In this Nature commentary Jess Davies from Lancaster Environment Centre discusses the urgent need to deal with the degradation of our soils, focusing on the need for the private sector to take this sustainability threat seriously by taking action on soil. Today one-third of all soils and more than half of agricultural soils are moderately or highly degraded.

This perspective article exposes and explains uncertainties in our historical calculations of carbon fluxes associated with land use and land cover change, and uses comparisons between dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) to estimate the effects of these uncertainties on historical, current and future assessments of carbon fluxes between the land and air.

This is a new book on the concept of sustainable intensification in the context of smallholder agriculture.

This paper argues that the strength of the linkages between the ‘Human System’ and the Earth system warrants a new paradigm of modeling which incorporates key factors in one system as variables of a model of the other.

This newly revised edition by Cambridge researchers sets out to help those interested in evidence-based conservation with summaries of relevant topics. 

Tara Garnett participated in the Nobel prize celebrations, giving the opening speech the Nobel Week Dialogue event in Stockholm on 9 December. You can watch her talk, introducing the day's discussion here.

The FCRN and the Food Foundation have jointly produced new report based on a meeting, held November 2016, on the topic of metrics for sustainable healthy diets for the food industry. While a range of sustainability metrics for this industry already exists, none comprehensively measure the progress (or otherwise) that food companies are taking to foster a public shift towards more sustainable and healthy eating patterns (SHEPs). The meeting report considers whether further work on such a set of metrics would be of use.

FCRN member Colin Sage from University College Cork, Ireland, is co-editor of this book. The following information was provided:

Opponents in an academic discussion on the relevance and the validity of the ‘Ecological Footprint approach’ have come together to write an article in which they challenge each other’s views.