Greenhouse gas mitigation potential of agricultural land in Great Britain

The aim of this paper is to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential of croplands and grasslands in Great Britain under different management practices. We consider the feasible land management options for grass and cropland using county level land‐use data with estimates of per‐area mitigation potential for individual and total GHGs, to identify the land management options with the greatest cost‐effective mitigation potential. We show that for grasslands, uncertainties still remain on the mitigation potential because of their climatic sensitivity and also their less intensive management. For croplands in Great Britain, the technical mean GHG mitigation potentials for all cropland management practices range from 17 Mt CO₂‐eq. per 20 yr to 39 Mt CO₂‐eq. per 20 yr. There are significant regional variation in all cases, with the greatest potentials in England, negligible potential in Wales and intermediate potential in Scotland, with country differences largely driven by the areas of cropland and grassland in each country. Practices such as agronomic improvement and nutrient management are the most promising options because of their impact on N₂O emissions and also their larger potential at low cost. In terms of annual emissions from agriculture, calculated mitigation potentials are small, where the technical mitigation potential of agronomy and nutrient management strategies are ca. 4.5 and 3.8%, respectively (agricultural emissions account for ca. 9% or 47.7 Mt CO₂‐eq., of total Great Britain GHG emissions, Department of Energy and Climate Change, UK). However when compared with the land use, land‐use change and forestry sector (LULUCF) emissions, nutrient management would reduce further emission reductions by approximately half of the 2005 LULUCF sink (i.e. ?1.6 Mt CO₂‐eq. per year).     

The Influence of Pedology and Changes in Soil Moisture Status on Manganese Release from Upland Catchments: Soil Core Laboratory Experiments

Manganese (Mn) contamination of drinking water may cause aesthetic and human health problems when concentrations exceed 50 and 500 μg l^?1, respectively. In the UK, the majority of Mn-related drinking water supply failures originate from unpolluted upland catchments. The source of Mn is therefore soil, but the exact mechanisms by which it is mobilised into surface waters remain unknown. Elevated Mn concentrations in surface waters have been associated with the rewetting of dried upland soils and with conifer afforestation. We investigated these hypotheses in a laboratory experiment involving the drying and rewetting of intact soil cores (1,900 cm³ volume) of horizons of four representative soil type-land use combinations from an upland water supply catchment in southwest Scotland. Although no statistically significant effect of land use or soil type was detected on Mn concentrations in soil water, Mn release occurred from three soil horizons upon rewetting. Soil water Mn concentrations in the moorland histosol H2 (10–30 cm), the histic podzol H and Eh horizons increased from means of 5.8, 6.2 and 0.6 μg l^?1 prior to rewetting to maxima of 90, 76 and 174 μg l^?1 after rewetting, respectively. The properties of these three horizons indicate that Mn release is favoured from soil horizons containing a mixture of organic and mineral material. Mineral material provides a source of Mn, but relatively high soil organic matter content is required to facilitate mobilisation. The results can be used alongside soil information to identify catchments at risk of elevated Mn concentrations in water supplies.     

Soil risk maps – Interpreting soils data for policy makers,agencies and industry

Surface runoff, erosion, compaction and the leaching of potential pollutants from land can degrade the soil resource and damage the water environment, reducing crop yields, causing loss of valuable nutrients and organic matter, together with increasing flood risk. Increasingly, it is recognized that scientific information must be translated into practical tools to change practices and protect the soil and water resource. Working alongside agencies in Scotland, we applied a suite of simple, transparent, rule-based models to identify areas most at risk of exporting sediment and pollutants that may degrade water quality based on field-scale (1:25,000) soil maps. The maps have been used by Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Water and Scottish Government to assess soil risks to waters from field to regional scale. The work brought scientists together with policy makers, agencies and the water industry to pool their knowledge to apply these practical tools for decision-making. It highlights the need to apply existing knowledge to answer salient questions. All three examples described show that providing the right type of information, which is based on fundamental soils data, can directly influence the implementation of policies, investment and monitoring decisions and provide evidence in support of government. However, this requires both researchers and agency scientists to develop skills as knowledge brokers and to normalize the use of soil data in everyday agency settings.     

