More diverse crop rotations have been promoted for their potential to remediate the range of ecosystem services compromised by biologically simplified grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90based agroecosystems, including increasing soil organic carbon (SOC). We hypothesized that functional diversity offers a more predictive means of characterizing the impact of crop rotations on SOC concentrations than species diversity per se. Furthermore, we hypothesized that functional diversity can either increase or decrease SOC depending on its associated carbon (C) input to soil. We compiled a database of 27 cropping system sites and 169 cropping systems, recorded the species and functional diversity of crop rotations, SOC concentrations (g C kg/soil), nitrogen (N) fertilizer applications (kg\uffc2\uffa0N\uffc2\uffb7ha\uffe2\uff88\uff921\uffc2\uffb7yr\uffe2\uff88\uff921), and estimated C input to soil (Mg\uffc2\uffa0C\uffc2\uffb7ha\uffe2\uff88\uff921\uffc2\uffb7yr\uffe2\uff88\uff921). We categorized crop rotations into three broad categories: grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations, grain rotations with cover crops, and grain rotations with perennial crops. We divided the grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations into two sub\uffe2\uff80\uff90categories: cereal\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations and those that included both cereals and a legume grain. We compared changes in SOC and C input using mean effect sizes and 95% bootstrapped confidence intervals. Cover cropped and perennial cropped rotations, relative to grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations, increased C input by 42% and 23% and SOC concentrations by 6.3% and 12.5%, respectively. Within grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations, cereal\uffc2\uffa0+\uffc2\uffa0legume grain rotations decreased total C input (\uffe2\uff88\uff9216%), root C input (\uffe2\uff88\uff9212%), and SOC (\uffe2\uff88\uff925.3%) relative to cereal\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations. We found no effect of species diversity on SOC within grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90only rotations. N fertilizer rates mediated the effect of functional diversity on SOC within grain\uffe2\uff80\uff90only crop rotations: at low N fertilizer rates (\uffe2\uff89\uffa475\uffc2\uffa0kg N\uffc2\uffb7ha\uffe2\uff88\uff921\uffc2\uffb7yr\uffe2\uff88\uff921), the decrease in SOC with cereal\uffc2\uffa0+\uffc2\uffa0legume grain rotations was less than at high N fertilizer rates. Our results show that increasing the functional diversity of crop rotations is more likely to increase SOC concentrations if it is accompanied by an increase in C input. Functionally diverse perennial and cover cropped rotations increased both C input and SOC concentrations, potentially by exploiting niches in time that would otherwise be unproductive, that is, increasing the \uffe2\uff80\uff9cperenniality\uffe2\uff80\uff9d of crop rotations.
", "keywords": ["Crops", " Agricultural", "2. Zero hunger", "Science", "Ecology and Evolutionary Biology", "Agriculture", "Fabaceae", "cropping systems", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "functional diversity", "Poaceae", "sustainable agriculture", "Soil", "meta\u2010analysis", "soil organic matter", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "cover crops", "soil carbon", "Organic Chemicals", "perennials", "Fertilizers", "nitrogen fertilizer", "biodiversity"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.1648"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Ecological%20Applications", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1002/eap.1648", "name": "item", "description": "10.1002/eap.1648", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1002/eap.1648"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2017-12-27T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.1007/s13593-012-0114-9", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-05-29T16:15:20Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2012-10-02", "title": "Biofuel From Plant Biomass", "description": "AbstractPlant biomass can be used for multiple forms of bioenergy, and there is a very large potential supply, depending on which global assessment is most accurate in terms of land area that could be available for biomass production. The most suitable plant species must be identified before the potential biomass production in a particular region can be quantified. This in turn depends on the degree of climatic adaptation by those species. In the range of climates present in New Zealand, biomass crop growth has less restriction due to water deficit or low winter temperature than in most world regions. Biomass production for energy use in New Zealand would be best utilised as transport fuel since 70\uffc2\uffa0% of the country\uffe2\uff80\uff99s electricity generation is already renewable, but nearly all of its transport fossil fuel is imported. There is a good economic development case for transport biofuel production using waste streams and biomass crops. This review identified the most suitable crop species and assessed their production potential for use within the climatic range present in New Zealand. Information from published work was used as a basis for selecting appropriate crops in a 2-year selection and evaluation process. Where there were knowledge gaps, the location-specific selections were further evaluated by field measurements. The data presented have superseded much of the speculative information on the suitability of species for the potential development of a biofuel industry in New Zealand.
