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Adopting a scoping review method, we examined peer‐reviewed academic papers published about human–lion conflict (HLC) (including coexistence) and identified knowledge gaps. We searched papers published between January 1981 and December 2023 using academic databases, with the key terms African lion, human–lion conflict, human–lion coexistence, and human–lion interaction. This produced 485 records, reduced to 137 after using additional criteria. Ninety‐eight papers were focused on lions in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. Ten pan‐African studies were identified in our review. Our inductive analysis identified four themes related to HLC: attitudes and perceptions toward lions, causes of HLC, consequences of HLC, and mitigating HLC. Some limitations identified in systematic reviews of human–wildlife conflict have been addressed in recent years, such as broadening the geographical scale of research. However, some knowledge gaps remain, including a lack of assessment of mitigation strategies and studies on climate changes impact on human–lion conflict. Addressing the knowledge gaps highlighted in this review will require diversifying the disciplinary composition of the research teams and increasing researcher reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although global warming is a serious problem that influences numerous people worldwide, individuals are still reluctant to change their behaviours. The present research investigates how local hot temperatures affect climate action in non-Western groups. In Study 1, an analysis of temperature and information acquisition by Shanghai residents in 122 days found that heat increased attention and awareness of climate change. In Study 2 and Study 3, participants who were primed with heat-related perceptions were more likely to take climate action in private and public spheres. In Study 4, we further identified that people who experienced hot temperature events increased their beliefs and efficacy about climate change, which in turn motivated them to take more climate action. Importantly, the mediating effects were significant both in the manipulation of heat and real-world settings. Consistent with our theoretical perspective, seeing is more than believing because personal experience increases climate action by fostering climate change beliefs and efficacy., (© 2024 The British Psychological Society.)

Conventional nature conservation has attempted to protect biodiversity, ecological integrity (i.e., composition and biomass/abundance of native species), and ecosystem services in parallel, assuming generally positive relationships among them. However, many native species are potentially weakened by and maladapted to a new, warmer climate. Such native species may not be able to offer ecosystem services at previous levels. If the relationship between ecosystem services and native species is no longer positive due to climate change, pursuing ecological integrity could be ineffective for maximizing ecosystem services. Hence, there is room to investigate future relationships among biodiversity, ecological integrity, and ecosystem services. This investigation can be done by describing the changes in ecosystem services as a function of biodiversity and ecological integrity. Herein, biodiversity and ecological integrity can be expressed by phylogenetic diversity and species intactness indices based on abundance, respectively. According to my hypothetical figure, the metrics of biodiversity and ecological integrity are potentially not positively but rather negatively related to ecosystem services. The hypothetical figure can be examined and improved using three different approaches: computer simulations (e.g., the LANDIS‐II forest simulation model), collection of actual data (e.g., measuring ecosystem services of some sites with psychrophilic and thermophilic species), and questionnaire surveys about cultural services (e.g., using digitally manipulated photographs and generative adversarial networks). Thus, we can successfully enable practitioners to understand new relationships, which will be relevant to ecosystem management under changing climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is impacting many aspects of human life in many ways. In Ghana, climate change knowledge remains low and discussions linking climate change and health are scarce. In this paper, authors contribute to the shaping of discussions about climate and health with a focus on how climate change increases certain ailments. First, the paper addresses the need for research in Ghanaian communities to link climate change and health. Second, the paper suggests the development of policies to address the link. Third, public health educators are advised in this paper to educate the public. Plain Language Summary: The paper addresses the link between climate change and health. Authors call for this link to be considered in Ghana and policies developed to meet worsening health problems. Key Points: Climate change is an important driver of negative health outcomesClimate change exacerbates the already precarious health inequality in GhanaResearchers, policymakers, and public health educators should focus on the impact of climate change on health in Ghana [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological constraints on independent breeding are recognised as major drivers of cooperative breeding across diverse lineages. How the prevalence and degree of cooperative breeding relates to ecological variation remains unresolved. Using a large data set of cooperative nesting in Polistes wasps we demonstrate that different aspects of cooperative breeding are likely to be driven by different aspects of climate. Whether or not a species forms cooperative groups is associated with greater short-term temperature fluctuations. In contrast, the number of cooperative foundresses increases in more benign environments with warmer, wetter conditions. The same data set reveals