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The spatial extent of marine and terrestrial protected areas (PAs) was amongst the most intensely debated issues prior to the decision about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Positive impacts of PAs on habitats, species diversity and abundance are well documented. Yet, biodiversity loss continues unabated despite efforts to protect 17% of land and 10% of the oceans by 2020. This casts doubt on whether extending PAs to 30%, the agreed target in the Kunming-Montreal GBF, will indeed achieve meaningful biodiversity benefits. Critically, the focus on area coverage obscures the importance of PA effectiveness and overlooks concerns about the impact of PAs on other sustainability objectives. We propose a simple means of assessing and visualising the complex relationships between PA area coverage and effectiveness and their effects on biodiversity conservation, nature-based climate mitigation and food production. Our analysis illustrates how achieving a 30% PA global target could be beneficial for biodiversity and climate. It also highlights important caveats: i) achieving lofty area coverage objectives alone will be of little benefit without concomitant improvements in effectiveness, ii) trade-offs with food production particularly for high levels of coverage and effectiveness are likely and iii) important differences in terrestrial and marine systems need to be recognized when setting and implementing PA targets. The CBD's call for a significant increase in protected area will need to be accompanied by clear PA effectiveness goals to reduce and revert dangerous anthropogenic impacts on socio-ecological systems and biodiversity.

People have shaped the land surface for many centuries. However, the global expansion of land use is fuelling climate change and threatening biodiversity. At the same time, there is an ever-increasing need to supply our growing world population with food, energy and materials. Despite the crucial role of land use for solving global sustainability challenges, existing data on long-term land use change lacks the spatial, temporal and thematic detail to comprehensively capture the changes in its full dynamics.We synergistically combined multiple open data streams (remote sensing-based land cover maps, land use reconstructions and statistics) to examine the spatio-temporal patterns of global land use change of global land use change. For this, we developed the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment+ (HILDA+), a modelling framework providing data-derived, annual gross changes between six land use/cover categories (urban, cropland, pasture/rangeland, forest, unmanaged grass/shrubland, sparse/no vegetation) at a spatial resolution of 1km and for a reference period of 1960-2020. Derived land use/cover maps are published as Open Data.In this live demo, we present our findings through an interactive map viewer - a visualisation of global land use change of the past six decades. The data visualisation builds on the open-source server GeoServer. We will interactively explore the extent of land use change and its diverging patterns across the globe.

Land-based mitigation is essential in reducing carbon emissions. Yet, the attribution of land carbon fluxes to their sinks and sources remains highly uncertain, in particular for the forest-rich but data-poor region of Eastern Europe. Here we integrate various data sources (from top-down and bottom-up modelling, earth observation, inventories) to show that Eastern Europe accounted for an annual aboveground biomass (AGB) carbon sink of ~0.49 GtC in 2010‑2019, or about 75% of the entire European carbon uptake. However, we find that the land-based carbon sink is declining. This declining trend is mainly driven by changes in land use and land management, but also by increasing natural disturbances due to ongoing climate change. Despite the high overall importance of environmental factors such as soil moisture, nitrogen and CO2 for enhancing the land-based carbon sink, we find indicators of a saturation effect of the regrowth in abandoned former agricultural areas, combined with an increase in wood harvest, particularly in European Russia. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the regional carbon budget of Eastern Europe and its trend. This study sheds light on land use and management as drivers of the land-based carbon sink and their role for climate mitigation.

