Sustained benefits of long-term biochar application for food security and climate change mitigation.

Biochar application offers significant potential to enhance food security and mitigate climate change. However, most evidence stems from short-term field experiments (≤3 y), leaving uncertainty about the long-term sustainability of these benefits, especially with annual biochar additions to soils. To address this knowledge gap, we analyzed a global dataset from 438 studies (3,229 observations) and found that long-term annual biochar application (≥4 y) not only sustains but often enhances its benefits.

Viral Diversity Mediates Carbon Allocation for Ecosystem Multifunctionality Across Biomes.

Viral diversity is essential for regulating the stability of ecosystem function by modulating the biochemical cycles via alterations in the survival and metabolic processes of host organisms. However, how viral survival strategies impact ecosystem function remains unresolved. Here, we analyzed 1824 metagenomes from soils across eight biomes, revealing that lytic viruses constituted a dominant proportion (88%) of the viral communities, with Siphoviridae (35.

Coupling nitrogen removal and watershed management to improve global lake water quality.

Lakes play a vital role in nitrogen (N) removal and water quality improvement, yet their efficiency varies due to differing watershed N input and lake characteristics, complicating management efforts. Here we established the N budget for 5768 global lakes using a remote sensing model. We found that watershed N input reduction and lake water quality improvement are nonlinearly related and depends on lake N removal efficiency.

Optimizing cover crop practices as a sustainable solution for global agroecosystem services.

The practice of cover crops has gained popularity as a strategy to improve agricultural sustainability, but its full potential is often limited by environmental trade-offs. Using meta-analytic and data-driven quantifications of 2302 observations, we optimized cover crop practices and evaluated their benefits for global agroecosystems. Cover crops have historically boosted crop yields, soil carbon storage, and stability, but also stimulated greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change exacerbates the environmental impacts of agriculture.

Agriculture's global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture's environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change-reinforcing feedback loop.

Climate adaptation through crop migration requires a nexus perspective for environmental sustainability in the North China Plain.

Crop migration can moderate the impacts of global warming on crop production, but its feedback on the climate and environment remains unknown. Here we develop an integrated framework to capture the climate impacts and the feedback of adaptation behaviours with the land-water-energy-carbon nexus perspective and identify opportunities to achieve the synergies between climate adaptation and environmental sustainability. We apply the framework to assess wheat and maize migration in the North China Plain and show that adaptation through wheat migration could increase crop production by ~18.

Small water body significantly contributes to nitrous oxide emissions in China's aquaculture.

Aquaculture systems are expected to act as potential hotspots for nitrous oxide (NO) emissions, largely attributed to substantial nutrient loading from aquafeed applications. However, the specific patterns and contributions of NO fluxes from these systems to the global emissions inventory are not well characterized due to limited data. This study investigates the patterns of NO flux across 127 freshwater systems in China to elucidate the role of aquaculture ponds and lakes/reservoirs in landscape NO emission.

Effects of grazing exclusion on soil microbial diversity and its functionality in grasslands: a meta-analysis.

Grazing exclusion (GE) is considered an effective strategy for restoring the degradation of overgrazed grasslands on the global scale. Soil microbial diversity plays a crucial role in supporting multiple ecosystem functions (multifunctionality) in grassland ecosystems. However, the impact of grazing exclusion on soil microbial diversity remains uncertain.

Sustainable Blue Foods from Rice-Animal Coculture Systems.

Global interest grows in blue foods as part of sustainable diets, but little is known about the potential and environmental performance of blue foods from rice-animal coculture systems. Here, we compiled a large experimental database and conducted a comprehensive life cycle assessment to estimate the impacts of scaling up rice-fish and rice-crayfish systems in China. We find that a large amount of protein can be produced from the coculture systems, equivalent to ∼20% of freshwater aquaculture and ∼70% of marine wild capture projected in 2030.

Diversifying crop rotation increases food production, reduces net greenhouse gas emissions and improves soil health.

Global food production faces challenges in balancing the need for increased yields with environmental sustainability. This study presents a six-year field experiment in the North China Plain, demonstrating the benefits of diversifying traditional cereal monoculture (wheat-maize) with cash crops (sweet potato) and legumes (peanut and soybean). The diversified rotations increase equivalent yield by up to 38%, reduce NO emissions by 39%, and improve the system's greenhouse gas balance by 88%.

Ecosystem multifunctionality and soil microbial communities in response to ecological restoration in an alpine degraded grassland.