", "keywords": ["0106 biological sciences", "2. Zero hunger", "Biomass crops", "[SDV.SA] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Agricultural sciences", "Environmental Engineering", "High dry mass yield", "LCA", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "01 natural sciences", "7. Clean energy", "Energy crops", "Perennials", "[SDV.EE] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Ecology", " environment", "Greenhouse gases", "13. Climate action", "Biofuels", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "Agronomy and Crop Science", "Land use change", "Bioenergy potential"], "contacts": [{"organization": "Huub Kerckhoffs, Richard Renquist,", "roles": ["creator"]}]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-012-0114-9"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Agronomy%20for%20Sustainable%20Development", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1007/s13593-012-0114-9", "name": "item", "description": "10.1007/s13593-012-0114-9", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1007/s13593-012-0114-9"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2012-10-03T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.1051/agro/2009039", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-05-29T16:18:02Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2010-02-10", "title": "Biofuels, Greenhouse Gases And Climate Change. A Review", "description": "Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass, mostly in liquid form, within a time frame sufficiently short to consider that their feedstock (biomass) can be renewed, contrarily to fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current and future biofuel technologies, and their development impacts (including on the climate) within given policy and economic frameworks. Current technologies make it possible to provide first generation biodiesel, ethanol or biogas to the transport sector to be blended with fossil fuels. Still under-development 2nd generation biofuels from lignocellulose should be available on the market by 2020. Research is active on the improvement of their conversion efficiency. A ten-fold increase compared with current cost-effective capacities would make them highly competitive. Within bioenergy policies, emphasis has been put on biofuels for transportation as this sector is fast-growing and represents a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with fossil fuels, biofuel combustion can emit less greenhouse gases throughout their life cycle, considering that part of the emitted CO2 returns to the atmosphere where it was fixed from by photosynthesis in the first place. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly used to assess the potential environmental impacts of biofuel chains, notably the impact on global warming. This tool, whose holistic nature is fundamental to avoid pollution trade-offs, is a standardised methodology that should make comparisons between biofuel and fossil fuel chains objective and thorough. However, it is a complex and time-consuming process, which requires lots of data, and whose methodology is still lacking harmonisation. Hence the life-cycle performances of biofuel chains vary widely in the literature. Furthermore, LCA is a site- and timeindependent tool that cannot take into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of emissions, and can hardly serve as a decision-making tool either at local or regional levels. Focusing on greenhouse gases, emission factors used in LCAs give a rough estimate of the potential average emissions on a national level. However, they do not take into account the types of crop, soil or management practices, for instance. Modelling the impact of local factors on the determinism of greenhouse gas emissions can provide better estimates for LCA on the local level, which would be the relevant scale and degree of reliability for decision-making purposes. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of the processes involved, most notably N2O emissions, is still needed to definitely improve the accuracy of LCA. Perennial crops are a promising option for biofuels, due to their rapid and efficient use of nitrogen, and their limited farming operations. However, the main overall limiting factor to biofuel development will ultimately be land availability. Given the available land areas, population growth rate and consumption behaviours, it would be possible to reach by 2030 a global 10% biofuel share in the transport sector, contributing to lower global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 1 GtCO2 eq.year\u22121 (IEA, 2006), provided that harmonised policies ensure that sustainability criteria for the production systems are respected worldwide. Furthermore, policies should also be more integrative across sectors, so that changes in energy efficiency, the automotive sector and global consumption patterns converge towards drastic reduction of the pressure on resources. Indeed, neither biofuels nor other energy source or carriers are likely to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic pressure on resources in a range that would compensate for this pressure growth. Hence, the first step is to reduce this pressure by starting from the variable that drives it up, i.e. anthropic consumptions.", "keywords": ["[SDV.SA]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Agricultural sciences", "AGRICULTURAL PRATICES", "P05 - Ressources \u00e9nerg\u00e9tiques et leur gestion", "P06 - Sources d'\u00e9nergie renouvelable", "NITROUS OXIDE", "[SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]", "CLIMATE CHANGE", "BIOFUELS", "710", "02 engineering and technology", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_16181", "7. Clean energy", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_2570", "land-use