Quantification of land surface-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes and their trends and uncertainties is essential for monitoring progress of the EU27+UK bloc as it strives to meet ambitious targets determined by both international agreements and internal regulation. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of fossil sources (CO2 fossil) and natural sources and sinks over land (CO2 land) using bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) approaches for the European Union and United Kingdom (EU27+UK), updating earlier syntheses (Petrescu et al., 2020, 2021b). Given the wide scope of the work and the variety of approaches involved, this study aims to answer essential questions identified in the previous syntheses and understand the differences between datasets, particularly for poorly characterized fluxes from managed ecosystems. The work integrates updated emission inventory data, process-based model results, data-driven sectoral model results, and inverse modeling estimates, extending the previous period 1990–2018 to the year 2020 to the extent possible. BU and TD products are compared with European National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (NGHGIs) reported by Parties including the year 2019 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The uncertainties of the EU27+UK NGHGI were evaluated using the standard deviation reported by the EU Member States following the guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and harmonized by gap-filling procedures. Variation in estimates produced with other methods, such as atmospheric inversion models (TD) or spatially disaggregated inventory datasets (BU), originate from within-model uncertainty related to parameterization as well as structural differences between models. By comparing NGHGIs with other approaches, key sources of differences between estimates arise primarily in activities. System boundaries and emission categories create differences in CO2 fossil datasets, while different land use definitions for reporting emissions from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities result in differences for CO2 land. The latter has important consequences for atmospheric inversions, leading to inversions reporting stronger sinks in vegetation and soils than are reported by the NGHGI. For CO2 fossil emissions, after harmonizing estimates based on common activities and selecting the most recent year available for all datasets, the UNFCCC NGHGI for the EU27+UK accounts for 3392 ± 49 Tg CO2 yr-1 (926 ± 13 Tg C yr-1), while eight other BU sources report a mean value of 3340 [3238,3401] [25th,75th percentile] Tg CO2 yr-1 (948 [937,961] Tg C yr-1). The sole top-down inversion of fossil emissions currently available accounts for 3800 Tg CO2 yr-1 (1038 Tg C yr-1), a value close to that of the NGHGI, but for which uncertainty estimates are not yet available. For the net CO2 land fluxes, during the most recent five-year period including the NGHGI estimates, the NGHGI accounted for -91 ± 32 Tg C yr-1 while six other BU approaches reported a mean sink of -62 [-117,-49] Tg C yr-1 and a 15-member ensemble of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) reported -69 [-152,-5] Tg C yr-1. The five-year mean of three TD regional ensembles combined with one non-ensemble inversion of -73 Tg C yr-1 has a slightly smaller spread (0th–100th percentile of [-135,45] Tg C yr-1), and was calculated after removing land-atmosphere CO2 fluxes caused by lateral transport of carbon (crops, wood trade and inland waters) resulting in increased agreement with the the NGHGI and bottom-up approaches. Results at the sub-sector level (Forestland, Cropland, Grassland) show generally good agreement between the NGHGI and sub-sector-specific models, but results for a DGVM are mixed. Overall, for both CO2 fossil and net CO2 land fluxes, we find current independent approaches are consistent with the NGHGI at the scale of the EU27+UK. We conclude that CO2 emissions from fossil sources have decreased over the past 30 years in the EU27+UK, while large uncertainties on net uptake of CO2 by the land surface prevent trend identification. In addition, a gap on the order of 1000 Tg C yr-1 between CO2 fossil emissions and net CO2 uptake by the land exists regardless of the type of approach (NGHGI, TD, BU), falling well outside all available estimates of uncertainties. However, uncertainties in top-down approaches to estimate CO2 fossil emissions remain uncharacterized and are likely substantial. The data used to plot the figures are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7365863.

Land-use models and integrated assessment models provide scenarios of land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes following pathways or storylines related to different socioeconomic and environmental developments. The large diversity of available scenario projections leads to a recognizable variability in impacts on land ecosystems and the levels of services provided. We evaluated 16 projections of future LULC until 2040 that reflected different assumptions regarding socioeconomic demands and modeling protocols. By using these LULC projections in a state-of-the-art dynamic global vegetation model, we simulated their effect on selected ecosystem service indicators related to ecosystem productivity and carbon sequestration potential, agricultural production and the water cycle. We found that although a common trend for agricultural expansion exists across the scenarios, where and how particular LULC changes are realized differs widely across models and scenarios. They are linked to model-specific considerations of some demands over others and their respective translation into LULC changes and also reflect the simplified or missing representation of processes related to land dynamics or other influencing factors (e.g., trade, climate change). As a result, some scenarios show questionable and possibly unrealistic features in their LULC allocations, including highly regionalized LULC changes with rates of conversion that are contrary to or exceed rates observed in the past. Across the diverging LULC projections, we identified positive global trends of net primary productivity (+10.2 % ± 1.4 %), vegetation carbon (+9.2 % ± 4.1 %), crop production (+31.2 % ± 12.2 %) and water runoff (+9.3 % ± 1.7 %), and a negative trend of soil and litter carbon stocks (−0.5 % ± 0.4 %). The variability in ecosystem service indicators across scenarios was especially high for vegetation carbon stocks and crop production. Regionally, variability was highest in tropical forest regions, especially at current forest boundaries, because of intense and strongly diverging LULC change projections in combination with high vegetation productivity dampening or amplifying the effects of climatic change. Our results emphasize that information on future changes in ecosystem functioning and the related ecosystem service indicators should be seen in light of the variability originating from diverging projections of LULC. This is necessary to allow for adequate policy support towards sustainable transformations.

