Costs and benefits of synthetic nitrogen for global cereal production in 2015 and in 2050 under contrasting scenarios
Increased use of synthetic N fertiliser has boosted global cereal grain production, but has also led to a massive increase of reactive N loss and environmental impacts. This paper quantifies the…
Multimodel and Multiconstituent Scenario Construction for Future Water Quality
Freshwater pollution is, together with climate change, one of today’s most severe and pervasive threats to the global environment. Comprehensive and spatially explicit scenarios covering a wide range…
Nitrogen in agri-food systems and the environment: Next steps to a sustainable future
The widespread introduction of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilisers, post World War II in the 1950s, marked a historic turning point in the world's agricultural systems. The increased N supply…
Long-term variations (1970–2020) and spatial patterns of nitrogen and phosphorus soil budgets and fates in Indian agriculture
The Green Revolution rapidly increased India’s food production since the 1960s, but excessive synthetic fertilizer use caused severe environmental problems.
Global riverine land-to-ocean carbon export constrained by observations and multi-model assessment
Rivers are a key component of the global carbon cycle. They receive vast quantities of terrestrial carbon, of which a large fraction is ultimately exported to the coastal ocean. Our review of…
Global inland-water nitrogen cycling has accelerated in the Anthropocene
Inland waters are an important component of the global nitrogen (N) cycle, functioning not only as land-to-sea transporters but also as active biogeochemical reactors. However, the latter role is not…
What drives the ecological quality of surface waters? A review of 11 predictive modeling tools
What policy is needed to ensure that good-quality water is available for both people’s needs and the environ-ment? The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), which came into force in 2000, established a…
Report on the workshop 'New Narratives for Nature: operationalizing the IPBES Nature Futures Scenarios'
In February 2020, the IPBES Task Force and Technical Support Unit on Scenarios and Models, which is hosted by PBL, organized the workshop ‘New Narratives for Nature: operationalizing the IPBES Nature…
Operationalising the Action Agenda for Nature and People: workshop report
PBL co-organised an international workshop to explore how the 'Action Agenda for Nature and People' of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) could practically be developed and implemented. It…
Pathways for agriculture and forestry to contribute to terrestrial biodiversity conservation: a global scenario-study
While there has been an increase in the societal responses to biodiversity loss, in most cases this will not be sufficient to achieve the biodiversity targets by 2020, let alone to realise the long…