that intraspecific responses to climate variation do not mirror genus-wide trends and instead are highly heterogeneous among species. Collectively these data suggest that the ecological drivers that lead to the origin or loss of cooperation are different from those that influence the extent of its expression within populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of adaptation, in which an organism or population becomes better suited to its environment, is used in a variety of disciplines. Originating in evolutionary biology, adaptation has been a central theme in biological anthropology and human ecology. More recently, the study of adaptation in the context of climate change has become an important topic of research in the social sciences. While there are clearly commonalities in the different uses of the concept of adaptation in these fields, there are also substantial differences. We describe these differences and suggest that the study of climate-change adaptation could benefit from a re-integration with biological and evolutionary conceptions of human adaptation. This integration would allow us to employ the substantial theoretical tools of evolutionary biology and anthropology to understand what promotes or impedes adaptation. The evolutionary perspective on adaptation focuses on diversity because diversity drives adaptive evolution. Population structures are also critical in facilitating or preventing adaptation to local environmental conditions. This suggests that climate-change adaptation should focus on the sources of innovation and social structures that nurture innovations and allow them to spread. Truly innovative ideas are likely to arise on the periphery of cohesive social groups and spread inward. The evolutionary perspective also suggests that we pay careful attention to correlated traits, which can distort adaptive trajectories, as well as to the importance of risk management in adaptations to variable or uncertain environments. Finally, we suggest that climate-change adaptation could benefit from a broader study of how local groups adapt to their dynamic environments, a process we call "autochthonous adaptation.", (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Background: Although anthropogenic climate change poses existential challenges for Indigenous communities in the Arctic, these challenges are not entirely unprecedented. Over many generations, Arctic peoples have developed a wide range of behavioral strategies to navigate environmental change and uncertainty, and these strategies provide a foundation for contemporary adaptation., Aims: In this article, we focus on mixed cash-subsistence economies and the social networks that underlie them in Alaska. The patterns of food production, labor exchange, and food sharing in subsistence-oriented communities throughout Alaska are driven by the productivity of keystone households who regularly harvest and share resources within and between communities., Materials & Methods: Building on previous research suggesting the critical importance of these networks to community resilience, we use network analysis to investigate whether patterns in resource transfers between households are associated with subsistence harvest diversity-the diversity of species harvested by a household unit. We use exponential random graph models to describe the structure of a sharing network from Aniak, Alaska, and model the links between harvest productivity, harvest diversity, and household position in this network., Results: Our results indicate that both productivity and diversity are positively associated with network connections, and that productivity alone provides an incomplete model of network structure., Discussion: We suggest that subsistence harvest diversity may play a unique role in supporting adaptive capacity and resilience by maintaining the productivity of keystone households despite changing environments and sustaining social network structures that circulate resources throughout the community. Harvest diversity may also serve as a broad indicator of Indigenous ecological knowledge and a tangible representation of cultural practices, values, and worldviews that underlie subsistence in Alaska., Conclusion: Greater attention to harvest diversity is important for understanding how subsistence networks adapt to environmental change and uncertainty linked to social and ecological dynamics of anthropogenic climate change., (© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The expression of alternative traits that benefit eusocial individuals but are not directly involved in reproductive differences among those individuals, which I call ‘eusocially selected traits’, may vary in response to environmental changes if this increases an individual's inclusive fitness. In this study, I describe traits that separate individuals within the reproductive division of labor of Mischocyttarus mexicanus, a eusocial paper wasp, and determine whether observed eusocially selected traits vary across seasons. I examined M. mexicanus because females initiate new nests throughout most of the year where they experience different conditions depending on the season. Findings from this study suggest two main conclusions: (1) phenotypic differences among M. mexicanus females are mixed, showing specialized, generalized, and context-dependent eusocially selected traits and (2) a female's position within the reproductive division of labor may be influenced by its state. The presence of context-dependent traits, e.g. large females initiated solitary nests in the spring and grouped nests during the summer, suggests that the payoff for pursuing different positions within the reproductive division of labor changes across seasons. The expression of context-dependent eusocially selected traits also suggests that, roles, instead of castes, may better reflect the reproductive division of labor among individuals of eusocial species like M. mexicanus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The field