Land use/cover change is central to understanding the global sustainability challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food security. Yet, while the magnitude of global land use has often been studied, little is known about land use transitions and their drivers, and how these vary across the world. A major obstacle has been the lack of consistent long-term data with sufficiently high resolution.Here we analyse the drivers of major global land use transitions based on a novel high-resolution land use reconstruction, HILDA+ (Historic Land Dynamics Assessment+). We (1) identify key land use transitions and their spatiotemporal patterns and (2) correlate national time series of annual land use transitions with a range of influencing variables that represent indirect drivers (demography, politics and economics) and direct drivers (production and environment) across the globe.We identify 12 major land use transitions and find that agricultural expansion accounted for the largest share of global land use change (~7.6 million km2), an area as large as Greece every year between 1960 and 2019. A major portion of this land is made up of pasture/rangeland expansion, mainly used for nomadic pastoralism. Areas of cropland expansion are mainly located in the Global South, particularly in South America (Argentina, Brazil), Africa (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda), India and Thailand. Here we notice a shift of agricultural expansion from South America to Africa since the late 1980s. Globally, forest loss (~3.6 million km2), including deforestation for pasture/rangelands or cropland and forest degradation to shrub/grassland, outweighed forest expansion (~2.6 million km2) during 1960-2019. Whereas forestry, crop-pasture dynamics and cropland abandonment dominated in the Global North, deforestation, forest degradation and agricultural expansion are major transitions of the Global South.Our driver analysis reveals that economic factors are the largest indirect drivers of global land use transitions in terms of area (~6.7 million km2). Of these, Gross Domestic Production (GDP) is the strongest driver in the Global North, mainly for forest expansion, forestry and urban growth. In contrast, wage and cereal price lead the list in the South, mostly related to agricultural expansion. Indirect-direct driver combinations of economy with production (~4.7 million km2), politics with production (~3.2 million km2) and demography with production (~2.3 million km2) affected the largest areas. We find that environmental indicators have a greater influence on land use change in the South, related to deforestation or desertification, than in the North, linked to crop-pasture dynamics. Indirect drivers show higher correlations than direct drivers, which underlines the importance of social systems on the extent and speed of land use change.Giving new data-driven and quantitative insights into a largely untouched field, we reveal the importance of indirect drivers from economy, politics and demography for land use transitions across the globe. Learning from the recent past, understanding how socio-economic and environmental factors affect the way humans use the land surface is essential for estimating impacts of land use change and implementing measures of climate mitigation and sustainable land use policies. With our findings, we can make a contribution to this.

Replacing some of the wheat flour in breads and pastries with OFSP (orange-fleshed sweetpotato) puree can increase the market demand for these nutritious varieties and would offer economic opportunities for smallholders, including women and youths. The technology to make sweetpotato puree has been well developed in industrialized countries since the 1960s. Techniques fine-tuned by RTB allow OFSP puree to be stored in plastic bags for 6 months, without refrigeration. Private companies in Malawi and Kenya are now manufacturing the puree and selling it to bakeries that substitute OFSP puree for up to 40% of the white wheat flour in bread and other baked goods. Consumers like the bread that is sold in supermarkets and bakeries. Food safety protocols ensure that the puree is part of safe, healthy products. The OFSP seed is available to smallholder farmers, who are linked with processors who buy the roots. Business models suggest that processing puree is profitable. The Scaling Readiness approach is helping to ensure that more farmers, processors, and consumers benefit from OFSP.

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct factors (human land-use management) and indirect factors (such as climate change, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition and recovery from natural disturbances). Among these, climate change and CO2 fertilization effects seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface- and/or groundwater irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth’, accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area. They highlight the need for a realistic representation of human land-use practices in Earth system models.

Land use change is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss and, hence, a key topic for current sustainability debates and climate change mitigation. To understand its impacts, accurate data of global land use change and an assessment of its extent, dynamics, causes and interrelations are crucial. However, although numerous observational data is publicly available (e.g. from remote sensing), the processes and drivers of land use change are not yet fully understood. In particular, current global-scale land change assessments still lack either temporal consistency, spatial explicitness or thematic detail. Here, we analyse the patterns of global land use change and its underlying drivers based on our novel high-resolution (~1x1 km) dataset of global land use/cover (LULC) change from 1960-2019, HILDA+ (Historic Land Dynamics Assessment+). The data harmonises multiple Earth Observation products and FAO land use statistics. It covers all transitions between six major LULC categories (urban areas, cropland, pasture/rangeland, forest, unmanaged grass-/shrubland and no/sparse vegetation).On this basis, we show (1) a classification of global LULC transitions into major processes of land use change, (2) a quantification of their spatiotemporal patterns and (3) an identification of their major socioeconomic and environmental drivers across the globe. By using temporal cross-correlation, we study the influence of selected drivers on processes such as agricultural land abandonment, deforestation, forest degradation or urbanisation.With this, we are able to map the patterns and drivers of global land use change at unprecedented resolution and compare them for different world regions. Giving new data-driven and quantitative insights into a largely untouched field, we identify tele-coupled globalisation patterns and climate change as important influencing factors for land use dynamics. Learning from the recent past, understanding how socio-economic and environmental factors affect the way humans use the land surface is essential for estimating future impacts of land use change and implementing measures of climate mitigation and sustainable land use policies.

Land use and land cover change (LULCC) has a significant role for the global carbon cycle. Despite big improvements in LULCC emission modelling, related uncertainties remain relatively high. Major uncertainties in quantifying LULCC emissions stem from uncertainties in underlying LULCC datasets. The novel, high-resolution (~1 km×1 km) LULCC dataset HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment+ (HILDA+) reflects gross transitions derived from multiple remote sensing products and offers an alternative to existing land use change datasets, serving as forcing for process-based and bookkeeping models. By incorporating HILDA+ in the “bookkeeping of land use emissions” (BLUE) model, which is one of the three bookkeeping models used in the Global Carbon Budget 2020, we gain a different temporal and spatial perspective on LULCC estimates and related sources of uncertainty. We compare our results to emission estimates based on LUH2, which is broadly used as LULCC forcing for process-based and bookkeeping models. First results of our analysis show overall lower LULCC emissions for the estimates based on HILDA+. For the time period 1990-2019, mean yearly emission estimates based on HILDA+ are 0.595 GtC yr−1 compared to 1.368 GtC yr−1 based on LUH2. Reasons are lower emissions from cropland expansion and less carbon uptake from vegetation regrowth after abandonment of managed land (i.e. a smaller carbon sink). Furthermore, fewer discontinuities in the BLUE runs with the HILDA+ forcing compared to the LUH2-based estimates suggests a better representation of land use dynamics and their effects. Overall, the simulations based on HILDA+ capture spatial heterogeneity to a greater degree and provide a more detailed picture of local sources and sinks, which is crucial for (1) a better representation of component fluxes (e.g. deforestation, degradation) and (2) effective mitigation and adaptation policies.