Linkages between microbial communities and multiple ecosystem functions are context-dependent. However, the impacts of different restoration measures on microbial communities and ecosystem functioning remain unclear. Here, a 14-year long-term experiment was conducted using three restoration modes: planting mixed grasses (MG), planting shrub with alone (SA), and planting shrub with plus planting mixed grasses (SG), with an extremely degraded grassland serving as the control (CK).

Eco-physiology and environmental impacts of newly developed rice genotypes for improved yield and nitrogen use efficiency coordinately.

Significant advancements have been made in understanding the genetic regulation of nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and identifying crucial NUE genes in rice. However, the development of rice genotypes that simultaneously exhibit high yield and NUE has lagged behind these theoretical advancements. The grain yield, NUE, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of newly-bred rice genotypes under reduced nitrogen application remain largely unknown.

Linking between soil properties, bacterial communities, enzyme activities, and soil organic carbon mineralization under ecological restoration in an alpine degraded grassland.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization is affected by ecological restoration and plays an important role in the soil C cycle. However, the mechanism of ecological restoration on SOC mineralization remains unclear. Here, we collected soils from the degraded grassland that have undergone 14 years of ecological restoration by planting shrubs with alone (SA) and, planting shrubs with plus planting mixed grasses (SG), with the extremely degraded grassland underwent natural restoration as control (CK).

Assessing the environmental sustainability of different soil disinfestation methods used in solar greenhouse vegetable production systems.

Overuse of fertilizers and irrigation and continuous monocropping is increasingly jeopardizing vegetable production in solar greenhouses as it causes serious soil degradation and the spread of soil-borne diseases. As a countermeasure, the practice of anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) has been recently introduced, which is carried out during the summer fallow period. However, ASD may increase N leaching and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when large amounts of chicken manure are applied.

Integrated biochar solutions can achieve carbon-neutral staple crop production.

Agricultural food production is a main driver of global greenhouse gas emissions, with unclear pathways towards carbon neutrality. Here, through a comprehensive life-cycle assessment using data from China, we show that an integrated biomass pyrolysis and electricity generation system coupled with commonly applied methane and nitrogen mitigation measures can help reduce staple crops' life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from the current 666.5 to -37.

Heavy metal and nutrient concentrations in top- and sub-soils of greenhouses and arable fields in East China - Effects of cultivation years, management, and shelter.

Although greenhouse vegetable production in China is rapidly changing, consumers are concerned about food quality and safety. Studies have shown that greenhouse soils are highly eutrophicated and potentially contaminated by heavy metals. However, to date, no regional study has assessed whether greenhouse soils differ significantly in their heavy metal and nutrient loads compared to adjacent arable land.

Global methane and nitrous oxide emissions from inland waters and estuaries.

Inland waters (rivers, reservoirs, lakes, ponds, streams) and estuaries are significant emitters of methane (CH ) and nitrous oxide (N O) to the atmosphere, while global estimates of these emissions have been hampered due to the lack of a worldwide comprehensive data set of CH and N O flux components. Here, we synthesize 2997 in-situ flux or concentration measurements of CH and N O from 277 peer-reviewed publications to estimate global CH and N O emissions from inland waters and estuaries. Inland waters including rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and streams together release 95.

Organic amendments enhance soil microbial diversity, microbial functionality and crop yields: A meta-analysis.

Fertilization plays an important role in changing soil microbial diversity, which is essential for determining crop yields. Yet, the influence of organic amendments on microbial diversity remains uncertain, and few studies have addressed the relative importance of microbial diversity versus other drivers of crop yields. Here, we synthesize 219 studies worldwide and found that organic amendments significantly increased microbial diversity components (i.

Deceleration of Cropland-NO Emissions in China and Future Mitigation Potentials.

Agricultural soils are the largest anthropogenic emission source of nitrous oxide (NO). National agricultural policies have been implemented to increase crop yield and reduce nitrogen (N) losses to the environment. However, it is difficult to effectively quantify crop-specific and regional NO mitigation priorities driven by policies, due to lack of long-term, high-resolution crop-specific activity data, and oversimplified models.

Elevated CO does not necessarily enhance greenhouse gas emissions from rice paddies.

Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (eCO) greatly impacts greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of CH and NO from rice fields. Although eCO generally stimulates GHG emissions in the short term (<5 years) experiments, the responses to long-term (≥10 years) eCO remain poorly known. Here we show, through a series of experiments and meta-analysis, that the eCO does not necessarily increase CH and NO emissions from rice paddies.