of biogeography is often described as a hub between research disciplines. Here we apply science mapping to study how biogeography has changed and evolved between 1995 and April 2022, and to analyse the mix of disciplines used in this field. We explore how research foci have changed over time and if biogeographical topics have entered the public discourse. Location: Local to global. Taxon: All taxa. Methods: We created a semantic map of the field based on co‐occurrences of keywords or composite keywords from 40,000+ scientific papers published between the 1970s and April 2022, structuring these data into three hierarchical sets. A fourth set of Top 100 researchers was constructed in September 2022. To address our public‐discourse question, we used the Factiva archive of global media. Results: Five core journals contained 14,386 papers (or 35.7% of the full set), while the remaining papers appeared in 2247 journals of which 59% included only one or two biogeographical papers. Since 1995, frequencies of keywords related to core concerns of biogeography have remained stable or even decreased, while 'computing' and 'climate change' have increased. There is an increasing association with Mathematics & Statistics, Computer Sciences, and Planning & Management, and a decreased association with Physical Geography. Biogeography‐related terms increasingly appearing in the public discourse are 'biodiversity', 'urban nature', 'conservation', 'extinction' and 'rewilding', while more technical concepts, such as 'ecoregions', 'macroecology' and 'island biogeography' remain at very low rates. Main Conclusions: Biogeographical research is moving towards the social sciences, probably linked to a growing concern over global environmental issues and the Anthropocene. It is difficult to disentangle to what extent the public discourse is influenced by biogeographical research or vice versa, but 'rewilding' and 'extinction' are examples of topics that began in basic ecological‐biogeographical research and are now debated publicly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this Editorial, the Geo: Geography and Environment Editors reflect on the journal over the past year, highlighting some of the key papers published and 'Geo Themes' being developed: 'Decolonising Climate Geography'; 'Climate Change, AI and Sustainability'; 'Geographies of Energy Futures'. The Editors renew the call for submissions on these topics and put out a new call for Special Section proposals on subjects around the environment, climate and sustainability. This Editorial highlights some of the key papers published in the last year, renews the call for submissions around the 'Geo Themes' and puts out a new call for Special Section proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for facilitation of access to soil information has never been greater. Growing human population, shrinking land and water resources, soil pollution, climate change and unequal distribution of agriculture‐oriented technology impact negatively on global food security. There has been a long‐standing interest in developing low‐cost and easily accessible soil field kits to measure different properties of agricultural soils in order to improve their agronomic capacity. Test strips in particular have provided a favoured method of obtaining soil nutrient status information since the 1970s. Today there is renewed interest in using semi‐quantitative colorimetric methods in soil assessment due to incorporation of modern technological solutions, such as smartphones, which could in turn increase the accuracy and precision of the existing methods. In this paper, we propose streamlined testing procedures based on experience gathered that may be conducted prior to a field kit development involving test strips. Results from laboratory and field experiments are presented, highlighting important factors which ought to be taken into account at the commencement of test strip‐oriented studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Human dimensions of climate change research in the Arctic often proposes ways for local communities to adapt to changes to their environment, foregrounding problems posed by climate change while treating social, political, and economic factors as background conditions. We explore the relevance of this research paradigm for Inuit by examining how Inuit from Kangiqsujuaq present and discuss the major issues facing their community., Methods: We thematically code and analyze the responses of 107 Inuit to three free-response questions about the problems facing their community and the best things about their community. The data were collected as part of a questionnaire for a project focused on food security and food sharing conducted in Kangiqsujuaq, Nunavik, in 2013 to 2014., Results: Few respondents mentioned issues relating to climate change among the most pressing problems faced by their community. Rather, a suite of interconnected social and economic issues, particularly substance abuse and the cost of living, emerged as the main concerns of Kangiqsujuarmiut. However, the environment was a central theme in respondents' favorite thing about their community., Conclusions: In light of the concerns identified by Inuit, we argue that much research on climate change makes incorrect a priori assumptions and consequently fails to capture aspects of Arctic socioecological systems that are essential for how Inuit are responding to climate change. An inductive, open-ended approach can help produce research more relevant to communities., (© 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Human Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Background: Communities in southwest Madagascar have co-evolved with a hypervariable environment and climate. The paleoclimate record reflects major fluctuations in climatic conditions over the course of Holocene human settlement. Archeological evidence indicates short-term occupations of sites, suggesting that frequent residential mobility and flexible subsistence