change", "CARBON DIOXIDE", "11. Sustainability", "0202 electrical engineering", " electronic engineering", " information engineering", "gaz \u00e0 effet de serre", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_34841", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_2018", "\u00e9nergie renouvelable", "POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FRAMEWORKS", "2. Zero hunger", "changement climatique", "[SDV.SA] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Agricultural sciences", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_27465", "bioenergy potential", "nitrous oxide", "LCA", "BIOENERGY POTENTIAL", "LAND-USE CHANGE", "[SDV] Life Sciences [q-bio]", "[SDV.EE] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Ecology", " environment", "source d'\u00e9nergie", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_926", "climate change", "politique \u00e9nerg\u00e9tique", "perennials", "ENERGY CROPS", "GREENHOUSE GASES", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_28744", "oxyde d'azote", "P40 - M\u00e9t\u00e9orologie et climatologie", "PERENNIALS", "agricultural practices", "pollution par l'agriculture", "12. Responsible consumption", "dioxyde de carbone", "greenhouse gases", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_25719", "biomasse", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_1302", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_1666", "AGRONOMIE", "political and economic frameworks", "energy crops", "pratique culturale", "bio\u00e9nergie", "660", "carbon dioxide", "biofuels", "biocarburant", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_16002", "13. Climate action", "http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_16526"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://hal.science/cirad-00749753/file/Article_ASD.2010.pdf"}, {"href": "https://doi.org/10.1051/agro/2009039"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Agronomy%20for%20Sustainable%20Development", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1051/agro/2009039", "name": "item", "description": "10.1051/agro/2009039", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1051/agro/2009039"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2011-01-01T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.5281/zenodo.8149617", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-05-29T16:23:57Z", "type": "Dataset", "title": "Effects of fragmentation at fine scale in Mediterranean mountain grasslands", "description": "European mountain grasslands suffer a process of abandonment and are colonized by shrubs and forest. This makes a fragmentation at fine scale where a matrix forest surrounds the grassland fragments. Multiple studies have been realized about grassland fragmentation but in anthropic matrix like crops. There is no knowledge about the effect of fragmentation on the abandoned grasslands where the isolation can be minor but not the environmental change due to the surrounding forest in the smallest fragments. In this work, we studied abandoned Mediterranean mountain grasslands in an oak forest matrix. We surveyed the grassland communities and their soil properties in multiple fragments of different sizes and isolation. We classified the communities into different functional groups and calculated landscape variables of fragmentation. Then, we analysed the effect of the fragmentation on the richness of the functional groups and the grassland community. The results show that the fragmentation does not have any effect on the grasslands except on the communities in the extreme gradient of the vegetation succession, the annuals and fringe forest communities. The landscape configuration does not have effects on the grasslands. The smallest grasslands favoured the herbaceous fringe forest and the decrease of the annuals, due to higher amounts of soil organic carbon and less light availability and wetter conditions. Annual grasslands are more abundant in bigger fragments with drier conditions. The connectivity among fragments is not a problem for the grassland communities at fine scale. The typical grassland species show that they remain even in the smallest fragments although in theses the community is more similar to the forest fringe.", "keywords": ["Fragmentation", " grasslands", " communities", " annuals", " perennials", " Mediterranean", " forest", " connectivity", "15. Life on land"], "contacts": [{"organization": "S\u00e1nchez-D\u00e1vila, J.", "roles": ["creator"]}]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8149617"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.5281/zenodo.8149617", "name": "item", "description": "10.5281/zenodo.8149617", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.5281/zenodo.8149617"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2023-05-30T00:00:00Z"}}], "links": [{"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "This document as GeoJSON", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Perennials&f=json", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "alternate", "type": "text/html", "title": "This document as HTML", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Perennials&f=html", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection URL", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"type": "application/geo+json", "rel": "first", "title": "items (first)", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Perennials&", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "last", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "items (last)", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Perennials&offset=5", "hreflang": "en-US"}], "numberMatched": 5, "numberReturned": 5, "distributedFeatures": [], "timeStamp": "2026-05-30T09:01:16.450139Z"}