2020, Van Oijen, Marcel, Barcza, Zoltán, Confalonieri, Roberto, Korhonen, Panu, Kröel-Dulay, György, Lellei-Kovács, Eszter, Louarn, Gaëtan, Louault, Frédérique, Martin, Raphaël, Moulin, Thibault, Movedi, Ermes, Picon-Cochard, Catherine, Rolinski, Susanne, Viovy, Nicolas, Wirth, Stephen Björn, Bellocchi, Gianni

Multi-species grasslands are reservoirs of biodiversity and provide multiple ecosystem services, including fodder production and carbon sequestration. The provision of these services depends on the control exerted on the biogeochemistry and plant diversity of the system by the interplay of biotic and abiotic factors, e.g., grazing or mowing intensity. Biogeochemical models incorporate a mechanistic view of the functioning of grasslands and provide a sound basis for studying the underlying processes. However, in these models, the simulation of biogeochemical cycles is generally not coupled to simulation of plant species dynamics, which leads to considerable uncertainty about the quality of predictions. Ecological models, on the other hand, do account for biodiversity with approaches adopted from plant demography, but without linking the dynamics of plant species to the biogeochemical processes occurring at the community level, and this hampers the models’ capacity to assess resilience against abiotic stresses such as drought and nutrient limitation. While setting out the state-of-the-art developments of biogeochemical and ecological modelling, we explore and highlight the role of plant diversity in the regulation of the ecosystem processes underlying the ecosystems services provided by multi-species grasslands. An extensive literature and model survey was carried out with an emphasis on technically advanced models reconciling biogeochemistry and biodiversity, which are readily applicable to managed grasslands in temperate latitudes. We propose a roadmap of promising developments in modelling.

2016, Russell, James M., Bijaksana, Satria, Vogel, Hendrik, Melles, Martin, Kallmeyer, Jens, Ariztegui, Daniel, Crowe, Sean, Fajar, Silvia, Hafidz, Abdul, Haffner, Doug, Hasberg, Ascelina, Ivory, Sarah, Kelly, Christopher, King, John, Kirana, Kartika, Morlock, Marina, Noren, Anders, O'Grady, Ryan, Ordonez, Luis, Stevenson, Janelle, von Rintelen, Thomas, Vuillemin, Aurele, Watkinson, Ian, Wattrus, Nigel, Wicaksono, Satrio, Wonik, Thomas, Bauer, Kohen, Deino, Alan, Friese, André, Henny, Cynthia, Marwoto, Ristiyanti, Ngkoimani, La Ode, Nomosatryo, Sulung, Safiuddin, La Ode, Simister, Rachel, Tamuntuan, Gerald

The Towuti Drilling Project (TDP) is an international research program, whose goal is to understand long-term environmental and climatic change in the tropical western Pacific, the impacts of geological and environmental changes on the biological evolution of aquatic taxa, and the geomicrobiology and biogeochemistry of metal-rich, ultramafic-hosted lake sediments through the scientific drilling of Lake Towuti, southern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Lake Towuti is a large tectonic lake at the downstream end of the Malili lake system, a chain of five highly biodiverse lakes that are among the oldest lakes in Southeast Asia. In 2015 we carried out a scientific drilling program on Lake Towuti using the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) Deep Lakes Drilling System (DLDS). We recovered a total of  ∼ 1018 m of core from 11 drilling sites with water depths ranging from 156 to 200 m. Recovery averaged 91.7 %, and the maximum drilling depth was 175 m below the lake floor, penetrating the entire sedimentary infill of the basin. Initial data from core and borehole logging indicate that these cores record the evolution of a highly dynamic tectonic and limnological system, with clear indications of orbital-scale climate variability during the mid- to late Pleistocene.

2019, Brown, Erik T., Caballero, Margarita, Cabral Cano, Enrique, Fawcett, Peter J., Lozano-García, Socorro, Ortega, Beatriz, Pérez, Liseth, Schwalb, Antje, Smith, Victoria, Steinman, Byron A., Stockhecke, Mona, Valero-Garcés, Blas, Watt, Sebastian, Wattrus, Nigel J., Werne, Josef P., Wonik, Thomas, Myrbo, Amy E., Noren, Anders J., O'Grady, Ryan, Schnurrenberger, Douglas

The primary scientific objective of MexiDrill, the Basin of Mexico Drilling Program, is development of a continuous, high-resolution ∼400 kyr lacustrine record of tropical North American environmental change. The field location, in the densely populated, water-stressed Mexico City region gives this record particular societal relevance. A detailed paleoclimate reconstruction from central Mexico will enhance our understanding of long-term natural climate variability in the North American tropics and its relationship with changes at higher latitudes. The site lies at the northern margin of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), where modern precipitation amounts are influenced by sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic basins. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), more winter precipitation at the site is hypothesized to have been a consequence of a southward displacement of the mid-latitude westerlies. It thus represents a key spatial node for understanding large-scale hydrological variability of tropical and subtropical North America and is at an altitude (2240 m a.s.l.), typical of much of western North America. In addition, its sediments contain a rich record of pre-Holocene volcanic history; knowledge of the magnitude and frequency relationships of the area's explosive volcanic eruptions will improve capacity for risk assessment of future activity. Explosive eruption deposits will also be used to provide the backbone of a robust chronology necessary for full exploitation of the paleoclimate record. Here we report initial results from, and outreach activities of, the 2016 coring campaign.