Publications

Daniel Chrisendo, Venla Niva, Roman Hoffmann, Sina Masoumzadeh Sayyar, Juan Rocha, Vilma Sandström, Frederick Solt, Matti Kummu. 2024. Income inequality has increased for over two-thirds of the global population. Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5548291/v1

Income inequality is one of the most important measures to indicate economic health, social justice, and quality of life. Yet, especially at the subnational level, comprehensive global data on the distribution of incomes is widely missing. Such data is essential to assess patterns in inequality within countries and their development over time. We created seamless global subnational Gini coefficient and gross national income (G...

Xander Huggins, Tom Gleeson, Karen G. Villholth, Juan C. Rocha, James S. Famiglietti. 2024. Groundwaterscapes: A Global Classification and Mapping of Groundwater's Large‐Scale Socioeconomic, Ecological, and Earth System Functions. Water Resources Research. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR036287

Groundwater is a dynamic component of the global water cycle with important social, economic, ecological, and Earth system functions. We present a new global classification and mapping of groundwater systems, which we call groundwaterscapes, that represent predominant configurations of large-scale groundwater system functions. We identify and map 15 groundwaterscapes which offer a new lens to conceptualize, study, model, and m...

Awaz Mohamed, Fabrice DeClerck, Peter H. Verburg, David Obura, Jesse F. Abrams, Noelia Zafra-Calvo, Juan Rocha, Natalia Estrada-Carmona, Alexander Fremier, Sarah K. Jones, Ina C. Meier, Ben Stewart-Koster. 2024. Securing Nature’s Contributions to People requires at least 20%–25% (semi-)natural habitat in human-modified landscapes. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.12.008

The cascading effects of biodiversity decline on human well-being present a pressing challenge for sustainable development. Conservation efforts often prioritize safeguarding specific species, habitats, or intact ecosystems but overlook biodiversity’s fundamental role in providing Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) in human-modified landscapes. Here, we systematically review 154 peer-reviewed studies to estimate the minimu...

Nielja Knecht, Ingo Fetzer, Juan Rocha. 2024. Global terrestrial ecosystem resilience: a high-resolution multivariate analysis of patterns and drivers. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-12856

Global assessments of ecosystem resilience often exclude areas with direct anthropogenic land use changes and focus instead on remnant natural ecosystems. However, for regional stakeholders it is important to understand how land-use and zoning decisions may affect the resilience of remaining ecosystems and the risk of critical transitions. In this study, we conduct a high-resolution global assessment of terrestrial ecosystem r...

Romi Lotcheris, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Juan Rocha. 2024. Remote sensing-based detection of resilience loss in the terrestrial water cycle. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-17019

In the face of Anthropogenic change, ecosystems globally have shown evidence of resilience loss in the past several decades. By governing key processes in terrestrial ecosystems, the hydrological cycle is critical for Earth system stability. A resilient system is able to retain its function and structure in the face of external perturbations. Changes to driving hydrological variables, i.e., precipitation, evaporation, and soil...

Tong Wu, Juan C. Rocha, Kevin Berry, Tomas Chaigneau, Maike Hamann, Emilie Lindkvist, Jiangxiao Qiu, Caroline Schill, Alon Shepon, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Carl Folke. 2024. Triple Bottom Line or Trilemma? Global Tradeoffs Between Prosperity, Inequality, and the Environment. World Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106595

A key aim of sustainable development is the joint achievement of prosperity, equality, and environmental integrity: in other words, material living standards that are high, broadly-distributed, and low-impact. This has often been called the “triple bottom line”. But instead, what if there is a “trilemma” that inhibits the simultaneous achievement of these three goals? We analysed international patterns and trends in the relati...

Aracely Burgos-Ayala, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, Megan Meacham, Daniel Rozas-Vásquez, María Mancilla García, Juan Rocha, Alexander Rincón-Ruíz. 2024. Mapping ecosystem services in Colombia: Analysis of synergies, trade-offs and bundles in environmental management. Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101608

Ecosystem services (ES) have gained significant attention in recent years from the global environmental initiatives that involve science and policy. Multiple scholars have analyzed how ES are integrated with environmental policies, plans, and strategic assessments. However, there is a lack of information on how countries translate these policies, plans and assessments into concrete environmental management actions that integra...

Chelsea Kaandorp, Juan Rocha, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Cynthia Flores, Andrew Hattle, Henrik Österblom, Carl Folke. 2024. Rethinking the Intertwined Biosphere. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-18923

Transformations towards sustainable futures can only be achieved with an advanced understanding of how human life is intertwined with the whole biosphere. Systems of people and nature are not separate entities but inherently connected across temporal and spatial scales. There is a dynamic interplay between the biosphere and the broader Earth system. Life in the biosphere has evolved with the basic building blocks of planet Ear...

Marta Tuninetti, Vittorio Giordano, Sara Constantino, Saverio Perri, Juan Rocha, Luana Schwarz, Jonathan F. Donges, Francesco Laio, Simon Levin. 2024. Positive Tipping Points in the Food Systems: the Role of Scales. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-22274

The global food system is at a critical inflection point with rising awareness of the need for change and progress on several fronts, pertaining both human health and the environment. One of the ten critical transitions envisioned by the Food and Land Use Coalitions states that global diets need to converge towards local variations of the “human and planetary healthy diet” which includes more protective foods a diverse protein...

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...