Two species of flowering plant of Fuegian montane provenance have been discovered on Deception Island in the maritime Antarctic, 950 km south of South America. Four individuals of Nassauvia magellanica and one of Gamochaeta nivalis (both Asteraceae) are growing robustly and in close proximity of each other on dry ash and scoria soil near a ruined whaling station which, in recent years, has been frequently visited by large numbers of ship-borne tourists.

Microbiological soil-quality indicators, especially related to C and N cycles, and microbial diversity may be useful tools to determine whether a particular environment responds to an imposed management or reclamation strategy. External influences such as forest clearance and soil management affect biological indicators making them useful to point out whether the land use strategy is sustainable.

In China, and elsewhere, long-term economic development and poverty alleviation need to be balanced against the likelihood of ecological failure. Here, we show how paleoenvironmental records can provide important multidecadal perspectives on ecosystem services (ES). More than 50 different paleoenvironmental proxy records can be mapped to a wide range of ES categories and subcategories. Lake sediments are particularly suitable for reconstructing records of regulating services, such as soil stability, sediment regulation, and water purification, which are often less well monitored.

Quantifying the carbon storage of grasslands under different management strategies can help us understand how this ecosystem responds to different land management practices. To assess the C cycle and the importance of soil microbial biomass carbon, we measured the levels of soil organic carbon, biomass carbon (above- and underground) and soil microbial biomass carbon in areas with different grazing intensities and different management strategy (fenced and unfenced) in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.