Publications

Cornell, S.E. 2022. We need to talk about gender in the 'safe operating space for humanity. Innovating Business for Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839101328.00009

The planetary boundaries framework highlights critical global environmental processes where society’s activities are altering Earth system risks. As businesses increasingly seek to apply the framework, more attention should be given to gender in the knowledge-action interplay of its scientific methodology, the discursive production of the framework’s ‘safe operating space for humanity’, and its institutional operationalization...

Miina Porkka, Vili Virkki, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Chinchu Mohan, Tom Gleeson, Dieter Gerten, Matti Kummu. 2022. Global blue and green water cycles exit from pre-industrial variation – freshwater change planetary boundary exceeded? EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13474

Cycling of water supports a wide array of Earth system functions ranging from ecosystem provision to regulating greenhouse gas fluxes. While justifiably included in the planetary boundaries framework, the current freshwater planetary boundary fails in recognising the interplay between local and global drivers modifying the water cycle. Building on recent conceptual work and considering an extended selection of Earth system fun...

Smith, E., Eder, C., Donges, J., Heitzig, J., Katsanidou, A., Wiedermann, M., Winkelmann, R.. 2022. Domino Effects in the Earth System – The role of wanted social tipping points. OSF. http://dx.doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/d8scb

Social tipping processes have been identified as potential mechanisms for triggering necessary socio-technical transformations to avoid or mitigate disastrous climate futures. But, the coupling of social and climate systems remains comparatively under-defined. Here, we explore how (anticipated) changes to climate systems can instigate necessary positive transformations within social systems – the wanted social tipping points. ...

Zeitz, M., Haacker, J., Donges, J., Albrecht, T., Winkelmann, R.. 2022. Interacting melt-elevation and glacial isostatic adjustment feedbacks allow for distinct dynamic regimes of the Greenland Ice Sheet. EGU. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-9968

Interacting feedbacks play an important role in governing the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet under global warming. Here we study the interaction between the positive melt-elevation feedback and the negative feedback from glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), and how they affect the ice volume of the Greenland Ice Sheet on long time scales. We therefore use the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) coupled to a simple solid Earth...

Marwan, N., Donges, J., Donner, R., Eroglu, D.. 2022. Integrative multivariate study of past African climate variability. EGU. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6559

Based on a set of various marine palaeoclimate proxy records, we investigate African climate variations during the past 5 million years. We use a collection of modern approaches from non-linear time series analysis to identify and characterise dynamical regime shifts as changes in signal predictability, regularity, complexity, and higher-order stochastic properties such as multi-stability. We observe notable nonlinear transiti...

Wunderling, N., Winkelmann, R., Rockström, J., Loriani, S., McKay, D., Ritchie, P., Sakschewski, B., Donges, J.. 2022. Tipping risks due to temperature overshoots within the Paris range. EGU. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-4425

Climate tipping elements potentially lead to accelerated and irreversible climate change once their critical temperature threshold is passed. Some of their critical thresholds (tipping points) are at risk to be transgressed already within the temperature guardrails of 1.5-2.0°C above pre-industrial levels. However, it has been suggested at the same time that global mean temperature levels are likely to temporarily overshoot th...

Mohamed, A., DeClerck, F., Verburg, P., Obura, D., Abrams, J., Zafra-Calvo, N., Rocha, J., Estrada-Carmona, N., Fremier, A., Jones, S., Meier, I., Stewart-Koster, B.. 2022. Biosphere functional integrity for people and Planet. Biosphere functional integrity for people and planet. bioRxiv. http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.24.497294

Defining a safe and just space for the biosphere requires global-scale synthetic measures of functional integrity in relation to Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP). We estimated, based on a systematic review of the literature, the minimum level of functional integrity needed to secure multiple critical ecosystem services, including pollination, pest and disease control, water quality regulation, soil protection and recreat...

van Emmerik, T., de Lange, S., Frings, R., Schreyers, L., Aalderink, H., Leusink, J., Begemann, F., Hamers, E., Hauk, R., Janssens, N., Jansson, P., Joosse, N., Kelder, D., van der Kuijl, T., Lotcheris, R., Löhr, A., Mellink, Y., Pinto, R., Tasseron, P., Vos, V., Vriend, P.. 2022. Hydrology as a Driver of Floating River Plastic Transport. Earth's Future. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002811

Plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems is a growing threat to ecosystem health and human livelihood. Recent studies show that the majority of environmental plastics accumulate within river systems for years, decades and potentially even longer. Long-term and system-scale observations are key to improve the understanding of transport and retention dynamics, to identify sources and sinks, and to assess potential risks. The goal...

Sara Löfqvist, Fritz Kleinschroth, Adia Bey, Ariane de Bremond, Ruth DeFries, Jinwei Dong, Forrest Fleischman, Sharachchandra Lele, Dominic A Martin, Peter Messerli, Patrick Meyfroidt, Marion Pfeifer, Sarobidy O Rakotonarivo, Navin Ramankutty, Vijay Ramprasad, Pushpendra Rana, Jeanine M Rhemtulla, Casey M Ryan, Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira, Geoff J Wells, Rachael D Garrett. 2022. How Social Considerations Improve the Equity and Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration. BioScience. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac099

Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from ...

Han Su, Bárbara Willaarts, Diana Luna-Gonzalez, Maarten S. Krol, Rick J. Hogeboom. 2022. Gridded 5 arcmin datasets for simultaneously farm-size-specific and crop-specific harvested areas in 56 countries. Earth System Science Data. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4397-2022

Farms are not homogeneous. Smaller farms generally have different planted crops, yields, agricultural inputs, and irrigation applications compared to larger farms. However, gridded farm-size-specific data that are moreover crop specific, are currently lacking. This obscures our understanding of differences between small-scale and large-scale farms, e.g., with respect to climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, cont...