Publications

Wang-Erlandsson, L., Tobian, A., van der Ent, R., Fetzer, I., te Wierik, S., Porkka, M., Staal, A., Jaramillo, F., Dahlmann, H., Singh, C., Greve, P., Gerten, D., Keys, P., Gleeson, T., Cornell, S., Steffen, W., Bai, X., Rockström, J. 2022. A planetary boundary for green water. Nature Reviews Earth and Environment. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00287-8

Green water — terrestrial precipitation, evaporation and soil moisture — is fundamental to Earth system dynamics and is now extensively perturbed by human pressures at continental to planetary scales. However, green water lacks explicit consideration in the existing planetary boundaries framework that demarcates a global safe operating space for humanity. In this Perspective, we propose a green water planetary boundary and es...

Martin, A., O'Farrell, P., Kumar, R., Eser, U., Faith, D.P., Gomez-Baggethun, E., Harmáčková, Z., Horcea-Milcu, A.I., Merçon, J., Quaas, M., Rode, J., Rozzi, R., Sitas, N., Yoshida, Y., Ochieng, T.N., Koessler, A.K., Lutti, N., Mannetti, L., & Arroyo-Robles, G. 2022. Chapter 5: The role of diverse values of nature in visioning and transforming towards just and sustainable futures. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Christie, M., Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6522326

The chapter assesses the role of nature's diverse values in supporting social-ecological transformations towards more just and sustainable futures. This is approached as a two-fold and mutually complementing task: a) assessing the diverse values that have been considered in developing and creating visions for, and scenarios of the future, particularly those relating to more just and sustainable futures; and b) assessing how i...

Isbell, F., Balvanera, P., Mori, A., He, J., Bullock, J., Regmi, G., Seabloom, E., Ferrier, S., Sala, O., Guerrero‐Ramírez, N., Tavella, J., Larkin, D., Schmid, B., Outhwaite, C., Pramual, P., Borer, E., Loreau, M., Omotoriogun, T., Obura, D., Anderson, M., Portales‐Reyes, C., Kirkman, K., Vergara, P., Clark, A., Komatsu, K., Petchey, O., Weiskopf, S., Williams, L., Collins, S., Eisenhauer, N., Trisos, C., Renard, D., Wright, A., Tripathi, P., Cowles, J., Byrnes, J., Reich, P., Purvis, A., Sharip, Z., O’Connor, M., Kazanski, C., Haddad, N., Soto, E., Dee, L., Díaz, S., Zirbel, C., Avolio, M., Wang, S., Ma, Z., Liang, J., Farah, H., Johnson, J., Miller, B., Hautier, Y., Smith, M., Knops, J., Myers, B., Harmáčková, Z., Cortés, J., Harfoot, M., Gonzalez, A., Newbold, T., Oehri, J., Mazón, M., Dobbs, C., Palmer, M. 2022. Expert perspectives on global biodiversity loss and its drivers and impacts on people. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/fee.2536

Despite substantial progress in understanding global biodiversity loss, major taxonomic and geographic knowledge gaps remain. Decision makers often rely on expert judgement to fill knowledge gaps, but are rarely able to engage with sufficiently large and diverse groups of specialists. To improve understanding of the perspectives of thousands of biodiversity experts worldwide, we conducted a survey and asked experts to focus on...

Harmáčková, Z. V., Pedde, S., Bullock, J. M., Dellaccio, O., Dicks, J., Linney, G., Merkle, M., Rounsevell, M. D. A., Stenning, J., Harrison, P. A. 2022. Improving regional applicability of the UK shared socioeconomic pathways through iterative participatory co-design. Climate Risk Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2022.100452

Regional analyses of risks from climate change require reproducible, consistent and robust approaches to downscaling global socioeconomic scenarios, with coherent processes that work across multiple projects and communities. We address this need by developing an iterative approach to stakeholder-based Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) downscaling and co-design, enabling us to extend SSPs while maintaining their consistency fr...

Weiskopf, S., Harmáčková, Z., Johnson, C., Londoño-Murcia, M., Miller, B., Myers, B., Pereira, L., Arce-Plata, M., Blanchard, J., Ferrier, S., Fulton, E., Harfoot, M., Isbell, F., Johnson, J., Mori, A., Weng, E., Rosa, I. 2022. Increasing the uptake of ecological model results in policy decisions to improve biodiversity outcomes. Environmental Modelling and Software. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2022.105318

Models help decision-makers anticipate the consequences of policies for ecosystems and people; for instance, improving our ability to represent interactions between human activities and ecological systems is essential to identify pathways to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, use of modeling outputs in decision-making remains uncommon. We share insights from a multidisciplinary National Socio-Environmental S...

Leventon, J., Suchá, L., Nohlová, B., Vaňo, S., Harmáčková, Z. 2022. Participation as a pathway to pluralism: A critical view over diverse disciplines. Advances in Ecological Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.aecr.2022.04.006

Wider participation in ecosystem governance has been called for as a means to reach pluralism in biodiversity conservation research and practice. The logical arguments given are that plurality in worldviews, priorities and values (social plurality) should be brought to the table to be reflected in decision-making, via participation. In this chapter, we give critical insight into participation as a pathway to recognizing socia...

Hoek van Dijke, A., Herold, M., Mallick, K., Benedict, I., Machwitz, M., Schlerf, M., Pranindita, A., Theeuwen, J., Bastin, J., Teuling, A. 2022. Shifts in regional water availability due to global tree restoration. Nature Geoscience. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00935-0

Tree restoration is an effective way to store atmospheric carbon and mitigate climate change. However, large-scale tree-cover expansion has long been known to increase evaporation, leading to reduced local water availability and streamflow. More recent studies suggest that increased precipitation, through enhanced atmospheric moisture recycling, can offset this effect. Here we calculate how 900 million hectares of global tree ...

Assis, T. O., Aguiar, A. P., von Randow, C., Nobre, C. A. Projections of future forest degradation and CO2 emissions for the Brazilian Amazon. Science Advances. https://doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.1126/sciadv.abj3309

In recent years, the area affected by forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon has frequently been higher than deforestation. From August 2006 to July 2019, the degraded area totaled 194,058 km2, representing almost two times the 99,630 km2 deforested in the same period. The impacts of degradation include biodiversity loss and changes in the carbon stocks, affecting the CO2 balance and future climate changes. This paper aims...

Silva Bezerra, F. G., Mann de Toledo, P., von Randow, C., Aguiar, A. P. et al. 2022. Spatio-temporal analysis of dynamics and future scenarios of anthropic pressure on biomes in Brazil. Ecological Indicators. https://doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.108749

Anthropogenic transformations, which have become intensified by land use and land cover changes and industrialization, have contributed to increased anthropogenic pressure on biodiversity. These disturbances contribute toward fragmentating habitats at different scales and putting species at risk, in addition to compromising the main biogeochemical cycles. To better understand the spatiotemporal dynamics of anthropogenic pressu...

Luthman, O., Jonell, M., Rönnbäck, P., Troell, M. 2022. Strong and weak sustainability in Nordic aquaculture policies. Aquaculture. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2021.737841

In this paper, we critically analyze how sustainability is considered in aquaculture policies and strategies using the Nordic countries as a case. The strong versus weak sustainability concepts are used to define and clarify what sustainability aspects are central to each state. To illustrate these concepts further, we draw on and modify four mainstream environmental discourses defined by John Dryzek and apply them to the stro...