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In this paper, we focus on the impact on soil organic carbon ( SOC) of two dedicated energy crops: perennial grass Miscanthus x Giganteus ( Miscanthus) and short rotation coppice ( SRC)-willow. The amount of SOC sequestered in the soil is a function of site-specific factors including soil texture, management practices, initial SOC levels and climate; for these reasons, both losses and gains in SOC were observed in previous Miscanthus and SRC-willow studies. The ECOSSE model was developed to simulate soil C dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions in mineral and organic soils. The performance of ECOSSE has already been tested at site level to simulate the impacts of land-use change to short rotation forestry ( SRF) on SOC. However, it has not been extensively evaluated under other bioenergy plantations, such as Miscanthus and SRC-willow. Twenty-nine locations in the United Kingdom, comprising 19 paired transitions to SRC-willow and 20 paired transitions to Miscanthus, were selected to evaluate the performance of ECOSSE in predicting SOC and SOC change from conventional systems (arable and grassland) to these selected bioenergy crops. The results of the present work revealed a strong correlation between modelled and measured SOC and SOC change after transition to Miscanthus and SRC-willow plantations, at two soil depths (0-30 and 0-100 cm), as well as the absence of significant bias in the model. Moreover, model error was within (i.e. not significantly larger than) the measurement error. The high degrees of association and coincidence with measured SOC under Miscanthus and SRC-willow plantations in the United Kingdom, provide confidence in using this process-based model for quantitatively predicting the impacts of future land use on SOC, at site level as well as at national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Decreasing trends in measles mortality have been reported in recent years. However, such estimates of measles mortality have depended heavily on assumed regional measles case fatality risks (CFRs) and made little use of mortality data from low- and middle-income countries in general and India, the country with the highest measles burden globally, in particular. Methods: We constructed a dynamic model of measles transmission in India with parameters that were empirically inferred using spectral analysis from a time series of measles mortality extracted from the Million Death Study, an ongoing longitudinal study recording deaths across 2.4 million Indian households and attributing causes of death using verbal autopsy. The model was then used to estimate the measles CFR, the number of measles deaths, and the impact of vaccination in 2000–2015 among under-five children in India and in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UP), two states with large populations and the highest numbers of measles deaths in India. Results: We obtained the following estimated CFRs among under-five children for the year 2005: 0.63% (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.40–1.00%) for India as a whole, 0.62% (0.38–1.00%) for Bihar, and 1.19% (0.80–1.75%) for UP. During 2000–2015, we estimated that 607,000 (95% CI: 383,000–958,000) under-five deaths attributed to measles occurred in India as a whole. If no routine vaccination or supplemental immunization activities had occurred from 2000 to 2015, an additional 1.6 (1.0–2.6) million deaths for under-five children would have occurred across India. Conclusions: We developed a data- and model-driven estimation of the historical measles dynamics, CFR, and vaccination impact in India, extracting the periodicity of epidemics using spectral and coherence analysis, which allowed us to infer key parameters driving measles transmission dynamics and mortality. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12916-017-0908-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The economic evolution of the United States has been, in one of its phases, a process of developing inequalities of economic power. There has been created a hierarchy, which includes the greater portion of those engaged in gainful pursuits, and which fastens them together in a meshwork of relations of superior and inferior. This signifies that the majority have come into a position where they must take orders, where the character of their lives, from hour to hour, is conditioned by the furniture of ideas in the minds of their superiors. Correspondingly, it signifies that other men have been delegated to carry responsibilities, and have attained to work which consists chiefly of discretionary functions. In short, the phenomenon of economic leadership has emerged, and has become an essential characteristic. For one thing, the men of wealth have greatly increased in numbers. The necessity to society of having its leaders made reliable does not alone rest upon the fact that some of these leaders have attained great wealth.

Systems approaches have great potential for application in predictive ecology. In this paper, we present a range of examples, where systems approaches are being developed and applied at a range of scales in the field of global change and biogeochemical cycling. Systems approaches range from Bayesian calibration techniques at plot scale, through data assimilation methods at regional to continental scales, to multi-disciplinary numerical model applications at country to global scales. We provide examples from a range of studies and show how these approaches are being used to address current topics in global change and biogeochemical research, such as the interaction between carbon and nitrogen cycles, terrestrial carbon feedbacks to climate change and the attribution of observed global changes to various drivers of change. We examine how transferable the methods and techniques might be to other areas of ecosystem science and ecology.