Publications

Bengtsson, J., Angelstam, P., Elmqvist, T., Emanuelsson, U., Folke, C., Ihse, M., Moberg, F., Nyström, M.. 2021. Reserves, resilience and dynamic landscapes 20 years later. Ambio. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01477-8

Garmestani, A., Twidwell, D., Angeler, D.G., Sundstrom, S. et.al. 2020. Panarchy: opportunities and challenges for ecosystem management. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Volume 18, Issue 10, December 2020, Pages 576-583, https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2264

Addressing unexpected events and uncertainty represents one of the grand challenges of the Anthropocene, yet ecosystem management is constrained by existing policy and laws that were not formulated to deal with today's accelerating rates of environmental change. In many cases, managing for simple regulatory standards has resulted in adverse outcomes, necessitating innovative approaches for dealing with complex social–ecologica...

Folke, C., Österblom, H., Jouffray, J-B., Lambin, E.F., et.al. 2020. An invitation for more research on transnational corporations and the biosphere. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 494, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1145-2

We welcome the interest in our work on transnational corporations (TNCs) and biosphere stewardship. TNCs have rarely been linked to ecosystem dynamics, and even less so considered suitable partners for knowledge co-production in sustainability research. How TNCs shape the intertwined nature of people and planet therefore represents a timely and critical topic and the Correspondence articles by Schneider et al. and Etzion offer...

Jouffray, J-N., Blasiak, R., Norström, A., Österblom, H., Nyström, H. 2020. The Blue Acceleration: The Trajectory of Human Expansion into the Ocean. One Earth, Perspective, Vol. 2, Issue 1, p. 43-54. DOI: /10.1016/j.oneear.2019.12.016

Does humanity's future lie in the ocean? As demand for resources continues to grow and land-based sources decline, expectations for the ocean as an engine of human development are increasing. Claiming marine resources and space is not new to humanity, but the extent, intensity, and diversity of today's aspirations are unprecedented. We describe this as the blue acceleration—a race among diverse and often competing interests f...

Nyström, J.-B. Jouffray, A. V. Norström, B. Crona, P. Søgaard-Jørgensen, S. R. Carpenter, Ö. Bodin, V. Galaz, C. Folke. 2019. Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem. Nature, Volume 575, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1712-3

Much of the Earth’s biosphere has been appropriated for the production of harvestable biomass in the form of food, fuel and fibre. Here we show that the simplification and intensification of these systems and their growing connection to international markets has yielded a global production ecosystem that is homogenous, highly connected and characterized by weakened internal feedbacks. We argue that these features converge to y...

Folke, C., H. Österblom, J.-B. Jouffray, E. Lambin, M. Scheffer, B.I. Crona, M. Nyström, et.al. 2019. Transnational Corporations and the Challenge of Biosphere Stewardship. Nature Ecology & Evolution doi 10.1038/s41559-019-0978-z

Sustainability within planetary boundaries requires concerted action by individuals, governments, civil society and private actors. For the private sector, there is concern that the power exercised by transnational corporations generates, and is even central to, global environmental change. Here, we ask under which conditions transnational corporations could either hinder or promote a global shift towards sustainability. We sh...

Jouffray, J-B., Wedding, L.M, Norström, A., Donovan, M.K. et.al. 2019. Parsing human and biophysical drivers of coral reef regimes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 6 February 2019 Volume 286 Issue 1896

Coral reefs worldwide face unprecedented cumulative anthropogenic effects of interacting local human pressures, global climate change and distal social processes. Reefs are also bound by the natural biophysical environment within which they exist. In this context, a key challenge for effective management is understanding how anthropogenic and biophysical conditions interact to drive distinct coral reef configurations. Here, w...

McLeod, E., Anthony, K.R.N., Mumby, P.J., Maynard, J. et.al. 2019. The future of resilience-based management in coral reef ecosystems. Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 233, 1 March 2019, Pages 291-301

Resilience underpins the sustainability of both ecological and social systems. Extensive loss of reef corals following recent mass bleaching events have challenged the notion that support of system resilience is a viable reef management strategy. While resilience-based management (RBM) cannot prevent the damaging effects of major disturbances, such as mass bleaching events, it can support natural processes that promote resista...

Williams, G.J., Nicholas A.J. Graham, Jouffray, J-B., Norström, A.V., Nyström, M., Gove, J.M., Heenan, A., Wedding, L. 2019. Coral reef ecology in the Anthropocene. Functional Ecology (First published: 21 January 2019) DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13290

We are in the Anthropocene—an epoch where humans are the dominant force of planetary change. Ecosystems increasingly reflect rapid human‐induced, socioeconomic and cultural selection rather than being a product of their surrounding natural biophysical setting. This poses the intriguing question: To what extent do existing ecological paradigms capture and explain the current ecological patterns and processes we observe? We arg...

Selgrath J.C., G.D. Peterson, M. Thyresson, N. Nyström S.E. Gergel. 2017. Regime Shifts and Spatial Resilience in a Coral Reef Seascape. In Gergel S., M. Turner (Eds.) Learning Landscape Ecology. Springer, New York, NY.doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-6374-4_18

Ecosystems are shaped by natural processes such as predator–prey interactions and climate, as well as by human activities such as harvesting and pollution. Resilient ecosystems are able to absorb disturbances, but chronic stressors may reduce the capacity of an ecosystem to cope with change (Trends Ecol Evol 15:413–417, 2000). The ability of ecosystems to absorb disturbance and at the same time maintain their structure, proces...