Li, W.; Reichstein, M.; O, S.; May, C.; Destouni, G.; Migliavacca, M.; Kraft, B.; Weber, U.; Orth, R.: Contrasting drought propagation into the terrestrial water cycle between dry and wet regions. Earth's Future 11 (7), e2022EF003441 (2023)
If rivers overflow their banks, the consequences can be devastating. Using methods of explainable machine learning, researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have shown that floods are more extreme when several factors are involved in their development.
Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world. According to the European Environment Agency’s assessment, many of these risks have already reached critical levels and could become catastrophic without urgent and decisive action.
Plant observations collected with plant identification apps such as Flora Incognita allow statements about the developmental stages of plants - both on a small scale and across Europe.
Global experts have unveiled the annual 10 New Insights in Climate Science report. The report equips policymakers with the latest and most pivotal climate science research from the previous 18 months, synthesised to help inform negotiations at COP28 and policy implementation through 2024 and beyond.
Vegetation can respond to drought through different mechanisms, including changes in the plants’ structure and physiology. By analyzing state-of-the-art satellite-derived datasets with explainable machine learning methods, an international team around Wantong Li and René Orth showed that the vegetation’s physiology in many ecosystems has deviated from its structure under drought on a global scale.
Carbon sinks on the land surface mitigate the greenhouse effect. An international team of scientists has now determined that the vast majority of Europe’s total above-ground carbon storage is provided by the forests of Eastern Europe. However, this carbon sink has declined, mainly due to changes in land use.
The world’s forests, grasslands, and other terrestrial ecosystems have played a substantial role in offsetting human carbon emissions—a capability that researchers say would be threatened by continued global change.
A new study shows that the efficiency of microbial carbon use is at least four times more influential than other biological factors or environmental conditions on the global storage and distribution of carbon in soil.
Germany's most popular plant identification app "Flora Incognita" has been further upgraded by a new artificial intelligence. This triples the number of plant species that can be identified up to 16,000. In addition, the app is now available in 20 different languages and also in offline mode.
Dr. Ana Bastos, group leader at Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, was awarded the Beutenberg Campus science award in the category „outstanding junior research scientist”.
A new study reveals that surprisingly small increases in atmospheric CO2 lead to detectable effects on ecosystem functioning. Using simulations of the land surface model developed at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, an international team of scientists finds that enhanced CO2 first affects entities of the carbon cycle such as vegetation productivity and the extension of leaf area.