strategies have been central features of life on the southwest coast for millennia. Today, despite rapid changes linked to globalization and increasing market integration, mobility and subsistence flexibility remain key to the lives of communities of the region., Aims: In this article, we advocate closer consideration of the social dimensions of the human niche, and their inextricable links to the biophysical world. Specifically, we explore the theoretical implications of applying a Niche Construction Theory framework to understanding the role of social memory in constructing the human niche of SW Madagascar. We look at how social memory facilitates mobility, resource use, and the creation and maintenance of social identities and ties among communities of foragers, farmers, herders, and fishers living under hypervariable climatic conditions., Materials & Methods: We conducted an extensive oral history survey in SW Madagascar between 2017 and 2018. We interviewed over 100 elders from 32 different communities., Results: Our analysis of the oral history archive resulted in the development of a theoretical model of human niche construction centered on the maintenance and transmission of social memory., Discussion: We argue that social memory and the ability to transmit oral histories of exchange, reciprocity, and cooperation, as well as ecological knowledge are key adaptive mechanisms that facilitate mobility and access to resources in a hypervariable environment., Conclusion: The preservation and transmission of oral histories and ecological knowledge are thus critical to future resilience and sustainability., (© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Abstract: The boreal biome represents approximately one third of the world's forested area and plays an important role in global biogeochemical and energy cycles. Numerous studies in boreal Alaska have concluded that growth of black and white spruce is declining as a result of temperature‐induced drought stress. The combined evidence of declining spruce growth and changes in the fire regime that favor establishment of deciduous tree species has led some investigators to suggest the region may be transitioning from dominance by spruce to dominance by deciduous forests and/or grasslands. Although spruce growth trends have been extensively investigated, few studies have evaluated long‐term radial growth trends of the dominant deciduous species (Alaska paper birch and trembling aspen) and their sensitivity to moisture availability. We used a large and spatially extensive sample of tree cores from interior Alaska to compare long‐term growth trends among contrasting tree species (white and black spruce vs. birch and aspen). All species showed a growth peak in the mid‐1940s, although growth following the peak varied strongly across species. Following an initial decline from the peak, growth of white spruce showed little evidence of a trend, while black spruce and birch growth showed slight growth declines from ~1970 to present. Aspen growth was much more variable than the other species and showed a steep decline from ~1970 to present. Growth of birch, black and white spruce was sensitive to moisture availability throughout most of the tree‐ring chronologies, as evidenced by negative correlations with air temperature and positive correlations with precipitation. However, a positive correlation between previous July precipitation and aspen growth disappeared in recent decades, corresponding with a rise in the population of the aspen leaf miner (Phyllocnistis populiella), an herbivorous moth, which may have driven growth to a level not seen since the early 20th century. Our results provide important historical context for recent growth and raise questions regarding competitive interactions among the dominant tree species and exchanges of carbon and energy in the warming climate of interior Alaska. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses physical geography, human geography and climate change.

Extreme high temperatures are associated with increased incidences of rail buckles. Climate change is predicted to alter the temperature profile in the United Kingdom with extreme high temperatures becoming an increasingly frequent occurrence. The result is that the number of buckles, and therefore delays, expected peryear will increase if the track is maintained to the current standard. This paper uses a combination of analogue techniques and a weather generator to quantify the increase in the number of buckles and rail related delays in the southeast of the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by assigning a cost to the resultant rise in delays and damage before making recommendations on how these effects can be mitigated. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Increasing obesity rates and accelerating climate change represent two global health challenges shaped by lifestyle change and human environmental modifications. Yet, few studies have considered how these issues may interact to exacerbate disease risk., Methods: In this theory article, we explore evidence that obesity-related disease and climatic changes share socio-ecological drivers and may interact to increase human morbidity and mortality risks. Additionally, we consider how obesity-climate change interactions may disproportionately affect vulnerable populations and how anthropological research can be applied to address this concern., Results: Interactions between heat stress and cardiometabolic disease represent an important pathway through which climate change and obesity-related morbidities may jointly impair health. For example, individuals with higher body fatness and obesity-related metabolic conditions (eg, type 2 diabetes) exhibit a reduced ability to dissipate heat. The risk of poor health resulting from these interactions is expected to be heterogeneous, with low- and middle-income countries, individuals of lower socioeconomic status, and minority populations facing a greater disease burden due to