In glacier forelands all over the world, the organic matter build‐up during the initial stages of topsoil development is strongly modulated by climate: a warmer climate accelerates accumulation of organic matter. We also detected a decreasing thermal stability of soil organic matter along the chronosequences. The observed changes in soil organic matter elemental stoichiometry, aromaticity and stable isotope signature with soil organic matter accumulation suggest an increasing contribution of organic matter from plant origin during the first centuries of topsoil development.

The Pacific marine heatwave was a prolonged warming event that led to reduced abundance and quality of small pelagic forage fishes. This caused a major disruption in the pelagic marine food web that precipitated large‐scale mortality and reproductive failures in upper trophic level predators. Unlike decadal‐scale variability underlying ecosystem regime shifts, the heatwave appeared to temporarily overwhelm the ability of the middle trophic level to buffer against changes imposed by warm water anomalies.

Using a process‐based, integrative, modelling approach to upscale from existing observations, we estimate a global terrestrial DOC leaching flux of 0.28 ± 0.07 Gt C year⁻¹ which is conservative, as it only includes the contribution of mineral soils. Our results suggest that globally about 15% of the terrestrial Net Ecosystem Productivity is exported to aquatic systems as leached DOC. In the tropical rainforest, the leached fraction of terrestrial NEP even reaches 22%.

Summertime temperatures at the surfaces of barren maritime Antarctic soils can approach or exceed 20°C under cloudless skies around solar noon. Here we show that the metabolism of the cold‐adapted and widespread Antarctic soil fungus Pseudogymnoascus roseus is inhibited when it is exposed to temperatures cycling daily to more than 20°C, both in the natural environment and the laboratory, with substantial reductions in the in vitro growth rates of colonies and activities of extracellular enzymes. We propose that surface warming in cold regions has the potential to inhibit the growth of other cold‐adapted microbes, with negative effects on soils as the Earth's climate continues to warm.

Volatile nitrogen oxides can negatively impact climate, air quality, and human health. Using soils collected from temperate forests across the eastern United States, we show microbial communities involved in nitrogen (N) cycling are structured, in large part, by the composition of overstory trees, leading to predictable N cycling syndromes, with consequences for emissions of volatile nitrogen oxides to air. Trees associating with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi promote soil microbial communities with higher N‐cycle potential and activity, relative to microbial communities in soils dominated by trees associating with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi. Given that nearly all tree species associate with either AM or ECM fungi, our results indicate that the consequences of tree species shifts associated with global change may have predictable consequences for soil N cycling.

A novel modelling approach for Earth observation of global gross primary production (GPP) of vegetation was introduced. The model improved simulations of GPP, and revealed a stagnation in the global GPP after the year 2000.

Leaf photosynthesis models are the beating heart of global carbon cycle models, simulating the rhythms of CO₂ transfer from the atmosphere to plants. Two key photosynthesis model variants are commonly used: the Farquhar and Collatz models, which vary in the way that some subprocesses are represented. Despite their almost ubiquitous use, the consequences of these alternative choices has never been formally investigated. Here we apply novel multi‐hypothesis modelling methods to investigate the influence of 14 parameters and four processes with alternative representations in photosynthesis models, finding the surprising dominance of a process that has not been extensively evaluated with data.

Using a phylogenetically controlled meta‐analysis, we quantified differences in adjustments of acoustic signals to anthropogenic noise. We found that animals changed acoustic signals when experimentally exposed to noise, but the magnitude and the direction of adjustments differed among species. Thus, an effective conservation approach to protect different species is to preserve natural soundscapes of ecosystems to which species have adapted to by reducing or mitigating the emission of anthropogenic noise into the environment.

Current understanding of organismal responses to change stems from relatively short‐term studies. Most projections lack long‐term observations incorporating the potential for transgenerational phenotypic plasticity and genetic adaption. We describe unexpected temporal responses in biomineralization as a mechanism for resistance to altered environments in the blue mussel Mytilus edulis. We evaluated archival mussel specimens collected regularly between 1904 and 2016, along with records of environmental descriptors and predators. Contrary to global‐scale predictions, shell production increased over the last century, highlighting a protective capacity of mussels for qualitative and quantitative trade‐offs in biomineralization as compensatory responses to altered environments and predator communities.

Conserving biodiversity ‘hotspots’ is intuitive because finite resources can be focussed towards manageable units. Yet, biodiversity, environmental conditions and their relationship are more complex with multidimensional properties. Assessments which ignore this risk failing to detect change, identify its direction, or gauge the scale of appropriate intervention. We focus on the marine benthos which holds most marine species and constitutes the largest single ecosystem on earth by area. When assessed alongside environmental gradients, α‐, β‐ and γ‐diversity provide a multidimensional but still intuitive perspective of biodiversity change that can direct conservation towards key drivers and the appropriate scale for intervention. Photographs used are a combination of © Elena Couce and © Crown Copyright, the latter collected by Cefas, Cornwall IFCA and Environment Agency whilst undertaking survey work in partnerships with the JNCC and Natural England.