The subtropical dry forests of South-America have been impacted by deforestation and degradation over the last two centuries. The forests still provide important ecosystem services but overexploitation of the forested ecosystems may lead to irreversible loss of provision and regulation services.

Approximately 800 million people populate areas within 100 km of a potentially active volcano. Since the beginning of human settlements, communities in volcanically active regions have enjoyed various benefits from volcanic eruptions, notably the occurrence of volcanic soils with outstanding agricultural capabilities.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) plays a crucial role in shaping bacterial populations and communities. Among others, conjugation is a key mechanism of HGT and participates in the transfer of genetic material, mainly plasmids, between mating partners that are in direct contact with one another.

Manganese (Mn) is involved in the decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) via redox reactions, which gives it a significant role in the terrestrial carbon cycle. It is also strongly recycled by vegetation in forest ecosystems, but the influence of tree species, as well as climate and soil, on Mn fluxes to the soil remains poorly characterised.

David Bol : Grande Accélération et Transition Socio-Ecologique - Quel rôle pour l'Innovation Technologique dans l'Anthropocène?

I am a plant physiologist and am working on various aspects of plant physiology to improve crop yield, particularly photosynthesis. Under abiotic stress conditions, the efficiency of photosynthesis decreases drastically leading to lower crop yield. We use a non-invasive tool of measuring Chlorophyll a fluorescence kinetics to get information about the photosynthetic efficiency of the plants.

The climate variability at multi-decadal and centennial scale over Antarctica is closely linked to the stability of regional glaciers, the whole ice sheet mass balance, and thus the estimation of future sea-level rise. However, the short instrumental data limit our ability to fully estimate such low-frequency variability.

Derek Bruggeman, Docteur en Géographie, expert en aménagement du territoire wallon via la CPDT (Conférence Permanente du Développement Territorial) et l'IGEAT (ULB), en partenariat avec le CREAT (UCLouvain) et le Lepur (ULiège) et financées par le Gouvernement wallon  présentera " Utilisation et affectation des terres en Wallonie : entre arbitrage de fonctions et limitation des impacts enviro