The study presented in this paper is part of the ACCELERATES (Assessing Climate Change Effects on Land Use and Ecosystems from Regional Analysis to The European Scale) project whose main goal is the construction of integrated predictions of future land use in Europe. The scenarios constructed in the project include estimates not only due to changes in the climate baseline, but also estimates due to possible future changes in socio-economics.

Soils of the world’s agroecosystems (croplands, grazing lands, rangelands) are depleted of their soil organic carbon (SOC) pool by 25–75% depending on climate, soil type, and historic management. The magnitude of loss may be 10 to 50tonsC/ha. Soils with severe depletion of their SOC pool have low agronomic yield and low use efficiency of added input.

Developing conservation strategies for threatened species increasingly requires understanding vulnerabilities to climate change, in terms of both demographic sensitivities to climatic and other environmental factors, and exposure to variability in those factors over time and space. We conducted a range‐wide, spatially explicit climate change vulnerability assessment for Eastern Massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus), a declining endemic species in a region showing strong environmental change.

Agricultural productivity in both developing and developed countries will have to improve to achieve substantial increases in food production by 2050 while land and water resources become less abundant and the effects of climate change introduce much uncertainty. Already less resilient production areas will suffer the most, as temperatures will rise further in tropical and semi-tropical latitudes and water-scarce regions will face even drier conditions.

BACKGROUND: Soil organic carbon (SOC) is fundamental for mitigating climate change as well as improving soil fertility. Databases of SOC obtained from soil surveys in 1981 and 2011 were used to assess SOC change (0–20 cm) in croplands of Heilongjiang Province in northeast China. Three counties (Lindian, Hailun and Baoqing) were selected as typical croplands representing major soil types and land use types in the region. RESULTS: The changes in SOC density (SOCD) between 1981 and 2001 were −6.6, −14.7 and 5.7 Mg C ha⁻¹ in Lindian, Hailun and Baoqing Counties respectively.

Adaptation in agro-ecological systems will be important for moderating the impacts of climate change. Vulnerability assessments provide the basis for developing strategies to reduce social vulnerability and plan for climate adaptation. Primary industries have been identified as the most vulnerable industry sector globally. We review how primary producers might be socially vulnerable to climate change and develop a ‘vulnerability typology’ of cattle producers based on survey responses from 240 producers across northern Australia.

The significance of nutrient inputs at the watershed scale is best expressed in terms of in-stream processes, compared to evaluating simple field measurements of nutrient inputs. Modeling tools are necessary to consider the complexity of river networks in the determination of the sources and processes by which nutrients are transported at the watershed scale.

Vegetation models are essential tools for projecting large-scale land-cover response to changing climate, which is expected to alter the distribution of biomes and individual species. A large-scale bioclimatic envelope model (RuBCliM) and an individual species based gap model (UVAFME) are used to simulate the Russian forests under current and future climate for two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Results for current conditions are compared between models and assessed against two independent maps of Russian forest biomes and dominant tree species.

An improved Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) model based on two kinds of remote sensing (RS) data, Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS), and climate variables were applied to estimate the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of Xuzhou in June of each year from 2001 to 2010. The NPP of the study area decreased as the spatial scale increased. The average NPP of terrestrial vegetation in Xuzhou showed a decreasing trend in recent years, likely due to changes in climate and environment.

The influence of Climate Change on plant development as well as on carbon and nitrogen cycling in soils is an important research topic for Global Change impact assessment at the regional scale. These changes affect the availability and quality of ground and surface waters and accordingly the future productivity of agriculturally used landscapes. The integrated assessment of these changes requires a robust prediction of the potential future characteristics of soil temperature and moisture based on scale-appropriate, process-oriented models.

Climate change is affecting species distribution, composition of biological communities, and species traits. Despite the growing body of knowledge on the reaction of species to climate change, the potentially delayed response of species is still severely understudied. In this paper we modelled the time needed by ground‐living invertebrates to effectively react to habitat modification induced by climate change in relation to dispersal abilities.

Land cover conversion intensively occurred in the Tibetan Plateau of China during the past decades. However, responses of soil properties and soil microbial activities to land cover conversion under different land cover types have not been fully understood. The objective was to assess the effects of land cover conversion on soil C and N stocks and soil microbial properties of topsoil of an alpine meadow in the Tibetan Plateau. Soil cores of surface soil (0–20 cm) were collected from three adjacent land cover types: native alpine meadow, artificial grassland and mound-shaped denuded land.