Publications by Robert Thomas Edmund Mills

Architecture of a decentralised decision support system for futuristic beehives

Francesco Mondada, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Robert Matthew Mills

Honeybees are essential to human society, providing pollination services globally as well as producing honey and other valuable products. Effective management of apiaries should not only rely on beekeeper knowledge and skill, but also incorporate new infor ...

2024

Social Integrating Robots Suggest Mitigation Strategies for Ecosystem Decay

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak

We develop here a novel hypothesis that may generate a general research framework of how autonomous robots may act as a future contingency to counteract the ongoing ecological mass extinction process. We showcase several research projects that have underta ...

2021

Bio-Hybrid Systems for Ecosystem Level Effects

Francesco Mondada, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Robert Matthew Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak, Matthieu Jean-Michel Philippe Broisin, Martina Szopek, Jean-Louis Deneubourg

In a time marked by ecological decay and by the perspective of a severe backlash of this ecosystem decay and climate devastation onto human society, bold moves that employ novel technology to counteract this decline are required. We present a novel concept ...

MIT Press2021

Vascular plant-mediated controls on atmospheric carbon assimilation and peat carbon decomposition under climate change

Alexandre Buttler, Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov, Luca Bragazza, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Remy Jean Henry Albrecht

2018

Seasonality alters drivers of soil enzyme activity in subalpine grassland soil undergoing climate change

Alexandre Buttler, Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Thomas Spiegelberger, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills

In mountain ecosystems with marked seasonality, climate change can affect various processes in soils, potentially modifying long-term key soil services via change in soil organic carbon (C) storage. Based on a four-year soil transplantation experiment in S ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2018

Slash-and-burn agriculture and tropical cyclone activity in Madagascar: Implication for soil fertility dynamics and corn performance

Alexandre Buttler, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Justine Marie Gay des Combes, Thomas Guillaume

On the western coast of Madagascar, the dry tropical forest of Kirindy may disappear in the next 50 years because of its rapid conversion into agricultural land by slash-and-burn cultivation. The slash-and-burn fields are cultivated during 3 years in avera ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Freeze-thaw cycles simultaneously decrease peatland photosynthetic carbon uptake and ecosystem respiration

Alexandre Buttler, Constant Signarbieux, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Mariusz Lamentowicz, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Maaike Louise Hofsommer

Decreasing snow cover in winter resulting from climate warming increases the incidence of freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs) in many ecosystems, including peatlands. As peatland ecosystems form a globally significant long-term carbon storage, understanding the effe ...

Finnish Environment Inst2017

Climate change effects on the stability and chemistry of soil organic carbon pools in a subalpine grassland

Alexandre Buttler, Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Thomas Spiegelberger, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills

Mountain soils stock large quantities of carbon as particulate organic matter that may be highly vulnerable to climate change. To explore potential shifts in soil organic matter (SOM) form and stability under climate change (warming and reduced precipitati ...

Springer2017

Winter ecology of a subalpine grassland: Effects of snow removal on soil respiration, microbial structure and function

Alexandre Buttler, Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Michael Bahn

Seasonal snow cover provides essential insulation for mountain ecosystems, but expected changes in precipitation patterns and snow cover duration due to global warming can influence the activity of soil microbial communities. In turn, these changes have th ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Tropical soils degraded by slash-and-burn cultivation can be recultivated when amended with ashes and compost

Alexandre Buttler, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Justine Marie Gay des Combes, Muhammad Saleem Arif, Leia Soraya Véronique Falquet, Clara Sanz Carrillo

In many tropical regions, slash-and-burn agriculture is considered as a driver of deforestation; the forest is converted into agricultural land by cutting and burning the trees. However, the fields are abandoned after few years because of yield decrease an ...

Wiley2017