The influence of changing rainfall on invasive grasses, the substitution of one group of predators for another in salt marshes and more from ESA's journals.

A team from the University of Illinois has engineered potato to be more resilient to global warming showing 30% increases in tuber mass under heatwave conditions. This adaptation may provide greater food security for families dependent on potatoes, as these are often the same areas where the changing climate has already affected multiple crop seasons. Their work was recently published in Global Change Biology

Many high-mountain rivers in Asia transport more sediment downstream compared to a few years ago. Changes in sediment levels have a particularly strong impact on agriculture, water quality, flood management, and hydropower generation. A study with participation of the University of Potsdam demonstrates the interacting roles of glaciers, vegetation, precipitation, and slope in mobilizing sediment and controlling the current sediment transport in rivers. In order to counteract climate change, the authors call for a systematic approach for the entire catchment area of rivers in the high mountains.

In two recent papers, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers and their collaborators found that emissions from streams are largely derived from nitrification processes in agricultural soils. Further, they found that stream emissions make up a much greater portion of the annual nitrous oxide budget than previously known.

A cutting-edge studystudy has uncovered the pivotal role of the sltrxh protein in tomatoes in managing nitrate stress—a growing challenge in modern agriculture.

The adoption of a sustainable land management practice (SLM) to manage invasive Prosopis juliflora – considered one of the world’s most threatening non-native tree species – appears to have ‘uprooted’ the problem in East Africa.

A new CABI-led study involving colleagues from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania, the Tanzania Forestry Research Institute, and the University of Nairobi, Kenya, found uprooting and use of the cleared land for continuous crop and fodder production in two invaded regions of Kenya and Tanzania to be successful.