People have increasingly been shaping the surface of our planet. Land use/cover change – the most visible human footprint on Earth – is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss and, hence, is a key topic for current sustainability debates and climate change mitigation. To understand these land surface dynamics and its impacts, accurate reconstructions of global land use/cover change are necessary. Although more and more observational data sets are publicly available (e.g. from remote sensing), current land change assessments are still incomplete and either lack temporal consistency, spatial explicitness or thematic detail. Here, we show a consistent reconstruction of global land use/cover change from 1960-2015, using an open data-driven approach that combines national land use statistics with earth observation data of multiple sources and scales. Our land change reconstruction model HILDA+ (Historic Land Dynamics Assessment) accounts for data-derived gross changes within six main land use/cover classes at 1 km spatial resolution: Urban areas, cropland, pastures and rangeland, forest, (semi-)natural grass- or shrubland, other land. As a result, we present yearly land use/cover maps at 1 km spatial resolution, magnitudes and hot spot areas of change. Globally, around 20 % of the land surface – almost three times the size of Brazil - has undergone change within the last 55 years. Further, gross change is about seven times as high as yearly net change extent for forest, cropland and pasture dynamics. We prove that land change studies accounting for net change only can lead to severe underestimations of change extent and frequency. With this purely data-driven approach, we address current research needs of the earth system modelling community by providing new layers of land use/cover change with unprecedented level of detail. Learning from the recent past, understanding how management and land cover dynamics interactively affect the climate is essential for implementing measures of mitigation and sustainable land use policies. In this context, a solid information base can support informed decision-making.

Amala is a food made out of sweet potato, yam and/or cassava flour product that is traditionally consumed in Nigeria. The aim of the study was to evaluate the acceptability of amala produced from orange-fleshed sweet potato using traditional and modified methods of fermentation. Consumer acceptability studies provided information on the sensory attributes of traditional and modified amala samples. It was found that the pH of the amala was the same as the pH of the fermented sweet potato at Day 3 for both the cold and hot traditional (4.4) and modified (3.5) processes. The mean appearance, odour and familiarity scores were in a narrow range (7.2 to 7.8), while taste and overall acceptability showed a wider range of mean scores (6.9 to 8.0). The major differences (P < 0.05) observed were in taste and overall acceptability of the two products. The study indicated a higher significant acceptability for modified amala than traditional amala. It further demonstrated the usefulness of consumer acceptability test in quantifying the sensory attributes of the two products. This study was the first of its type and can serve as a good opening for policy makers wishing to promote the use of orange-fleshed sweet potato to fight against vitamin deficiencies in developing countries, particularly Nigeria. The study has successfully created varieties as well as alternative to amala from yam and the traditional method. Key words: Orange-fleshed sweet potato, traditional, modified fermentation, amala, vitamin A and C, Nigeria.

Importing millions of tonnes of crops and meat each year undercuts farming standards in the European Union and destroys tropical forests. Importing millions of tonnes of crops and meat each year undercuts farming standards in the European Union and destroys tropical forests.

Legacy effects of land cover/use on carbon fluxes require considering both present and past land cover/use change dynamics. To assess past land use dynamics, model-based reconstructions of historic land cover/use are needed. Most historic reconstructions consider only the net area difference between two time steps (net changes) instead of accounting for all area gains and losses (gross changes). Studies about the impact of gross and net land change accounting methods on the carbon balance are still lacking. In this study, we assessed historic changes in carbon in soils for five land cover/use types and of carbon in above-ground biomass of forests. The assessment focused on Europe for the period 1950 to 2010 with decadal time steps at 1-km spatial resolution using a bookkeeping approach. To assess the implications of gross land change data, we also used net land changes for comparison. Main contributors to carbon sequestration between 1950 and 2010 were afforestation and cropland abandonment leading to 14.6 PgC sequestered carbon (of which 7.6 PgC was in forest biomass). Sequestration was highest for old-growth forest areas. A sequestration dip was reached during the 1970s due to changes in forest management practices. Main contributors to carbon emissions were deforestation (1.7 PgC) and stable cropland areas on peaty soils (0.8 PgC). In total, net fluxes summed up to 203 TgC yr(-1) (98 TgC yr(-1) in forest biomass and 105 TgC yr(-1) in soils). For areas that were subject to land changes in both reconstructions (35% of total area), the differences in carbon fluxes were about 68%. Overall for Europe the difference between accounting for either gross or net land changes led to 7% difference (up to 11% per decade) in carbon fluxes with systematically higher fluxes for gross land change data.

