Soils with andic features are known to be very important as regards both ecosystem fertility and susceptibility to land degradation. In recent years there has been an increasing number of finds of these soils in non-volcanic mountain ecosystems (NVME) in different parts of the world under different environmental settings. In Italian NVME there has been extensive investigation proving that these soils have a much wider distribution than previously thought. But despite these important findings, very little is known about their genesis or properties.

Water is essential not only to maintain the livelihoods of human beings but also to sustain ecosystems. Over the last few decades several global assessments have reviewed current and future uses of water, and have offered potential solutions to a possible water crisis. However, these have tended to focus on water supply rather than on the range of demands for all water services (including those of ecosystems). In this paper, a holistic global view of water resources and the services they provide is presented, using Sankey diagrams as a visualisation tool.

This article reviews the level of current scientific understanding regarding the impact of future change in the large-scale climate-earth system on ecosystem services. Impacts from sea level rise, ocean acidification, increases in ocean temperature, potential collapse of the thermohaline circulation; failure of the South Asia monsoon; the melting of sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; changes in water availability; and Amazonia forest dieback, are considered.