A new Middle Pleistocene interglacial occurrence from Ejby, Sjælland, Denmark

Despite more than a century of investigations, parts of the Quaternary stratigraphy of Denmark with their fragmented record of deposits remain ambiguous. Here we describe a newly found interglacial clay deposit from Ejby on Sjælland, Denmark, from a borehole at 55.695°N, 11.839°E (terrain elevation 5.7 m above sea level). We place the new occurrence on record and provide details of the macrofossil analysis of the sample. The clay contains remains of the present-day temperate bivalve Corbicula fluminalis and the caddis fly Hydropsyche contubernalis – both inhabiting rivers. The presence of C. fluminalis indicates that the deposit most probably is of Middle Pleistocene age, older than the last interglacial, the Eemian

An Early Pleistocene interglacial deposit at Pingorsuit, North-West Greenland

At the Pingorsuit Glacier in North-West Greenland, an organic-rich deposit that had recently emerged from the retreating icecap was discovered at an elevation of 480 m above sea level.This paper reports on macrofossil analyses of a coarse detritus gyttja and peaty soil, which occurred beneath a thin cover of till and glacifluvial deposits. The sediments contained remains of vascular plants, mosses, beetles, caddisflies, midges, bryozoans, sponges and other invertebrates. The flora includes black spruce, tree birch, boreal shrubs and wetland and aquatic taxa, which shows that mires,lakes and ponds were present in the area.We describe an ewextinct water wort species Elatineodgaardii.The fossils were deposited in a boreal environment with a mean July air temperature that was at least 9°C higher than at present. The fossil assemblages show strong similarities with others from Greenland that have been assigned an Early Pleistocene age, and we suggest a similar age for the sediments found at the margin of the Pingorsuit Glacier. At the Pingorsuit Glacier in North-West Greenland, an organic-rich deposit was discovered at an elevation of 480 m above sea level. The sediments contained remains of vascular plants, mosses, beetles, caddisflies, midges, bryozoans,sponges and other invertebrates. The fossils were deposited in aboreal environment with a mean July air temperature that was at least 9°C higher than at present

The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt

Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss1. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity2. Here, using 1,816 time series of freshwater invertebrate communities collected across 22 European countries between 1968 and 2020, we quantified temporal trends in taxonomic and functional diversity and their responses to environmental pressures and gradients. We observed overall increases in taxon richness (0.73% per year), functional richness (2.4% per year) and abundance (1.17% per year). However, these increases primarily occurred before the 2010s, and have since plateaued. Freshwater communities downstream of dams, urban areas and cropland were less likely to experience recovery. Communities at sites with faster rates of warming had fewer gains in taxon richness, functional richness and abundance. Although biodiversity gains in the 1990s and 2000s probably reflect the effectiveness of water-quality improvements and restoration projects, the decelerating trajectory in the 2010s suggests that the current measures offer diminishing returns. Given new and persistent pressures on freshwater ecosystems, including emerging pollutants, climate change and the spread of invasive species, we call for additional mitigation to revive the recovery of freshwater biodiversity.N. Kaffenberger helped with initial data compilation. Funding for authors and data collection and processing was provided by the EU Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant agreement no. 871128); the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; 033W034A); the German Research Foundation (DFG FZT 118, 202548816); Czech Republic project no. P505-20-17305S; the Leibniz Competition (J45/2018, P74/2018); the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad—Agencia Estatal de Investigación and the European Regional Development Fund (MECODISPER project CTM 2017-89295-P); Ramón y Cajal contracts and the project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2019-027446-I, RYC2020-029829-I, PID2020-115830GB-100); the Danish Environment Agency; the Norwegian Environment Agency; SOMINCOR—Lundin mining & FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal; the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant PP00P3_179089); the EU LIFE programme (DIVAQUA project, LIFE18 NAT/ES/000121); the UK Natural Environment Research Council (GLiTRS project NE/V006886/1 and NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme); the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Italy); and the Estonian Research Council (grant no. PRG1266), Estonian National Program ‘Humanitarian and natural science collections’. The Environment Agency of England, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Natural Resources Wales provided publicly available data. We acknowledge the members of the Flanders Environment Agency for providing data. This article is a contribution of the Alliance for Freshwater Life (www.allianceforfreshwaterlife.org).Peer reviewe