Publications

Shiwei Liu, Cunde Xiao, David E. Robertson, Bo Su, Yi Huang, Tianye Wang, Xiaoming Wang. 2025. An enhanced Budyko-based water balance model simulating monthly runoff in headwater catchments of the Tarim River Basin. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2025.102576

Climate warming is rapidly retreating the cryosphere, increasing water yield variability in high mountain catchments and challenging downstream water management. A deeper understanding of water resources involving quantifying runoff components, is crucial for effective adaptation strategies in high mountain catchments. However, data scarcity limits the application of complex physically-based models in high mountain areas. To a...

Louis Delannoy, Alexandre Verzier, Bernardo A. Bastien-Olvera, Felipe Benra, Magnus Nyström, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen. 2025. Dynamics of the polycrisis: temporal trends, spatial distribution, and co-occurrences of national shocks (1970–2019). Global Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.10008

In response to the concerns of a growing number of crises, we trace the temporal trends, distribution, and co-occurrences of shocks – sudden events with noticeable impacts – on 175 countries from 1970 to 2019. Our analysis shows that shocks have not evolved uniformly over time and space: after becoming more co-occurring between 1970 and 2000, they then showed a regionally dependent shift in patterns. Our results highlight that...

Erle C. Ellis, Yadvinder Malhi, Hannah Ritchie, Jasper Montana, Sandra Díaz, David Obura, Susan Clayton, Melissa Leach, Laura Pereira, Emma Marris, Michael Muthukrishna, Bojie Fu, Peter Frankopan, Molly K. Grace, Samira Barzin, Krushil Watene, Nicholas Depsky, Josefin Pasanen, Pedro Conceição. 2025. An aspirational approach to planetary futures. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09080-1

Prevailing frameworks to address planetary environmental challenges tend to focus on setting goals, targets, or boundaries to limit human harm to ecosystems or species. Here we propose an aspirational approach aimed at empowering people to shape a better future for all of life on Earth. We do this by building on the human development approach and its supporting metrics, especially the Human Development Index (HDI), a broadly i...

Sana Okayasu, Jan J. Kuiper, Ghassan Halouani, HyeJin Kim, Brian W. Miller, América Paz Durán, Angelique Vermeer, Machteld Schoolenberg, Shizuka Hashimoto, Carolyn Lundquist. 2025. Catalyzing change: a literature review on the implementation of the Nature Futures Framework. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01682-y

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF), developed under the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), serves as a catalyst for advancing new scenarios and models focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services within the broader research community. In particular, the framework facilitates the development of scenarios and models that can help guide change processes toward desirable fut...

Y Ran, U M Persson, T Lindahl, M Jonell, A Brons, B Macura, J Candel, A Abu Hatab, E Röös. 2025. Are interventions for environmentally sustainable dietary behaviours effective? A review. Environmental Research: Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601X/adda4e

In the face of growing environmental pressures, understanding how governance can promote more sustainable dietary behaviours is increasingly critical. However, a synthesis of available intervention strategies for behavioural change is currently missing. This umbrella review synthesizes findings from 29 reviews published between 2018–2024, assessing effectiveness of governance interventions aimed at reducing consumer-level food...

Scott Hawken, Christian Isendahl, Keir Strickland, Stephan Barthel. 2025. Towards intergenerational neutrality in urban planning and governance: Reflections on temporality in sustainability transitions research. Urban Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241307907

In urban studies, ‘presentism’ – the prioritisation of present-day concerns at the expense of historical and future considerations – has emerged as a critical bias that is rarely challenged, either through governance structures, institutional frameworks and urban planning and design, or as the ethical basis for our communities and social relations. From the vantage of the historical social sciences, we problematise application...

Petr Vesnovskii, Michele-Lee Moore. 2025. Mapping Global Water Resilience Risks for River Basin Governance. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18128

Global water resilience is a critical concern for both nature and society in the face of increasing environmental and socio-economic pressures. Numerous studies have produced global maps highlighting a diversity of water-related risks. Yet, efforts to understand the cumulative nature of those risks and how that information can be used for decision-making remain crucial. This study aims to provide an exploratory global mapping ...

Nielja Knecht, Romi Lotcheris, Ingo Fetzer, Juan Rocha. 2025. Limitations of early warning signals: evaluating the performance of resilience loss detection methods to predict forest die-back events from remote sensing data. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18547

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are under increasing stress due to changing climate and weather regimes, as well as direct anthropogenic influences such as land use changes. The combination of stressors can erode an ecosystem’s ability to resist and recover from external shocks and pressures. Vegetation resilience loss is often assessed by applying temporal early warning signals (EWS) based on dynamical systems theory to rem...

Fabio Benedetti, Jonas Wydler, Corentin Clerc, Nielja Knecht, Meike Vogt. 2025. Emergent Relationships Between the Functional Diversity of Marine Planktonic Copepods and Ecosystem Functioning in the Global Ocean. Global Change Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70094

Copepods are a major group of the mesozooplankton and thus a key part of marine ecosystems worldwide. Their fitness and life strategies are determined by their functional traits which allow different species to exploit various ecological niches. The range of functional traits expressed in a community defines its functional diversity (FD), which can be used to investigate how communities utilize resources and shape ecosystem pr...

Rachel Mazac, Kajsa Resare Sahlin, Iisa Hyypiä, Fanny Keränen, Mari Niva, Nora Berglund, Iryna Herzon. 2025. Does “better” mean “less”? Sustainable meat consumption in the context of natural pasture-raised beef. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-025-10707-2

Livestock production has significant environmental impacts, requiring sustainable dietary shifts with reduced meat consumption. The concept of "less but better" has gained attention as a pragmatic approach to dietary and production changes, advocating for reduced meat consumption while focusing on sustainably produced, high-quality products. We focus on the interplay between "less" and "better" and critically evaluate the appr...