Publications

Arie Staal, Pim Meijer, Maganizo Kruger Nyasulu, Obbe Tuinenburg, Stefan Dekker. 2024. Global terrestrial moisture recycling in Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8049

The global water cycle has undergone considerable changes since pre-industrial times due to global climate change and land-use changes. These drivers will almost certainly continue to change during the course of this century. However, where, how, and to which extent terrestrial moisture recycling will change as a result remains unclear. Mutually consistent scenarios of climate change and land-use changes for the 21 st centur...

Maganizo Kruger Nyasulu, Ingo Fetzer, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Fabian Stenzel, Dieter Gerten, Johan Rockström, Malin Falkenmark. 2024. African rainforest moisture contribution to continental agricultural water consumption. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109867

Precipitation is essential for food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 80 % of agriculture is rainfed. Although ∼40 % of precipitation in certain regions is recycled moisture from Africa's tropical rainforest, there needs to be more knowledge about how this moisture supports the continent's agriculture. In this study, we quantify all moisture sources for agrarian precipitation (African agricultural precipitatio...

Blanca González-Mon, María Mancilla-García, Örjan Bodin, Willem Malherbe, Nadia Sitas, Catherine B. Pringle, Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs, Maja Schlüter. 2024. The importance of cross-scale social relationships for dealing with social-ecological change in agricultural supply chains. Journal of Rural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.103191

Agricultural systems are important for the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. These systems are increasingly interconnected across scales and face challenges in responding to multiple, and coalescing types of environmental, social, and economic change. Most studies on how actors respond to change have focused on farmers and farming communities. In this study, we investigate the connectivity of farming systems...

Tilman Hertz, Thomas Banitz, Rodrigo Martínez-Peña, Sonja Radosavljevic, Emilie Lindkvist, Lars-Göran Johansson, Petri Ylikoski, Maja Schlüter. 2024. Eliciting the plurality of causal reasoning in social-ecological systems research. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/es-14806-290114

Understanding causation in social-ecological systems (SES) is indispensable for promoting sustainable outcomes. However, the study of such causal relations is challenging because they are often complex and intertwined, and their analysis involves diverse disciplines. Although there is agreement that no single research approach (RA) can comprehensively explain SES phenomena, there is a lack of ability to deal with this diversit...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Raf Jansen, Daniel Avila Ortega, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom, Per Olsson, Magnus Nyström, Steve Lade, Thomas Hahn, Carl Folke, Garry Peterson, Anne-Sophie Crepin. 2024. Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21005

The Anthropocene is characterized by accelerating change and global challenges of increasing complexity and most recently by what some have called a polycrisis. Based on an adaptation of the evolutionary traps concept to a global human context, we explore whether the human trajectory of increasing complexity and influence on the Earth system could become a form of Anthropocene trap for humanity. We identify 14 Anthropocene tra...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Vanessa P. Weinberger, Timothy M. Waring. 2024. Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0251

How did human societies evolve to become a major force of global change? What dynamics can lead societies on a trajectory of global sustainability? The astonishing growth in human population, economic activity and environmental impact has brought these questions to the fore. This theme issue pulls together a variety of traditions that seek to address these questions using different theories and methods. In this Introduction, w...

Thomas E. Currie, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Laurel Fogarty, Maja Schlüter, Carl Folke, L. Jamila Haider, Guido Caniglia, Alessandro Tavoni, Raf E. V. Jansen, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Timothy M. Waring. 2024. Integrating evolutionary theory and social–ecological systems research to address the sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0262

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropocene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social–ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be ful...

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...

Roy P. Remme, Megan Meacham, Kara E. Pellowe, Erik Andersson, Anne D. Guerry, Benjamin Janke, Lingling Liu, Eric Lonsdorf, Meng Li, Yuanyuan Mao, Christopher Nootenboom, Tong Wu, Alexander P.E. van Oudenhoven. 2024. Aligning nature-based solutions with ecosystem services in the urban century. Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101610

In an increasingly urbanized world, the concepts of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions can help tackle grand challenges. However, ambiguity in their definitions and in the relationship between the two concepts complicates comprehensive research efforts as well as their effective application in policy and planning in urban systems. This paper presents a framework to clarify and explicitly relate the two concepts, enh...

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...