Brazilian landowners are obligated to conserve a minimum percentage of native vegetation within their properties (termed a ‘legal reserve’), but non-compliance can be compensated elsewhere through a biodiversity offset. Recent changes in rules for legal reserve compensation (LRC) have increased the allowed spatial scale and softened the ecological criteria required to select properties for compensation, potentially leading to considerable biodiversity losses. In this paper, we analyse whether these rules promote the conservation of tree species on private lands through LRC in the Cerrado biome, the most biodiverse savannah in the world. We modelled the potential distribution of 126 Cerrado tree species and simulated several potential biodiversity offsets to calculate expected species losses under former and current LRC rules. Our results show that biodiversity offsets established under current and former LRC rules can lead to up to 100% tree species losses. In contrast, setting a minimum similarity threshold between watersheds can reduce median tree species loss in biodiversity offsets to as low as 3% and prevents LRC with no common species between sites. Therefore, the current rule is expected to strongly impact biodiversity in the Cerrado. Similarity in species composition between watersheds must be considered in order to implement LRC offsets that effectively conserve Cerrado biodiversity on private lands.

Recent research has shown the potential of speleothem δ13C to record a range of environmental processes. Here, we report on 230Th-dated stalagmite δ13C records for southwest Sulawesi, Indonesia, over the last 40,000 yr to investigate the relationship between tropical vegetation productivity and atmospheric methane concentrations. We demonstrate that the Sulawesi stalagmite δ13C record is driven by changes in vegetation productivity and soil respiration and explore the link between soil respiration and tropical methane emissions using HadCM3 and the Sheffield Dynamic Global Vegetation Model. The model indicates that changes in soil respiration are primarily driven by changes in temperature and CO2, in line with our interpretation of stalagmite δ13C. In turn, modelled methane emissions are driven by soil respiration, providing a mechanism that links methane to stalagmite δ13C. This relationship is particularly strong during the last glaciation, indicating a key role for the tropics in controlling atmospheric methane when emissions from high-latitude boreal wetlands were suppressed. With further investigation, the link between δ13C in stalagmites and tropical methane could provide a low-latitude proxy complementary to polar ice core records to improve our understanding of the glacial–interglacial methane budget.

The IntCal family of radiocarbon (14C) calibration curves is based on research spanning more than three decades. The IntCal group have collated the 14C and calendar age data (mostly derived from primary publications with other types of data and meta-data) and, since 2010, made them available for other sorts of analysis through an open-access database. This has ensured transparency in terms of the data used in the construction of the ratified calibration curves. As the IntCal database expands, work is underway to facilitate best practice for new data submissions, make more of the associated metadata available in a structured form, and help those wishing to process the data with programming languages such as R, Python, and MATLAB. The data and metadata are complex because of the range of different types of archives. A restructured interface, based on the “IntChron” open-access data model, includes tools which allow the data to be plotted and compared without the need for export. The intention is to include complementary information which can be used alongside the main 14C series to provide new insights into the global carbon cycle, as well as facilitating access to the data for other research applications. Overall, this work aims to streamline the generation of new calibration curves.

Understanding the relative longevity of different seed lots, perhaps of different species or genotypes, but also following production under different environments or using different cultivation methods, or following different post-harvest treatments, is relevant to anyone concerned with the retention of seed lot viability and vigour during storage. However, different scientists over the years have used different conditions to assess seed lot longevity, as well as different variables as the measure of ‘longevity.’ Here, we give some of the backgrounds to how two standard protocols, with an open and closed system respectively, were derived, and explain why we consider p50, defined as the time during storage when seed lot viability, as measured through a germination test, has declined to 50%, is a suitable longevity trait parameter.

Public representations of long-term residential care (LTRC) facilities have received limited focus in Canada, although literature from other countries indicates that public perceptions of LTRC tend to be negative, particularly in contexts that prioritize aging and dying in place. Using Manitoba as the study context, we investigate a question of broad relevance to the Canadian perspective; specifically, what are current public perceptions of the role and function of long-term care in the context of a changing health care system? Through critical discourse analysis, we identify four overarching discourses dominating public perceptions of LTRC: the problem of public aging, LTRC as an imperfect solution to the problem, LTRC as ambiguous social spaces, and LTRC as a last resort option. Building on prior theoretical work, we suggest that public perceptions of LTRC are informed by neoliberal discourses that privilege individual responsibility and problematize public care.

Predispersal seed predation is one of the main causes of seed mortality in plant populations, contributing to decreased plant recruitment. Seed loss has previously been found to be related to crop size. Thus, we examined the influence of individual crop size on predispersal seed predation by beetles in the palm Syagrus flexuosa in the Brazilian savanna. The study was carried out in three tropical woodland savanna sites, where we sampled the total seed crop of 46 fruiting palms and checked the presence of beetle larvae inside all seeds per plant. We observed predispersal seed predation of S. flexuosa from all sites and a high variation in the number of seeds preyed on per individual palm. Crop size had a positive influence on the number of seeds lost to predispersal seed predators. Variations in levels of predispersal seed predation may also be accounted for by the reproductive phenology of S. flexuosa. If fruits are not available at the same time, less resource is available for predators and therefore a high proportion of seeds may be preyed on. Thus, our study demonstrates that an individual plant trait, crop size, is an important predictor of beetle seed damage per palm and a driver of the number of seeds lost to predispersal seed predators.