In recent years, wave reanalyses have become popular as a powerful source of information for wave climate research and engineering applications. These wave reanalyses provide continuous time series of offshore wave parameters; nevertheless, in coastal areas or shallow water, waves are poorly described because spatial resolution is not detailed. By means of wave downscaling, it is possible to increase spatial resolution in high...

Ecosystems across the globe are threatened by climate change and human activities. New rapid survey approaches for monitoring biodiversity would greatly advance assessment and understanding of these threats. Taking advantage of next‐generation DNA sequencing, we tested an approach we call metabarcoding: high‐throughput and simultaneous taxa identification based on a very short (usually

Terrestrial ecosystems sequester 2.1 Pg of atmospheric carbon annually. A large amount of the terrestrial sink is realized by forests. However, considerable uncertainties remain regarding the fate of this carbon over both short and long timescales. Relevant data to address these uncertainties are being collected at many sites around the world, but syntheses of these data are still sparse. To facilitate future synthesis activit...

The Sixth and Seventh Conference of the Parties (COP 6 and 7) at The Hague, Bonn and Marrakesh came to a final Agreement on the Kyoto Protocol, which is thus ready for ratification by the individual nations. The Agreement was only achieved by allowing countries to offset their fossil fuel emission targets (on average 95% of the 1990 emissions) by increasing biological carbon sequestration, and by trading carbon credits. Activi...

Reliable models are required to assess the impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems. Precise and independent data are essential to assess this accuracy. The flux measurements collected by the EUROFLUX project over a wide range of forest types and climatic regions in Europe allow a critical testing of the process‐based models which were developed in the LTEEF project. The ECOCRAFT project complements this with a wealth of...

Summary This paper presents CO 2 flux data from 18 forest ecosystems, studied in the European Union funded EUROFLUX project. Overall, mean annual gross primary productivity (GPP, the total amount of carbon (C) fixed during photosynthesis) of these forests was 1380 ± 330 gC m −2 y −1 (mean ±SD). On average, 80% of GPP was respired by autotrophs and heterotrophs and released back into the atmosphere (total ecosystem respiration,...

Summary Based on review and original data, this synthesis investigates carbon pools and fluxes of Siberian and European forests (600 and 300 million ha, respectively). We examine the productivity of ecosystems, expressed as positive rate when the amount of carbon in the ecosystem increases, while (following micrometeorological convention) downward fluxes from the atmosphere to the vegetation (NEE = Net Ecosystem Exchange) are...