relative lack of resource access (eg, air conditioning). Moreover, older adults are at higher risk due to aging-associated changes in body composition and loss of thermoregulation capabilities., Conclusions: Few policy makers appear to be considering how interventions can be designed to simultaneously address the medical burden posed by increasing obesity rates and climate change. Anthropological research is well situated to address this need in a nuanced and culturally-sensitive way; producing research that can be used to support community resilience, promote holistic well-being, and improve health outcomes., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Remote sensing applications have a long history in treeline research. Recent reviews have examined the topic mainly from a methodological point of view. Here, we propose a question‐oriented review of remote sensing in treeline ecology to relate remote sensing methodologies to key ecological metrics and identify knowledge gaps and promising areas for future research. We performed a meta‐analysis to assess the role of remote sensing as a tool for measuring spatial patterns and dynamics of alpine and Arctic treeline ecotone globally. We assessed the geographic distribution, scale of analysis, and relationships between remote sensing techniques and treeline ecological metrics through co‐occurrence mapping and multivariate statistics. Our analysis revealed that only 10% of treeline ecology studies applied remote sensing tools, often associated with the keyword 'climate change'. Monitoring studies adopted coarser spatial resolutions over longer temporal extents in comparison with other treeline studies. A multiscale and multi‐sensor spatial approach was implemented in just 19% of papers. Long‐term research commonly relied on aerial and oblique photography to measure treeline shifts through photointerpretation within a multidisciplinary framework. More recent treeline dynamics were often quantified using greenness trends derived from the pixel‐based classification of satellite images. Many recent short‐term studies focused on delineating tree scale metrics derived from the object‐based classification of uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) images or LiDAR data. Over the past decade, high‐resolution and low‐cost UAV remote sensing has emerged as an interesting opportunity to fill the gap between local‐scale ecological patterns and coarse‐resolution satellite sensors. Additionally, treeline remote sensing applications would strongly benefit from multidisciplinary frameworks that integrate field studies in ecology and environmental science. The multi‐dimensional structural complexity of treelines typically responds to environmental drivers over multiple scales and thus is best described with multiscale and multi‐sensor approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metapopulations may be very sensitive to global climate change, particularly if temperature and precipitation change rapidly. We present an analysis of the role of climate and other factors in determining metapopulation structure based on presence and absence data. We compared existing and historical population distributions of desert bighorn sheep ( ) to determine whether regional climate patterns were correlated with local extinction. To examine all mountain ranges known to hold or to have held desert bighorn populations in California and score for variables describing climate, metapopulation dynamics, human impacts, and other environmental factors, we used a geographic information system (GIS) and paper maps. We used logistic regression and hierarchical partitioning to assess the relationship among these variables and the current status of each population (extinct or extant). Parameters related to climate—elevation, precipitation, and presence of dependable springs—were strongly correlated with population persistence in the twentieth century. Populations inhabiting lower, drier mountain ranges were more likely to go extinct. The presence of domestic sheep grazing allotments was negatively correlated with population persistence. We used conditional extinction probabilities generated by the logistic-regression model to rank native, naturally recolonized, and reintroduced populations by vulnerability to extinction under several climate-change scenarios. Thus risk of extinction in metapopulations can be evaluated for global-climate-change scenarios even when few demographic data are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa's population is expected to triple by 2050, owing to rapid urbanisation and overall demographic trends. The combined pressures of urbanisation and climate change impact the ecosystem and the services it provides. As a result, additional dangers such as increased flooding, and environmental disruption have risen. Therefore, devising adaptive solutions to mitigate flood risk impacts while also building community resilience is needed. Evidence suggests that Nature‐based Solutions (NbS) can potentially alleviate floods and mitigate climate change impacts while also delivering other societal benefits. Despite rising NbS popularity following its recognition in the last decade, studies on its recognition in Africa remain limited. For this reason, this paper reviewed NbS studies conducted in East Africa (EA) to evaluate opportunities and barriers surrounding NbS adoption in EA. Academic literature published from January 2012 to May 2022 was reviewed using a comprehensive search of the SCOPUS database. Results show 14 papers have been published during the period, with the majority being post‐2020. In addition, the majority of the articles focused on cities and peri‐urban settlements, while public awareness, clear guidelines on performance monitoring, stakeholder inclusion, and diverse demonstration projects were highlighted as potential success factors for the adoption of NbS in EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of climate change, research on frozen soils has attracted