Publications

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Raf Jansen, Daniel Avila Ortega, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom, Per Olsson, Magnus Nyström, Steve Lade, Thomas Hahn, Carl Folke, Garry Peterson, Anne-Sophie Crepin. 2024. Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21005

The Anthropocene is characterized by accelerating change and global challenges of increasing complexity and most recently by what some have called a polycrisis. Based on an adaptation of the evolutionary traps concept to a global human context, we explore whether the human trajectory of increasing complexity and influence on the Earth system could become a form of Anthropocene trap for humanity. We identify 14 Anthropocene tra...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Vanessa P. Weinberger, Timothy M. Waring. 2024. Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0251

How did human societies evolve to become a major force of global change? What dynamics can lead societies on a trajectory of global sustainability? The astonishing growth in human population, economic activity and environmental impact has brought these questions to the fore. This theme issue pulls together a variety of traditions that seek to address these questions using different theories and methods. In this Introduction, w...

Miina Porkka, Vili Virkki, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Matti Kummu. 2024. The new planetary boundary for freshwater change: key findings and their potential to guide water management and policy. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19383

The recent third planetary boundary (PB) assessment replaced the original PB for ‘freshwater use’ with a new PB for ‘freshwater change’. The new PB is defined by the percentage of global land area experiencing streamflow (blue water component of the PB) and root-zone soil moisture (green water) deviations from pre-industrial baseline conditions. Here, we first present the spatiotemporally explicit results of the comprehensive ...

Miina Porkka, Vili Virkki, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Dieter Gerten, Tom Gleeson, Chinchu Mohan, Ingo Fetzer, Fernando Jaramillo, Arie Staal, Sofie te Wierik, Arne Tobian, Ruud van der Ent, Petra Döll, Martina Flörke, Simon N. Gosling, Naota Hanasaki, Yusuke Satoh, Hannes Müller Schmied, Niko Wanders, James S. Famiglietti, Johan Rockström, Matti Kummu. 2024. Notable shifts beyond pre-industrial streamflow and soil moisture conditions transgress the planetary boundary for freshwater change. Nature Water. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00208-7

Human actions compromise the many life-supporting functions provided by the freshwater cycle. Yet, scientific understanding of anthropogenic freshwater change and its long-term evolution is limited. Here, using a multi-model ensemble of global hydrological models, we estimate how, over a 145-year industrial period (1861–2005), streamflow and soil moisture have deviated from pre-industrial baseline conditions (defined by 5th–95...

Hongkai Gao, Markus Hrachowitz, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Fabrizio Fenicia, Qiaojuan Xi, Jianyang Xia, Wei Shao, Ge Sun, Hubert Savenije. 2024. Root zone in the Earth system. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-332

The concept of “root zone” is widely used in hydrology, agronomy, and land surface process studies. However, the root zone still lacks a precise definition. More essentially, the importance of root zone in the Earth system science is largely under explored. Furthermore, the methodology to estimate root zone is still controversial. In this study, we firstly attempted to clarify the definition of the root zone by comparing with ...

Jonathan F. Donges, Donovan P. Dennis, Sina Loriani, Boris Sakschewski, Nico Wunderling, Ricarda Winkelmann. 2024. Methodologies for climate tipping points analysis and risk assessments in TIPMIP. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-18039

The Tipping Point Modelling Intercomparison Project (TIPMIP) is an international initiative that aims to systematically improve our understanding of potential tipping dynamics in different components of the Earth system and to assess the associated uncertainties (www.tipmip.org). By linking and evaluating different models through a systematic framework, TIPMIP aims to fill critical knowledge gaps in Earth system and climate ri...

Vitus Benson, Jonathan F Donges, Niklas Boers, Marina Hirota, Andreas Morr, Arie Staal, Jürgen Vollmer, Nico Wunderling. 2024. Measuring tropical rainforest resilience under non-Gaussian disturbances. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad1e80

The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the Earth's tipping elements and may lose stability under ongoing climate change. Recently a decrease in tropical rainforest resilience has been identified globally from remotely sensed vegetation data. However, the underlying theory assumes a Gaussian distribution of forest disturbances, which is different from most observed forest stressors such as fires, deforestation, or windthrow...

Johan Rockström, Louis Kotzé, Svetlana Milutinović, Frank Biermann, Victor Brovkin, Jonathan Donges, Jonas Ebbesson, Duncan French, Joyeeta Gupta, Rakhyun Kim, Timothy Lenton, Dominic Lenzi, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Barbara Neumann, Fabian Schuppert, Ricarda Winkelmann, Klaus Bosselmann, Carl Folke, Wolfgang Lucht, David Schlosberg, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen. 2024. The planetary commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding Earth-regulating systems in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301531121

The Anthropocene signifies the start of a no-analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new trajectory is characterized by rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulating functions more effectively and comprehensively. The global commons framework...

Steven Lade. 2024. Safe and just Earth system boundaries. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21091

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs fo...

Jakub Kronenberg , Erik Andersson, Thomas Elmqvist, Edyta Łaszkiewicz, Jin Xue, Yara Khmara. 2024. Cities, planetary boundaries, and degrowth. The Lancet Planetary Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00025-1

Cities are the main hubs of human activity and the engines of economic growth. In pursuit of such growth, cities are transgressing their local environmental boundaries. Ongoing urbanisation increasingly contributes to the human pressure on planetary boundaries and negatively affects planetary health. In a telecoupled world, cities externalise impacts by shifting production and many other functions away from their boundaries. A...