ASF) has become a global threat to the pig industry and wild suids. Within Europe, including Germany, affected wild boar populations play a major role. Fencing and carcass removal in combination with the reduction in environmental contamination are key to control further spread. The handling of the ASF virus (ASFV) is restricted to high-containment conditions in Germany. According to the regulation of the German Veterinarian Society (DVG), modified vaccinia Ankara virus (MVAV) is the virus of choice to determine the efficacy of disinfection for enveloped viruses. The aim of this study was to use the MVAV as a guide to select the best possible disinfectant solution and concentration for the inactivation of ASFV in soil. Both viruses were tested simultaneously. In this study, two layers (top and mineral soil) of soil types from six different locations in Saxony, Germany, were collected. The tenacity of ASFV and MVAV were tested at various time points (0.5 to 72 h). The capabilities of different concentrations of peracetic acid and citric acid (approx. 0.1 to 2%) to inactivate the viruses in the selected soil types with spiked high protein load were examined under appropriate containment conditions. Around 2-3 Log 10 (TCID 50 ) levels of reduction in the infectivity of both ASFV and MVAV were observed in all soil types starting after two hours. For MVAV, a 4 Log 10 loss was recorded after 72 h. A total of 0.1% of peracetic acid (5 L/m 2 ) was sufficient to inactivate the viruses. A 4 log 10 reduction in the infectivity of MVAV was noticed by applying 1% citric acid, while a 2 log 10 decline was recorded with ASFV. In conclusion, comparing MVAV to ASFV for efficacy screening of disinfectant solutions has revealed many similarities. Peracetic acid reduced the infectivity of both viruses independently of the soil type and the existence of a high organic soiling.

Peatlands have been drained for land use for a long time and on a large scale, turning them from carbon and nutrient sinks into respective sources, diminishing water regulation capacity, causing surface height loss and destroying biodiversity. Over the last decades, drained peatlands have been rewetted for biodiversity restoration and, as it strongly decreases greenhouse gas emissions, also for climate protection. We quantify restoration success by comparing 320 rewetted fen peatland sites to 243 near-natural peatland sites of similar origin across temperate Europe, all set into perspective by 10k additional European fen vegetation plots. Results imply that rewetting of drained fen peatlands induces the establishment of tall, graminoid wetland plants (helophytisation) and long-lasting differences to pre-drainage biodiversity (vegetation), ecosystem functioning (geochemistry, hydrology), and land cover characteristics (spectral temporal metrics). The Paris Agreement entails the rewetting of 500,000 km 2 of drained peatlands worldwide until 2050-2070. A better understanding of the resulting locally novel ecosystems is required to improve planning and implementation of peatland rewetting and subsequent management., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Ground- and surface-water-fed peatlands (i.e., fens) of temperate Europe face high anthropogenic nutrient loads from atmospheric deposition, agricultural catchment areas, and from peat decomposition, if drained. As a result, nitrogen loads may exceed a fen's natural nutrient removal capacity, leading to increased eutrophication of adjacent water bodies. Therefore, it is important to address possible means to decrease a fen's nutrient load, including nutrient uptake by fen plants. To assess how much fen plants can contribute to nutrient removal by uptake, nutrient stocks of above- and below-ground biomass need to be quantified. Therefore, we investigated nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium uptake capacities of sedges (Carex species), which are common dominants in fen plant communities. We grew specimens of five Carex species with varying preferences in nutrient availability under controlled, different nutrient levels. We show that Carex above-ground biomass harvest can remove up to one third of a system's total nitrogen even at high loads of about 40 g nitrogen m -2 . Species-specific differences in biomass production, rather than preferences in nutrient availability under natural conditions, were drivers of standing nutrient stocks: Highly productive species, i.e., C. acutiformis and C. rostrata, had highest nutrient standing stocks across all nutrient levels. Amounts of nutrients stored in shoots increased almost linearly with increasing nutrient levels, whereas below-ground nutrient stocks species-specifically increased, saturated, or decreased, with increasing nutrient levels. As a rough estimate, depending on the species, 6-16 cycles of annual above-ground harvest would suffice to decrease nitrogen concentrations from the highest to the lowest level used in this study. Overall, our results indicate that Carex biomass harvest can be an efficient means to counteract anthropogenic nitrogen eutrophication in fens., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Many of the world's peatlands have been affected by water table drawdown and subsequent loss of organic matter. Rewetting has been proposed as a measure to restore peatland functioning and to halt carbon loss, but its effectiveness is subject to debate. An important prerequisite for peatland recovery is a return of typical microbial communities, which drive key processes. To evaluate the effect of rewetting, we investigated 13 fen peatland areas across a wide (>1500 km) longitudinal gradient in Europe, in which we compared microbial communities between drained, undrained, and rewetted sites. There was a clear difference in microbial communities between drained and undrained fens, regardless of location. Community recovery upon rewetting was substantial in the majority of sites, and predictive functional profiling suggested a concomitant recovery of biogeochemical peatland functioning. However, communities in rewetted sites were only similar to those of undrained sites when soil organic matter quality (as expressed by cellulose fractions) and quantity were still sufficiently high. We estimate that a minimum organic matter content of ca. 70% is required to enable microbial recovery. We conclude that peatland recovery after rewetting is conditional on the level of drainage-induced degradation: severely altered physicochemical peat properties may preclude complete recovery for decades.

The global Aquatic Warbler (Acrocephalus paludicola, Vieillot, 1817) population has suffered a major decline due to the large-scale destruction of its natural habitat (fen mires). The species is at risk of extinction, especially in NE Germany/NW Poland. In this study, we developed habitat suitability models based on satellite and environmental data to identify potential areas for habitat restoration on which further surveys and planning should be focused. To create a reliable model, we used all Aquatic Warbler presences in the study area since 1990 as well as additional potentially suitable habitats identified in the field. We combined the presence/absence regression tree algorithm Cubist with the presence-only algorithm Maxent since both commonly outperform other algorithms. To integrate the separate model results, we present a new way to create a metamodel using the initial model results as variables. Additionally, a histogram approach was applied to further reduce the final search area to the most promising sites. Accuracy increased when using both remote sensing and environmental data. It was highest for the integrated metamodel (Cohen's Kappa of 0.4, P < 0.001). The final result of this study supports the selection of the most promising sites for Aquatic Warbler habitat restoration.

Nitrogen enrichment is widely thought to be responsible for the loss of plant species from temperate terrestrial ecosystems. This view is based on field surveys and controlled experiments showing that species richness correlates negatively with high productivity and nitrogen enrichment. However, as the type of nutrient limitation has never been examined on a large geographical scale the causality of these relationships is uncertain. We investigated species richness in herbaceous terrestrial ecosystems, sampled along a transect through temperate Eurasia that represented a gradient of declining levels of atmospheric nitrogen deposition--from approximately 50 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) in western Europe to natural background values of less than 5 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) in Siberia. Here we show that many more endangered plant species persist under phosphorus-limited than under nitrogen-limited conditions, and we conclude that enhanced phosphorus is more likely to be the cause of species loss than nitrogen enrichment. Our results highlight the need for a better understanding of the mechanisms of phosphorus enrichment, and for a stronger focus on conservation management to reduce phosphorus availability.