Publications

Charlotte Stijnen, Katinka Wijsman, Timon McPhearson, Niki Frantzeskaki. 2026. Uncovering streams, dreams, and dilemmas: A case study analyzing trade-offs and justice in the urban stream daylighting of Tibbetts Brook in New York City, USA. Environmental Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101391

Daylighting urban waterways is one form of nature-based solution (NBS) gaining attention amongst cities internationally. Urban daylighting – which involves removing historically buried waterways from underground pipes and bringing them back to the surface – is an intensive form of NBS which can address urban stormwater management, reduce combined-sewage overflow issues, improve riparian habitat, and increase biodiversity. The ...

Grzegorz Budzik, Marta Sylla, Catharina J.E. Schulp. 2026. Cooling benefits of Urban agriculture to inhabitants—mapping cooling potential of allotments in European functional urban areas. Journal of Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.128275

As climate change accelerates and open urban spaces diminish, multifunctional urban planning solutions that enhance multiple ecosystem services (ES) are essential. Urban agriculture, particularly allotment gardens, plays a key role in addressing these challenges. This study assesses the cooling potential of all allotments across European Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) in terms of area cooled, maximum cooling distance and intens...

Marion Jay, Gonzalo Cortés‐Capano, Romina Martin, Julian Suntken, Tobias Plieninger. 2026. Exploring narratives of human–nature connections in protected areas. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70195

1. Protected areas have become the most widespread strategy for nature conservation, and are currently expanding worldwide. Many of them are inhabited or close to inhabited areas, shaping and being shaped by connections between people and nature. These connections are not always positive. Social fragmentation, in the form of conflicts and disconnections from nature, represents a major challenge for biodiversity conservation in...

Thomas Elmqvist, Pippin Anderson, Erik Andersson, Vanesa Castan Broto, Tao Liu, Timon McPhearson, Anjal Prakash, Christopher Raymond, Patricia Romero-Lankao, Suneetha M. Subramanian, Xiaoling Zhang. 2026. Urban sustainability science: from adaptation to regeneration on the road to 2050. npj Urban Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-026-00362-9

When npj Urban Sustainability was launched in 2021, we framed urbanization as one of the defining processes of the Anthropocene—a process that drives global change, but which also opens opportunities for sustainability action 1 . Now, alongside the 5th anniversary of the journal, we reflect on the state of urban sustainability research and the knowledge gaps that we would like our community to address to support local and...

Simon West, Oliver Lilford, Vanessa Masterson, Emmeline Laszlo Ambjörnsson, Beau Austin, Bram Büscher, Laura Bethia Campbell, Marnie Graham, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Lisen Schultz, Marja Spierenburg, Grace Wong, Carina Wyborn. 2026. Masculinities in Conservation Science, Policy and Practice. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/con4.70007

Gender equality is a key target for conservation but is often treated as a women's issue with limited attention to the roles of men and masculinities in perpetuating unequal gender relations. This paper provides a qualitative systematic review of academic literature on “masculinities”—actions, norms, and values associated with men—in the conservation sector and synthesizes the reported effects of masculinities on conservation ...

Matthew Dennis, Jonathan Huck, Claire Holt, Ewan McHenry, Erik Andersson, Sonali Sharma, Dagmar Haase. 2026. Beyond the patch: leveraging functional habitat delineation in fragmentation-biodiversity research. Landscape Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-025-02290-y

Theoretical and methodological developments in the field of fragmentation-biodiversity research continue to rely on the central concept of the habitat patch where patch size and number are considered particularly relevant to spatially structured ecological communities. However, although great interest has been shown in the effects of habitat fragmentation, appropriate methods for the spatial delineation of habitat have not rec...

Fiona S Rickowski, Florian Ruland, Örjan Bodin, Thomas Evans, Mike S Fowler, Lotta C Kluger, Guillaume Latombe, Bernd Lenzner, Rafael L Macêdo, Tim Adriaens, Robert Arlinghaus, Gustavo A Castellanos-Galindo, Jaimie T A Dick, James W E Dickey, Franz Essl, Belinda Gallardo, Sabine Hilt, Yuval Itescu, Ivan Jarić, Sophia Kimmig, Lohith Kumar, Ana Novoa, Francisco J Oficialdegui, Cristian Pérez-Granados, Petr Pyšek, Wolfgang Rabitsch, David M Richardson, Núria Roura-Pascual, Menja von Schmalensee, Florencia A Yannelli, Montserrat Vilà, Giovanni Vimercati, Jonathan M Jeschke. 2026. A Systems Perspective: How Social–Ecological Networks Can Improve Our Understanding and Management of Biological Invasions. BioScience. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf174

Reversing biodiversity loss and the sustainability crisis requires approaches that explicitly consider human–nature interdependencies. Social–ecological networks, which incorporate social and ecological actors and entities, as well as their interactions, provide such an approach. Social–ecological networks have been applied to a range of complex issues, including sustainable resource use, management of ecosystem services and d...

Andreas Plach, Lucie Bakels, Andreas Stohl. 2025. Reduction of Residence Time of Air in the Arctic Since the 1980s. Geophysical Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118228

The Arctic is important for our climate, and it is changing faster than most other parts of the world. To better understand how air moves in and out of this region and how that movement brings in heat, moisture, and pollution, we looked at a simple metric called “Arctic residence time,” which tells us how long air typically stays in the Arctic. Our study shows that, on average, air remains in the Arctic for about 7 days in win...

Friedrich J. Bohn, Ana Bastos, Romina Martin, Anja Rammig, Niak Sian Koh, Giles B. Sioen, Bram Buscher, Louise Carver, Fabrice DeClerck, Moritz Drupp, Robert Fletcher, Matthew Forrest, Alexandros Gasparatos, Alex Godoy-Faúndez, Gregor Hagedorn, Martin C. Hänsel, Jessica Hetzer, Thomas Hickler, Cornelia B. Krug, Stasja Koot, Xiuzhen Li, Amy Luers, Shelby Matevich, H. Damon Matthews, Ina C. Meier, Mirco Migliavacca, Awaz Mohamed, Sungmin O, David Obura, Ben Orlove, Rene Orth, Laura Pereira, Markus Reichstein, Lerato Thakholi, Peter H. Verburg, Yuki Yoshida. 2025. Reviews and syntheses: Current perspectives on biosphere research 2024–2025 – eight findings from ecology, sociology, and economics. Biogeosciences. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2425-2025

This review of recent advances in biosphere research aims to provide information on eight selected themes related to changes in biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, social and economic interactions with ecosystems, and the impacts of climate change on the biosphere. An interdisciplinary panel of experts selected these eight themes from a public survey based on relevance and scientific evidence that have the potential to guide ...

Marion Jay, Tobias Plieninger, Romina Martin, Gonzalo Cortés Capano, Erik Andersson, Zoë Zürn, Tommaso Demozzi, Alberto Arroyo Schnell. 2025. Building connections with nature. A Reconnect policy brief on narratives that support nature restoration. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15189757

Restoring our ecosystems back to a healthy status is central to the transition towards a more sustainable future.  This is a process of changing the biophysical landscapes and actively working with human perceptions and world-views. For nature restoration to bring benefits for both nature and people, it is important to ensure that it will be a broad societal commitment, supported and motivated by strong narratives of meaningfu...