The UN General Assembly has declared 2015 the International Year of Soils to raise awareness of the vital importance of soil, which is essential not only for food security and for cultivating plants for feed, fibre, fuel and medicinal products, but also for maintaining biodiversity as it hosts countless organisms. It plays a key role in storing and filtering water, in carbon and other nutrients cycling and performs other irreplaceable ecosystem functions. The Institute of Soil Biology of the CAS Biology Centre carries out biological research into many of those functions of soil in both natural and human–affected environments, including studies of the soil microstructure, soil organism communities and their dynamics and interactions and so on. Researchers at the Institute of Soil Biology focus, among other things, on the contribution of soil fungi to nitrous oxide emissions and on the production of methane. The latter is a potent greenhouse gas and a substantial part of atmospheric methane is produced by anaerobic microorganisms called Archaea found in the soil and in animal digestive tracts, while soil is also a significant methane sink. Research is also being concentrated on the characterization and risk assessment of antibiotic resistance-reservoirs in soil, which is connected with the massive use of antibiotics in the past five decades. Scientists examine ways of preventing the antibiotic resistance spreading in the environment through food chains as well as and on the role played by the soil microflora in those processes, as Doctor Dana Elhottová explains in the corresponding article. and Jana Olivová.
Earth’s climate has experienced notable changes during the past 50-70 years when global surface temperature has risen by 0.8°C during the 20th century. This was a consequence of the rise in the concentration of biogenic gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and ozone) in the atmosphere that contribute, along with water vapor, to the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’. Most of the emissions of greenhouse gases have been, and still are, the product of human activities, namely, the excessive use of fossil energy, deforestations in the humid tropics with associated poor land use-management, and wide-scale degradation of soils under crop cultivation and animal/pasture ecosystems. General Circulation Models predict that atmospheric CO2 concentration will probably reach 700 μmol(CO2) mol-1. This can result in rise of Earth’s temperature from 1.5 to over 5°C by the end of this century. This may instigate 0.60-1.0 m rise in sea level, with impacts on coastal lowlands across continents. Crop modeling predicts significant changes in agricultural ecosystems. The mid- and
high-latitude regions might reap the benefits of warming and CO2 fertilization effects via increasing total production and yield of C3 plants coupled with greater water-use efficiencies. The tropical/subtropical regions will probably suffer the worst impacts of global climate changes. These impacts include wide-scale socioeconomic changes, such as degradation and losses of natural resources, low agricultural production, and lower crop yields, increased risks of hunger, and above all waves of human migration and dislocation. Due to inherent cassava tolerance to heat, water stress, and poor soils, this crop is highly adaptable to warming climate. Such a trait should enhance its role in food security in the tropics and subtropics., M. A. El-Sharkawy., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Povodně a sucho se v posledních letech skloňují ve všech pádech. Často se v tomto kontextu zmiňuje potřeba budování přehrad a dalších nákladných děl, která však řeší jen důsledek mnohdy špatné péče o krajinu. Ne každý si totiž uvědomuje, jak důležitou roli hraje v koloběhu vody půda a stav krajiny. Kvalitní a nedegradovaná půda dokáže poutat značné množství vody, čímž reguluje dopady obou klimatických extrémů. Pestrá krajina s přirozenými mokřady a dalšími krajinnými prvky s vodou hospodaří lépe než krajina plná velkých půdních bloků s monokulturami zemědělských plodin a regulovanými vodními toky. and Jiří Hladík, Jan Vopravil, Marek Batysta.
Fossil continental molluscs have not hitherto been regarded as reliable paleoenvironmental indicators. Little was known about their ecological requirements or their position in characteristic biomes of the Quaternary climatic cycle, for instance in the loess steppe. Only recent analyses of their assemblages in a broad environmental context have shown that they are indicative of a number of important environmental phenomena in the same way as pollen grains or vertebrate remains. and Vojen Ložek.
Fossil molluscan successions from ca 450 sites provide evidence of the paleo-environmental history of the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the Quaternary. They not only reflect the Quaternary cycle of warm and cold phases but also a number of various events, such as the impact of the cold oscillation at 8,2 ky BP or the detailed reconstruction in time and space of the habitat patchwork in areas where other fossils are sparse or absent, particularly in karstlands, in the full scale of elevations. and Vojen Ložek.