Since the 1950s, Europe has seen large shifts in climate and land cover. Previous assessments of past and future changes in evapotranspiration or streamflow have either focussed on land use/cover or climate contributions, or have focussed on individual catchments under specific climate conditions. Here, we aim to understand how decadal changes in climate (e.g., precipitation, temperature) and land use (e.g., de-/afforestation, urbanization) have impacted the amount and distribution of water resources availability across Europe since the 1950s. To this end, we simulate the distribution of green and blue water fluxes at high-resolution (1 × 1 km) by combining (a) a steady-state Budyko model for water balance partitioning constrained by long-term (lysimeter) observations across different land-use types, (b) a novel decadal high-resolution historical land use reconstruction, and (c) gridded observations of key meteorological variables. The continental-scale patterns in the simulations agree well with coarser-scale observation-based estimates of evapotranspiration, and also with observed changes in streamflow from small basins across Europe. We find that strong shifts in the continental-scale patterns of evapotranspiration and streamflow have occured from 1950 to 2010. In Sweden, for example, increased precipitation dominates effects of large scale re- and afforestation leading to increases in both streamflow and evapotranspiration. In most of the Mediterrenean, decreased precipitation combines with increased forest cover and potential evapotranspiration to reduce streamflow. In spite of local and regional scale complexity, the Europe-wide net contribution of land use, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration changes to changes in ET is similar with around ~ 40 km3/y, equivalent to the discharge of a large river. For streamflow, changes in precipitation dominate land use and potential evapotranspiration contributions with ~ 90 km3/y compared to ~ 45 km3/y. Locally, increased forest cover and urbanisation have lead to significant decreases and increases of available streamflow.

An analysis of global soya-bean production forecasts massive deforestation in Brazil — stakeholders must act fast to prevent it, warn Richard Fuchs and colleagues. An analysis of global soya-bean production forecasts massive deforestation in Brazil — stakeholders must act fast to prevent it, warn Richard Fuchs and colleagues.

Democracy is an extremely valuable and fragile asset, yet it seems that many people have no idea how important it is for them as individuals and for society at large. In times when it is under threat, be it by extreme political parties or by an American president who disregards the rules of fair play and truthfulness, we have to rely more than ever on a free press to preserve democracy. The text is a first-hand account of a journalist who in the spirit of Aristotle sat down in a city square to speak with his fellow citizens about their concerns regarding the current political situation. This experiment highlights the important role of journalists as fair and impartial proxies between politics and the public.

The consideration of gross land changes, meaning all area gains and losses within a pixel or administrative unit (e.g. country), plays an essential role in the estimation of total land changes. Gross land changes affect the magnitude of total land changes, which feeds back to the attribution of biogeochemical and biophysical processes related to climate change in Earth System Models. Global empirical studies on gross land changes are currently lacking. Whilst the relevance of gross changes for global change has been indicated in the literature, it is not accounted for in future land change scenarios. In this study, we extract gross and net land change dynamics from large-scale and high-resolution (30–100 m) remote sensing products to create a new global gross and net change dataset. Subsequently, we developed an approach to integrate our empirically derived gross and net changes with the results of future simulation models, by accounting for the gross and net change addressed by the land use model and the gross and net change that is below the resolution of modelling. Based on our empirical data, we found that gross land change within 0.5-degree grid cells were substantially larger than net changes in all parts of the world. As 0.5-degree grid cells are a standard resolution of Earth System Models, this leads to an underestimation of the amount of change. This finding contradicts earlier studies, which assumed gross land changes to appear in shifting cultivation areas only. Applied in a future scenario, the consideration of gross land changes led to approximately 50 % more land changes globally compared to a net land change representation. Gross land changes were most important in heterogeneous land systems with multiple land uses (e.g. shifting cultivation, smallholder farming, and agro-forestry systems). Moreover, the importance of gross changes decreased over time due to further polarization and intensification of land use. Our results serve as empirical database for land change dynamics that can be applied in Earth System Models and Integrated Assessment Models.

BACKGROUND The aim of the work was to study the effect of traditional processing methods on the β-carotene, ascorbic acid and trypsin inhibitor contents of orange-fleshed sweet potato amala. The most common sweet potato in Nigeria is white or yellow fleshed, which is very low in provitamin A. However, efforts are underway to promote orange-fleshed sweet potato to improve provitamin A intake. This paper describes how orange-fleshed sweet potato slices were traditionally processed into amala, which is increasingly consumed in Nigeria. RESULTS The study revealed that both the cold and hot fermentation methods resulted in increased vitamin A levels and lower vitamin C levels in orange-fleshed sweet potato. Further processing to make amala resulted in a fall in both vitamin A and C content. The study found an increase in trypsin inhibitor activity following the cold-water fermentation and a decrease following the hot-water fermentation compared to raw orange-fleshed sweet potato. Trypsin inhibitor activity in amala produced using both the cold and hot methods was below detectable levels. CONCLUSION The results indicate that amala produced from traditionally fermented orange-fleshed sweet potato could be a good source of vitamins A and C for the rural poor and that the processing removes any potential negative effects of trypsin inhibitors.