Changes in the carbon concentrations and other soil properties of some Scottish agricultural soils: Evidence from a resampling campaign

The change in soil carbon (C) concentration, soil pH and major nutrients for approximately 1,000 topsoil sampled from on-farm experimental sites over a thirty-year period from 1950 to 1980 in north-east Scotland are summarized. This period coincided with increased agricultural intensification, which included regular liming and fertilizer additions. During 2017, 37 of these sites were resampled and reanlaysed. While pH and extractable phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) increased over this period, there was no detectable change in the percentage loss on ignition. Composite soil samples were taken by auger from a depth of 0–15 cm and compared with the corresponding archived samples collected at the initiation of each experiment. Analysis of these resampled soils indicated no significant change in soil carbon (C), although soil pH, extractable magnesium (Mg) and K and Nitrogen (N) concentrations were significantly greater (p < .001) but extractable soil P concentration was significantly less (p = .015) compared with the original samples. Even though measuring C concentration alone is a poor indicator of overall changes in soil C stocks, it does provide a relative quick “early warning” of C losses that would justify a more comprehensive measure of stocks.     

Signs of generalized anxiety and compulsive disorders in chimpanzees

Fear and anxiety have been studied extensively in humans and other animals. However, far less attention has been focused on the clinical and ethical implications of nonhuman animals’ susceptibility to psychological disorders. Behavioral signs of psychopathology in nonhuman animals, including our closest phylogenetic relatives, are rarely described as clinical syndromes. In this study, we drew on approaches described in child psychiatry, veterinary medicine, and primatology, to identify behavioral clusters in chimpanzees comparable with human anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive–compulsive disorder.In phase 1 of this study, we accessed published case reports of 20 chimpanzees subjected to maternal separation, social isolation, experimentation, or similar experiences. We tested the inter-rater reliability of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth edition; DSM-IV) criteria for generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive–compulsive disorder when applied to chimpanzees in these case studies. Additionally, based on the DSM-IV, veterinary approaches, and ethograms, we defined behaviorally anchored alternative criteria, which proved more reliable than the DSM-IV criteria in phase 1. In phase 2, the new behaviorally anchored criteria were applied to chimpanzees living in wild sites in Africa (n = 196) and those with previous histories of experimentation, orphanage, illegal seizure, or violent human conflict (n = 168) living in sanctuaries. In phase 2, 18% of chimpanzees living in sanctuaries met the set of behaviorally anchored criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, compared with 0.5% of those in the wild (P = 0.036), and 19% of chimpanzees in sanctuaries met the set of behaviorally anchored criteria for obsessive–compulsive disorder, compared with 0% of those in the wild (P = 0.071).Chimpanzees display behavioral clusters similar to anxiety disorders described in humans, underscoring the importance of ethical considerations regarding their use in experimentation and other captive settings.     

Considerations for Scottish soil monitoring in the European context

Two contrasting phases of work are described that help inform the development and requirements of a soil monitoring system: firstly, the development and application of a multi-criterion analysis of soil quality indicators grounded in the basic natural sciences; and secondly, scrutiny of the outcome of that process by a wide range of non-specialist but key stakeholders at a workshop. This process ensures that the final monitoring design meets both the scientific rigour expected from a monitoring system and as far as possible meets the aspirations of policy and regulatory stakeholders. Individual indicators of soil quality were evaluated in terms of their applicability against a number of important environmental and logistical parameters and therefore their overall fitness for purpose. These included relevance to different soil types, functions, habitats and threats to soil, the inherent variability of soil, and a range of technical aspects such as analytical complexity, precision and reproducibility of analytical results and whether a standard operating procedure (SOP) existed for the technique. A tiered approach to soil monitoring was supported by workshop delegates. This will require indicators that are suitable and effective at national, site-specific and process-level scales. In addition, the opportunities for synchronizing soil monitoring with air and water quality monitoring should be considered and the potential for integrating on-site measurements with remote methods should be researched further. It was considered by workshop attendees that soil monitoring should be rooted in pedological principles (i.e. recognizing defined soil horizons) to ensure that results can be extrapolated from individual sites and to retain flexibility.