Selected publications

The Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) calls for restoring at least 25,000 kilometres of free-flowing rivers by 2030. Translating this ambition into implementation remains challenging due to differing restoration priorities across ecological, social, economic and governance contexts. This study offers a roadmap to support the implementation of the NRR's goal of restoring free-flowing rivers. 

This study shows: Over 40 percent of extant large freshwater animals (megafauna) have been deliberately introduced outside their natural ranges, often for economic gain. While these alien species can provide substantial benefits to certain groups in the introduced regions, they also posed profound and often underestimated risks to native biodiversity and local people. 

Oceans are important carbon sinks. Bacteria play a central role in carbon cycling because, collectively, they convert more organic material than all other marine organisms combined. Their activity acts as a “carbon pump”, ensuring that life is possible in the deep sea. The authors quantified the effect of bacteria in the middle ocean layers, known as the twilight zone, in the North-East Atlantic.

In stream mesocosm experiments the authors tested how reduced flow and a sequence of controlled flushing events, with or without macroinvertebrates, affect periphyton community composition, algal biovolume, and ecosystem metabolism. Flow variability and macroinvertebrates control periphyton structure, metabolism, and carbon cycling, with macroinvertebrates stabilising responses to disturbance.

Microplastics are ubiquitous – in the environment and in the human body. However, accurately detecting these particles poses major challenges for researchers from various disciplines. The authors described the methodological difficulties in the journal and call for more standardized methods in biomonitoring.

Science benefits from the rapid and open exchange of knowledge. However, there is a lack of appropriate community standards for data exchange between different institutions. In this article the authors discuss improvements for the exchange of extensive microbiome data.