- Freshwater’s role for Earth system resilience
- Planetary boundaries and safe operating space
- Land-water feedbacks, such as through moisture recycling and ecosystem rooting adaptation
- Water-induced tipping points
- Teleconnected water resilience risks
- Freshwater’s role in climate change mitigation
Lan Wang-Erlandsson’s research focuses on the large-scale interactions between land, water, and climate, and their implications for resilience
Wang-Erlandsson studies the role of water for social-ecological and Earth system resilience. What is the role of land use in sustaining the water cycle? How does freshwater provide resilience for society and ecosystems at the local to global scale? What are the synergies and trade-offs between land, climate, and water-related policy interventions?
She leads three interdisciplinary research projects: The SAFER project that seeks to understand global water resilience risks in the Anthropocene and how they spread through teleconnections, the ReForMit project that investigates the resilience of forest-based climate change mitigation measures, and a third project that investigate the integrative forest-agriculture solutions for securing rainfall for crop production in Africa. She also contributes to research on Earth resilience and integrated assessments as part of the international research project WorldTrans – Transparent Assessment for real people and a project developing the Earth System Impact score for capturing measuring multiple and systemic environmental impacts of companies and investors.
Previously, Wang-Erlandsson was coordinator of a research consortium “Ripples of Resilience: navigating cross-scale SDG interactions of water, land, and climate within planetary boundaries” (2019-2020). She was also a co-editor and one of the authors of the landmark report “The essential drop to net-zero: Unpacking freshwater’s role in climate change mitigation” led by Stockholm International Water Institute, launched at COP27 (2022).
She works quantitatively with models and data analyses, as well as qualitatively with conceptual developments. In her data analyses, she often employs remote sensing, reanalyses and other global-scale data products related to water, land, and climate. For simulations of the water cycle, she uses the global hydrological model STEAM that she developed during her PhD studies (Wang-Erlandsson et al., 2014), and the atmospheric moisture tracking model Water Accounting Model-2layers (WAM-2layers) (van der Ent et al. 2010, 2014). Conceptual developments that she has contributed to include a proposal for a planetary boundary for green water (Wang-Erlandsson et al., 2022), moisture recycling as an ecosystem service (Keys et al., 2016), and water resilience functions (Falkenmark et al., 2019).
Wang-Erlandsson earned her PhD degree in global hydrology from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands) in September 2017 from her thesis titled “Root for Rain: towards understanding land-use change impacts on the water cycle”. Her MSc degree in Civil Engineering and Natural Resources Management is from KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden). Wang Erlandsson also has experience from an internship at Stockholm Environment Institute, and worked as an environmental consultant in Sweden. Before joining SRC, Wang was a Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (Kyoto, Japan).
Supervision
Romi Lotcheris, PhD, co-supervisor
Vajira Lasantha, PhD, main supervisor
Diana Luna-Gonzalez, PhD, main supervisor
Lucie Bakels, Postdoc, main supervisor
Bo Su, Postdoc, main supervisor
Agnes Pranindita, PhD candidate, main supervisor
Key publications
Moore, ML., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Bodin, Ö. et al., (2024) Moving from fit to fitness for governing water in the Anthropocene. Nature Water, 2, 511–520.
Falkenmark, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Rockström, J. (2019): Understanding of Water Resilience in the Anthropocene, J. Hydrol. X 2, 100009. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589915518300099?via%3Dihub
Wang-Erlandsson, L., Tobian, A., van der Ent, R.J., Fetzer, I., te Wierik, S., Porkka, M., Staal, A., Jaramillo, F., Dahlmann, H., Singh, C., Greve, P., Gerten, D., Keys, P.W., Gleeson, T., Cornell, S.E., Steffen, W., Bai, X., & Rockström, J. (2022) A planetary boundary for green water. Nat Rev Earth Environ 3, 380–392.
Singh, C., van der Ent R., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, I., (2022) Hydroclimatic adaptation critical to the resilience of tropical forests Global Change Biology, 00, 1-10.
Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, I., Keys, P. W., van der Ent, R. J., Savenije, H. H. G., and Gordon, L. J. (2018): Remote land use impacts on river flows through atmospheric teleconnections, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 22, 4311-4328.
.png)
