Publications

Roth, N., Jaramillo, F., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Zamora, D., Palomino-Angel, S. & Cousins, S.A.O. 2021. A call for consistency with the terms `wetter’ and `drier’ in climate change studies. Environmental Evidence 10(1), 8.

Ongoing and future hydroclimatic changes have large environmental and societal impacts. In terrestrial ecosystems, these changes are usually described with the terms ‘wetter’ and ‘drier’, which refer to the change in the quantity and/or presence of water, either as water fluxes or stocks. We conducted a literature review of almost 500 recent climate change studies to quantitatively investigate the consistency of the use of the...

Ahlström, H., Hileman, J., Wang-Erlandsson, L., García, M., Moore, M., Jonas, K., Pranindita, A., Kuiper, J., Fetzer, I., Jaramillo, F., Svedin, U.. 2021. An Earth system law perspective on governing social-hydrological systems in the Anthropocene. Earth System Governance. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2021.100120

The global hydrological cycle is characterized by complex interdependencies and self-regulating feedbacks that keep water in an ever-evolving state of flux at local, regional, and global levels. Increasingly, the scale of human impacts in the Anthropocene is altering the dynamics of this cycle, which presents additional challenges for water governance. “Earth system law” provides an important approach for addressing gaps in go...

Lade, S.J., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Staal, A. & Rocha, J.C. 2021. Empirical pressure-response relations can benefit assessment of safe operating spaces. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5(8), 1078–1079

In a recent study, Hillebrand et al. tested ecosystem pressure-response data from multiple meta-analyses for multimodality and changing variance, both indicators of ‘tipping point’ thresholds that lead to discontinuous responses such as regime shifts. They found that such thresholds were difficult to detect and argued that threshold and safe operating space concepts are therefore not suitable for environmental management and ...

Falkenmark, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., 2021. One Earth, Volume 4, Issue 2, 19 February 2021, Pages 213-225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.01.009

The freshwater cycle over land is fundamental for sustainability and resilience, yet is extensively modified and shaped by a vast range of human interventions in the land, water, and climate systems. The consequences of human water-cycle modifications can be non-linear, delayed, and distributed across boundaries, sectors, and scale. This complexity renders freshwater challenges difficult to govern and manage. We here propose a...

Wang-Erlandsson, L., van der Ent, R., Staal, A., Porkka, M., Tobian, A., te Wierik, S., Fetzer, I., Singh, C., Jaramillo, F., Greve, P., Gerten, D., Keys, P., Dahlmann, H., Gleeson, T., Steffen, W., Cornell, S., and Rockström, J. 2021. Towards a green water planetary boundary, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13583, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13583, 2021.

Green water - soil moisture, evaporation, and precipitation over land - is fundamental to safeguard Earth system functioning. Nonlinear green-water driven changes in climate, ecosystems, biogeochemistry, and hydrology are becoming increasingly evident and widespread. Yet, considerations of continental to planetary scale green-water dynamics are yet to be assessed and incorporated in management and governance. Here, we propose...

Porkka, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Destouni, G., Ekman, A.M.L., Rockstrom, J. & Gordon, L.J. 2021. Is wetter better? Exploring agriculturally-relevant rainfall characteristics over four decades in the Sahel. Environmental Research Letters 16(3), 035002.

The semi-arid Sahel is a global hotspot for poverty and malnutrition. Rainfed agriculture is the main source of food and income, making the well-being of rural population highly sensitive to rainfall variability. Studies have reported an upward trend in annual precipitation in the Sahel since the drought of the 1970s and early '80s, yet farmers have questioned improvements in conditions for agriculture, suggesting that intras...

Gleeson, T., Wang‐Erlandsson, L., Porkka, M., Zipper, S.C., Jaramillo, F., Gerten, D., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S.E., Piemontese, L., Gordon, L.J. and Rockström, J., 2020. Illuminating water cycle modifications and Earth System resilience in the Anthropocene. Water Resources Research, 56(4), p.e2019WR024957

Fresh water—the bloodstream of the biosphere—is at the center of the planetary drama of the Anthropocene. Water fluxes and stores regulate the Earth's climate and are essential for thriving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as water, food, and energy security. But the water cycle is also being modified by humans at an unprecedented scale and rate. A holistic understanding of freshwater's role for Earth system resilie...

Singh, C., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, Rockström, J., et.al. 2020. Rootzone storage capacity reveals drought coping strategies along rainforest-savanna transitions. Environ. Res. Lett. 15 124021, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc377

Climate change and deforestation have increased the risk of drought-induced forest-to-savanna transitions across the tropics and subtropics. However, the present understanding of forest-savanna transitions is generally focused on the influence of rainfall and fire regime changes, but does not take into account the adaptability of vegetation to droughts by utilizing subsoil moisture in a quantifiable metric. Using rootzone stor...

Staal, A., Fetzer, I., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Bosmans, J.H.C., Dekker, S.C. et.al. 2020. Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century. Nat Commun 11, 4978 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18728-7

Tropical forests modify the conditions they depend on through feedbacks at different spatial scales. These feedbacks shape the hysteresis (history-dependence) of tropical forests, thus controlling their resilience to deforestation and response to climate change. Here, we determine the emergent hysteresis from local-scale tipping points and regional-scale forest-rainfall feedbacks across the tropics under the recent climate and...

Zipper, S.C., Jaramillo, F., Erlandsson, L-W., Cornell, S.E., Gleeson, T., Poorka. M. 2020. Integrating the water planetary boundary with water management from local to global scales. Earth's Future, DOI: 10.1029/2019EF001377

The planetary boundaries framework defines the “safe operating space for humanity” represented by nine global processes that can destabilize the Earth System if perturbed. The water planetary boundary attempts to provide a global limit to anthropogenic water cycle modifications, but it has been challenging to translate and apply it to the regional and local scales at which water problems and management typically occur. We dev...