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One of the most challenging issues in Mediterranean ecosystems to date has been to understand the emergence of discontinuous changes or catastrophic shifts. In the era of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which encompass ideas around Land Degradation Neutrality, advancing this understanding has become even more critical and urgent. The aim of this paper is to synthesise insights into the drivers, processes and management of catastrophic shifts to highlight ways forward for the management of Mediterranean ecosystems. We use a multidisciplinary approach that extends beyond the typical single site, single scale, single approach studies in the current literature. We link applied and theoretical ecology at multiple scales with analyses and modelling of human-environment-climate relations and stakeholder engagement in six field sites in Mediterranean ecosystems to address three key questions: i) How do major degradation drivers affect ecosystem functioning and services in Mediterranean ecosystems? ii) What processes happen in the soil and vegetation during a catastrophic shift? iii) How can management of vulnerable ecosystems be optimized using these findings? Drawing together the findings from the use of different approaches allows us to address the whole pipeline of changes from drivers through to action. We highlight ways to assess ecosystem vulnerability that can help to prevent ecosystem shifts to undesirable states; identify cost-effective management measures that align with the vision and plans of land users; and evaluate the timing of these measures to enable optimization of their application before thresholds are reached. Such a multidisciplinary approach enables improved identification of early warning signals for discontinuous changes informing more timely and cost-effective management, allowing anticipation of, adaptation to, or even prevention of, undesirable catastrophic ecosystem shifts.

A major challenge of the Sustainable Development Goals linked to Agriculture, Food Security, and Nutrition, under the current global crop production paradigm, is that increasing crop yields often have negative environmental impacts. It is therefore urgent to develop and adopt optimal soil-improving cropping systems (SICS) that can allow us to decouple these system parameters. Soil salinization is a major environmental hazard that limits agricultural potential and is closely linked to agricultural mismanagement and water resources overexploitation, especially in arid climates. Here we review literature seeking to ameliorate the negative effect of soil salinization on crop productivity and conduct a global meta-analysis of 128 paired soil quality and yield observations from 30 studies. In this regard, we compared the effectivity of different SICS that aim to cope with soil salinization across 11 countries, in order to reveal those that are the most promising. The analysis shows that besides case-specific optimization of irrigation and drainage management, combinations of soil amendments, conditioners, and residue management can contribute to significant reductions of soil salinity while significantly increasing crop yields. These results highlight that conservation agriculture can also achieve the higher yields required for upscaling and sustaining crop production.

WOS: 000427563600009, Science Citation Index Expanded, The Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change aims not only at avoiding +2 degrees C warming (and even limit the temperature increase further to +1.5 degrees C), but also sets long-term goals to guide mitigation. Therefore, the best available science is required to inform policymakers on the importance of and the adaptation needs in a +1.5 degrees C warmer world. Seven research institutes from Europe and Turkey integrated their competencies to provide a cross-sectoral assessment of the potential impacts at a pan-European scale. The initial findings of this initiative are presented and key messages communicated. The approach is to select periods based on global warming thresholds rather than the more typical approach of selecting time periods (e.g., end of century). The results indicate that the world is likely to pass the +1.5 degrees C threshold in the coming decades. Cross-sectoral dimensions are taken into account to show the impacts of global warming that occur in parallel in more than one sector. Also, impacts differ across sectors and regions. Alongside the negative impacts for certain sectors and regions, some positive impacts are projected. Summer tourism in parts of Western Europe may be favored by climate change; electricity demand decreases outweigh increases over most of Europe and catchment yields in hydropower regions will increase. However, such positive findings should be interpreted carefully as we do not take into account exogenous factors that can and will influence Europe such as migration patterns, food production, and economic and political instability., European Union [282746]; Niels Stensen Fellowship; Veni-grant of NWO Earth and Life Sciences [863.14.008]; RCN [255397], We are grateful to use the data which were obtained during the course of work of the project IMPACT2C: Quantifying projected impacts under 2 degrees C warming. IMPACT2C has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no 282746. These data were obtained freely from the IMPACT2C data archive (impact2c.dmi.dk). Dr. Michelle van Vliet was financially supported by a contribution of Niels Stensen Fellowship and a Veni-grant (project 863.14.008) of NWO Earth and Life Sciences (ALW). SPS is partially supported by RCN grant no. 255397. We would like to thank David Williams for his valuable support. The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and helpful suggestions that have contributed to improve this article.

Flooding is one of the most common disasters worldwide. This paper strives to highlight the hydrological effects of multi-temporal land use changes in flood hazard. The study area is Potamia basin established in the broader Yialias catchment basin located in Nicosia -Cyprus. The certain area has suffered from several flood disasters in the recent past. Initially, the land cover regime of the study area (last 20 years) was thoroughly studied using multi-temporal satellite (ASTER) and implementing g sophisticated classification methodologies such as Object oriented analysis. Land use/ Land cover (LULC) maps for the periods of 1990, 2000 and 2010 were developed. All these maps were incorporated in the CA-Markov chain analysis model and the LULC map of 2020 was constructed. The Markov chain analysis describes the probability of land cover change from one period to another by developing a transition probability matrix between two different time periods. Following, the hydrological analysis was performed using the Hydrological Modeling System (HEC-HMS). HEC-HMS is designed to simulate the precipitation-runoff processes of dendritic watershed systems. The HEC-HMS model was set up in distributed mode, enabling the utilization of the spatial information on the land use via the Curve number coefficient. Thus, the 2020LULC map was incorporated in the hydrological model in order to predict the hydrological behavior of the catchment area for the next decade. The results were compared with the present hydrological regime and denoted the future increase of runoff due o the predicted extensive urban sprawl phenomenon.