As the applications of Earth system models (ESMs) move from general climate projections toward questions of mitigation and adaptation, the inclusion of land management practices in these models becomes crucial. We carried out a survey among modeling groups to show an evolution from models able only to deal with land‐cover change to more sophisticated approaches that allow also for the partial integration of land management changes. For the longer term a comprehensive land management representation can be anticipated for all major models. To guide the prioritization of implementation, we evaluate ten land management practices—forestry harvest, tree species selection, grazing and mowing harvest, crop harvest, crop species selection, irrigation, wetland drainage, fertilization, tillage, and fire—for (1) their importance on the Earth system, (2) the possibility of implementing them in state‐of‐the‐art ESMs, and (3) availability of required input data. Matching these criteria, we identify “low‐hanging fruits” for the inclusion in ESMs, such as basic implementations of crop and forestry harvest and fertilization. We also identify research requirements for specific communities to address the remaining land management practices. Data availability severely hampers modeling the most extensive land management practice, grazing and mowing harvest, and is a limiting factor for a comprehensive implementation of most other practices. Inadequate process understanding hampers even a basic assessment of crop species selection and tillage effects. The need for multiple advanced model structures will be the challenge for a comprehensive implementation of most practices but considerable synergy can be gained using the same structures for different practices. A continuous and closer collaboration of the modeling, Earth observation, and land system science communities is thus required to achieve the inclusion of land management in ESMs.

The American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF), in partnership with key specialty and subspecialty societies, conducted a review of common clinical scenarios where noninvasive vascular testing (venous ultrasound and physiological testing) is frequently considered. The indications (clinical

In the light of daunting global sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food security, improving our understanding of the complex dynamics of the Earth system is crucial. However, large knowledge gaps related to the effects of land management persist, in particular those human-induced changes in terrestrial ecosystems that do not result in land-cover conversions. Here, we review the current state of knowledge of ten common land management activities for their biogeochemical and biophysical impacts, the level of process understanding and data availability. Our review shows that ca. one-tenth of the ice-free land surface is under intense human management, half under medium and one-fifth under extensive management. Based on our review, we cluster these ten management activities into three groups: (i) management activities for which data sets are available, and for which a good knowledge base exists (cropland harvest and irrigation); (ii) management activities for which sufficient knowledge on biogeochemical and biophysical effects exists but robust global data sets are lacking (forest harvest, tree species selection, grazing and mowing harvest, N fertilization); and (iii) land management practices with severe data gaps concomitant with an unsatisfactory level of process understanding (crop species selection, artificial wetland drainage, tillage and fire management and crop residue management, an element of crop harvest). Although we identify multiple impediments to progress, we conclude that the current status of process understanding and data availability is sufficient to advance with incorporating management in, for example, Earth system or dynamic vegetation models in order to provide a systematic assessment of their role in the Earth system. This review contributes to a strategic prioritization of research efforts across multiple disciplines, including land system research, ecological research and Earth system modelling.

R. Fuchs1, M. Herold1, P. H. Verburg2, and J. G. P. W. Clevers11Laboratory of Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 3, 6708 PB Wageningen, the Netherlands2Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the NetherlandsHuman-induced land use changes are nowadays the second largest contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide after fossil fuel combustion. Existing historic land change reconstructions on the European scale do not sufficiently meet the requirements of greenhouse gas (GHG) and climate assessments, due to insufficient spatial and thematic detail and the consideration of various land change types. This paper investigates if the combination of different data sources, more detailed modelling techniques, and the integration of land conversion types allow us to create accurate, high-resolution historic land change data for Europe suited for the needs of GHG and climate assessments. We validated our reconstruction with historic aerial photographs from 1950 and 1990 for 73 sample sites across Europe and compared it with other land reconstructions like Klein Goldewijk et al. (2010, 2011), Ramankutty and Foley (1999), Pongratz et al. (2008) and Hurtt et al. (2006). The results indicate that almost 700 000 km2 (15.5%) of land cover in Europe has changed over the period 1950–2010, an area similar to France. In Southern Europe the relative amount was almost 3.5% higher than average (19%). Based on the results the specific types of conversion, hot-spots of change and their relation to political decisions and socio-economic transitions were studied. The analysis indicates that the main drivers of land change over the studied period were urbanization, the reforestation program resulting from the timber shortage after the Second World War, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Common Agricultural Policy and accompanying afforestation actions of the EU. Compared to existing land cover reconstructions, the new method considers the harmonization of different datasets by achieving a high spatial resolution and regional detail with a full coverage of different land categories. These characteristics allow the data to be used to support and improve ongoing GHG inventories and climate research.Citation: Fuchs, R., Herold, M., Verburg, P. H., and Clevers, J. G. P. W.: A high-resolution and harmonized model approach for reconstructing and analysing historic land changes in Europe, Biogeosciences, 10, 1543-1559, doi:10.5194/bg-10-1543-2013, 2013.

