As I’ve done for the last six years, I am publishing a retrospective list of the ‘top’ 20 influential papers of 2109 as assessed by experts in F1000 Prime (in no particular order). See previous years’ lists here: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.
- Decline of the North American avifauna — … the first comprehensive assessment of population change in the North American avifauna.
- Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change — … [highlights] the crucial role of microbial transformations in determining set points for sea temperature, pH and ocean productivity … [identifies] microbial activity as the “life support system of the biosphere”.
- (Note: Lots of people hated this one, basically because it appears severely flawed; nonetheless, it received several recommendations on F1000): The global tree restoration potential — … illustrates the substantial potential of capturing some of the excess carbon dioxide present in the earth’s atmosphere by planting trees.
- Managing the middle: a shift in conservation priorities based on the global human modification gradient — … probably the best global assessment of spatial extent of human modification of natural terrestrial environments published to date.
- Five decades of northern land carbon uptake revealed by the interhemispheric CO2 gradient — … [concludes] that northern hemisphere [sic] vegetation and soil account for the majority of the terrestrial carbon sink, rather than tropical forests (not trying to display too many sour grapes here, but we’ve already reported this for the boreal forest, and they didn’t even bother to cite us — sad panda)
- Impacts of historical warming on marine fisheries production — … describes a new advance in the topic of how a warming ocean will impact some of the important fisheries.
- Ecosystem tipping points in an evolving world — … what this paper does exceptionally well is to place the relationships between traits and tipping points into a temporal context, thereby illustrating how functionally relevant system properties can provide an interface between ecological and evolutionary dynamics.
- Wilderness areas halve the extinction risk of terrestrial biodiversity — … show elegantly that not all wilderness areas have the same effect [on threatened populations], which allows prioritization of conservation efforts.
- One strategy does not fit all: determinants of urban adaptation in mammals — … show that species traits such as litter size, body mass, behavioural plasticity and diet diversity play a role that remains specific across different taxonomic groups.
- Range edges in heterogeneous landscapes: integrating geographic scale and climate complexity into range dynamics — … demonstrate that we need a better understanding of how climate heterogeneity, collinearity among climate variables and spatial scale together modify range edges of species.
- The geography of biodiversity change in marine and terrestrial assemblages — … emphasizes considerable geographic variation in biodiversity change and that while species richness in many areas has not changed over time, species composition has changed substantially.
- Climate tipping points – too risky to bet against — … highlights that we are nearly at the point of no return with regard to the onset of irreversible climate change as a consequence of the continued rise in carbon dioxide emissions and temperature of the planet.
- Global synthesis of conservation studies reveals the importance of small habitat patches for biodiversity — … found that small patches of habitat in otherwise degraded landscapes rank much higher for conservation priority than large habitat patches in less degraded landscapes.
- Light pollution is a driver of insect declines — … estimates that [light] exposure is an important driver of the current catastrophic decline in insect numbers.
- Widespread drought-induced tree mortality at dry range edges indicates that climate stress exceeds species’ compensating mechanisms — … predictions that dry range margins will recede if warming continues are likely to come true, with important implications for ecosystem change and the global carbon cycle.
- Biodiversity decline as a consequence of an inappropriate environmental risk assessment of pesticides — … repeats the obvious, but it is much needed indeed! … posits that the Environmental Risk Assessment … scheme for registration of pesticides in the European Union is inappropriate in the face of the biodiversity decline we have been witnessing.
- Drivers of plant species richness and phylogenetic composition in urban yards at the continental scale — … provides an interesting approach to the challenge of bringing humans into classic questions about ecology as factors involved in the structure and maintenance of biodiversity.
- Neonicotinoids disrupt aquatic food webs and decrease fishery yields — … highlights the catastrophic effects of using neonicotinoid insecticides on aquatic food webs and the collapse of the spring zooplankton biomass.
- Deficits of biodiversity and productivity linger a century after agricultural abandonment — … show that after 91 years of agricultural abandonment in savannah and grasslands only half of the plant productivity and three-quarters of the plant diversity have recovered.
- Degradation and forgone removals increase the carbon impact of intact forest loss by 626% — … presents a new carbon accounting framework to assess whole system and long-term value of avoided deforestation and avoided degradation for climate protection.
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CJA Bradshaw