Land-use and land-cover (LUC) changes are a key uncertainty when attributing changes in measured atmospheric CO2 concentration to its sinks and sources, and must also be much better understood to determine possibilities for land-based climate change mitigation, especially in the light of human demand on other land-based resources. On the spatial scale typically used in terrestrial ecosystem models (0.5 or 1 degrees) changes in LUC over time periods of a few years or more can include bi-directional changes on the sub-grid level, such as the parallel expansion and abandonment of agricultural land (e.g. in shifting cultivation), or cropland-grassland conversion (and vice versa). These complex changes between classes within a gridcell have often been neglected in previous studies, and only net changes of land between natural vegetation cover, cropland and pastures accounted for, mainly because of a lack of reliable high-resolution historical information on gross land transitions. In the present study we applied a state-of-the-art dynamic global vegetation model with a detailed representation of croplands and carbon-nitrogen dynamics to quantify the uncertainty in terrestrial ecosystem carbon stocks and fluxes arising from the choice between net and gross representations of LUC. We used three frequently applied global and one recent European LUC datasets, two of which resolve gross land transitions, either in Europe or in tropical regions. When considering only net changes, land-use-transition uncertainties (expressed as one standard deviation around decadal means) in global carbon emissions from LUC (ELUC) are &pm;0.23, &pm;0.76 and &pm;0.49 Pg C a−1 in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, respectively, or between 17 % and 42 % of mean ELUC. Carbon stocks at the end of the 20th century vary by &pm;13 Pg C for vegetation and &pm;41 Pg C for soil C due to the choice of LUC reconstruction, i.e. around 3 % of the respective C pools. Accounting for sub-grid (gross) land conversions significantly increased the effect of LUC on global and European carbon stocks and fluxes, most noticeably enhancing global cumulative ELUC by 33 Pg C (1750–2014) and entailing a significant reduction in carbon stored in vegetation, although the effect on soil C stocks was limited. Simulations demonstrated that assessments of historical carbon stocks and fluxes are highly uncertain due to the choice of LUC reconstruction and that the consideration of different contrasting LUC reconstructions is needed to account for this uncertainty. The analysis of gross in addition to net land changes showed that the full complexity of gross land-use changes is required in order to accurately predict the magnitude of LUC change emissions. This introduces technical challenges to the process-based models and relies on extensive information on historical land use transitions.

The aim of the work was to study the effect of traditional processing methods on the β-carotene, ascorbic acid and trypsin inhibitor contents of orange-fleshed sweet potato amala. The most common sweet potato in Nigeria is white or yellow fleshed, which is very low in provitamin A. However, efforts are underway to promote orange-fleshed sweet potato to improve provitamin A intake. This paper describes how orange-fleshed sweet potato slices were traditionally processed into amala, which is increasingly consumed in Nigeria.The study revealed that both the cold and hot fermentation methods resulted in increased vitamin A levels and lower vitamin C levels in orange-fleshed sweet potato. Further processing to make amala resulted in a fall in both vitamin A and C content. The study found an increase in trypsin inhibitor activity following the cold-water fermentation and a decrease following the hot-water fermentation compared to raw orange-fleshed sweet potato. Trypsin inhibitor activity in amala produced using both the cold and hot methods was below detectable levels.The results indicate that amala produced from traditionally fermented orange-fleshed sweet potato could be a good source of vitamins A and C for the rural poor and that the processing removes any potential negative effects of trypsin inhibitors. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry.

Historic land-cover/use change is important for studies on climate change, soil carbon, and biodiversity assessments. Available reconstructions focus on the net area difference between two time steps (net changes) instead of accounting for all area gains and losses (gross changes). This leads to a serious underestimation of land-cover/use dynamics with impacts on the biogeochemical and environmental assessments based on these reconstructions. In this study, we quantified to what extent land-cover/use reconstructions underestimate land-cover/use changes in Europe for the 1900-2010 period by accounting for net changes only. We empirically analyzed available historic land-change data, quantified their uncertainty, corrected for spatial-temporal effects and identified underlying processes causing differences between gross and net changes. Gross changes varied for different land classes (largest for forest and grassland) and led to two to four times the amount of net changes. We applied the empirical results of gross change quantities in a spatially explicit reconstruction of historic land change to reconstruct gross changes for the EU27 plus Switzerland at 1 km spatial resolution between 1950 and 2010. In addition, the reconstruction was extended back to 1900 to explore the effects of accounting for gross changes on longer time scales. We created a land-change reconstruction that only accounted for net changes for comparison. Our two model outputs were compared with five commonly used global reconstructions for the same period and area. In our reconstruction, gross changes led in total to a 56% area change (ca. 0.5% yr(-1)) between 1900 and 2010 and cover twice the area of net changes. All global reconstructions used for comparison estimated fewer changes than our gross change reconstruction. Main land-change processes were cropland/grassland dynamics and afforestation, and also deforestation and urbanization.

The crystal structure of 4-cyclopropylacetanilide was investigated at room temperature (21‡C) and at −100‡C in order to determine the orientation of the phenyl ring with respect to the cyclopropane moiety and the effect of this substituent on the stereochemistry of the three-membered ring. The compound was chosen because it is one of the few species containing a simple phenyl ring as the sole cyclopropane ring substituent and whose crystals are suitable for X-ray diffraction at room temperature. The substance crystallizes in space groupP2l/c at either temperature (no phase transitions) with cell constants: (at 21‡C)a=9.725(2),b=10.934(3), andc=9.636(2) a,Β=106.13(1)‡;V=984.21 a3 andd(calc;z=4)=1.182 g cm−3. The relevant parameters for the −100‡C structure area=9.557(4),b=10.980(2), andc=9.641(2) a,Β=106.34(3)‡;V=970.76 a3 and d(calc;z=4)=1.199 g cm−3. Final values wereR(F)=0.042, Rw=0.035, using unit weights, and its nonhydrogen atoms were used to phase the low-temperature data, whose final discrepancy indices wereR(F)=0.051,R w =0.061. The phenyl substituent is almost exactly in the bisecting conformation with respect to the C-C-C angle at the point of attachment to cyclopropane and conjugative effects are clearly evident in the lengths of the cyclopropane ring [1.494(3), 1.498(3), and 1.474(4) a, the later being the distal bond]. If one omits the terminal methylene fragments at C10 and C11, the atoms comprising the acetanilide fragment and the substituted carbon of the cyclopropane ring lie in a nearly perfect plane. Molecular mechanics as well as semiempirical (AM1) calculations were carried out in order to determine the structure of the energy-minimized configurations in the two computational environments. The molecular conformations thus obtained are close to that experimentally observed from the X-ray diffraction experiment. In both theoretical models, the lowest energy conformation is that in which the plane of the phenyl ring bisects the cyclopropane C-C-C angle as was experimentally observed. Finally, the shape of the conformational barrier as a function of the orientation of the plane of the phenyl ring was computed, giving a maximum barrier to rotation of 2.2 kcal/mol. Similar calculations were carried out for two other aryl cyclopropanes, whose rings (naphthalene and anthracene) cannot adopt the bisecting position. Comparisons of experimental geometrical parameters as well as of the barriers to rotation are presented.

Human-induced land use changes are nowadays the second largest contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide after fossil fuel combustion. Existing historic land change reconstructions on the European scale do not sufficiently meet the requirements of greenhouse gas (GHG) and climate assessments, due to insufficient spatial and thematic detail and the consideration of various land change types. This paper investigates if the combination of different data sources, more detailed modelling techniques, and the integration of land conversion types allow us to create accurate, high-resolution historic land change data for Europe suited for the needs of GHG and climate assessments. We validated our reconstruction with historic aerial photographs from 1950 and 1990 for 73 sample sites across Europe and compared it with other land reconstructions like Klein Goldewijk et al. (2010, 2011), Ramankutty and Foley (1999), Pongratz et al. (2008) and Hurtt et al. (2006). The results indicate that almost 700 000 km2 (15.5 %) of land cover in Europe has changed over the period 1950-2010, an area similar to France. In Southern Europe the relative amount was almost 3.5% higher than average (19 %). Based on the results the specific types of conversion, hot-spots of change and their relation to political decisions and socio-economic transitions were studied. The analysis indicates that the main drivers of land change over the studied period were urbanization, the reforestation program resulting from the timber shortage after the Second World War, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Common Agricultural Policy and accompanying afforestation actions of the EU. Compared to existing land cover reconstructions, the new method considers the harmonization of different datasets by achieving a high spatial resolution and regional detail with a full coverage of different land categories. These characteristics allow the data to be used to support and improve ongoing GHG inventories and climate research. © Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License.

Ostwald solubility coefficients, L, have been determined for 37 gases and vapours in methylene iodide at 298 K, and have been correlated through equation (i), where the solute explanatory log L=–0.74 + 0.32R2+ 1.34π2H+ 0.83α2H+ 1.19β2H+ 0.87 log L16(i) variables are R2 an excess molar refraction, π2H the solute dipolarity/polarisability, α2H and β2H the solute hydrogen-bond acidity and basicity, and log L16 where L16 is the solute Ostwald solubility coefficient on hexadecane at 298 K. Similar equations have been constructed for solvation of solutes in tetrachloromethane, trichloromethane and 1,2-dichloroethane using literature data. It is shown that polarisability effects favour solvation in methylene iodide, through the R2 term, but that such effects enhance the solubility of polarisable solutes only moderately: thus the R2 term contributes 0.4 log units more in methylene iodide than in trichloromethane for the solute benzene. Examination of ΔG°, ΔH° and ΔS° for solvation of gaseous solutes suggests also that polarisability effects in methylene iodide are not very much larger than in the other halogenated solvents.

Twenty-three samples of hot-smoked fish and 58 samples of cold-smoked fish were tested for the presence of Listeria. Listeria spp. were isolated from two (8.7%) and five (8.6%) of the respective samples tested. Listeria monocytogenes was only isolated from 2 samples (3.4%) of the cold-smoked fish.

Thirty-two samples of ceriche, a South American acidified fish product, were tested for the presence of listeria. Listeria innocua was isolated from 24 samples (75%) and L. monocytogenes was isolated from three samples (9%) of those tested.