much attention in recent years, and numerous research papers have been published on these topics in the last decade. However, the present status and developmental trends in frozen soils research have not been reported systematically. Herein, a bibliometric analysis was conducted using 7,108 research papers on frozen soils published between 2010 and 2019. The results indicate that: (a) although the number of articles published increased from 432 in 2010 to 1,066 in 2019, the average number of citations per paper reached a maximum of 5.40 in 2014, and subsequently decreased to 2.99 in 2019; (b) China, the USA, and Canada ranked first to third in terms of total papers; (c) the most popular author keywords were boreal, tundra, Landsat, lakes, decomposition, dissolved organic carbon, permafrost thaw, and carbon cycle; and (d) the five most popular research topics in 2010–2019 were the characteristics and factors influencing frozen soils, the Arctic carbon cycle under the background of its complex environment, permafrost changes on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau in the context of climate change, ancient frozen soils in various historical periods, and frozen soils in the Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, land clearing and invasive species are affecting ecosystems in concert, so effective management requires knowledge sharing and collaboration across multiple fields of applied ecological research.We provide an examination of the growth and interconnectivity of four major subfields of applied ecology: climate change biology, conservation biology, invasion biology and restoration ecology; estimated using citations from the entire population of peer‐reviewed journal articles published between 1990 and 2017.Over this period applied ecological research has grown from 2% of new ecology papers to over 20%. The subfields each represented c. 6% of new ecology publications in 2017, with the exception of restoration ecology at c. 3%. Inter‐subfield citation probabilities also increased consistently over our study period.Despite these positive trends, we identified apparent barriers to future integration of these research areas. While the probability that citations in one subfield would include at least one paper from another subfield was high, the magnitude of cross‐subfield citations was low. Subfields also exhibited segregated publishing habits, asynchronous research foci and a strong preference for citing application over theory.Synthesis and applications. Despite strong overall growth in applied ecological research, segregation of subfields in papers and journals may limit opportunities to identify co‐benefits and complementary theoretical frameworks. This has the potential to result in suboptimal ecological management outcomes. Despite strong overall growth in applied ecological research, segregation of subfields in papers and journals may limit opportunities to identify co‐benefits and complementary theoretical frameworks. This has the potential to result in suboptimal ecological management outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is no longer a myth that climate change‐related disasters are on the rise globally, with severe and devastating consequences in developing countries, particularly in Sub‐Saharan Africa, where many of the world's poor people reside. Thus, the emphasis on adaptation to climate change is no longer a choice or a deferred problem into the future, but rather an urgent matter of concern which must be considered a policy priority. As a response to retrogressive climate change challenges on social‐economic development and environmental degradation, the government of South Africa has in the last two and half decades, embarked on the progressive formulation of different policy instruments and strategic frameworks to curb and minimize the impacts of climate change on all sub‐sectors of the economy. Although much remains to be achieved, some level of success has been realized, particularly in the space of policy formulation, albeit the poor record of implementation. Using research methods inspired by the tradition of qualitative research and an appraisal of existing literature, this paper discusses the complexities of climate change adaptation governance at a local government level in South Africa, focusing on the Eastern Cape Province. It is argued in the paper that one of the major challenges for climate change governance at local municipality levels in South Africa emanates from the gap between aspirations and actions across the entire national governance system. The absence of an integrated climate change governance system has posed significant systemic challenges, and these have tended to constrain decision‐making and implementation processes. These issues have been discussed within the broader discourse of the sustainable development goals, particularly goals number 13, 16 and 17. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

de Senerpont Domis et al. (2013, Freshwater Biology, 58, 463-482) forecasted changes in plankton dynamics in temperate, polar and tropical regions resulting from climate change. For tropical regions, they predicted an increase in precipitation intensity that would increase nutrient loading, increasing phytoplankton biomass and select for plankton adapted to flushing., We do not agree with these predictions, as regional projections from the IPCC did not forecast a major increase in precipitation in tropical regions. The only regions where a slight increase in precipitation was projected were eastern Africa and South- East Asia. In eastern Africa, the major freshwater bodies are large, deep lakes that have very long residence times and are unlikely to be affected by flushing. Moreover, nutrient inputs from their catchment represent a small fraction of their total nutrient loading., Several independent studies carried out in this region have provided evidence of a decrease in primary productivity in some of these large tropical lakes due to climate change. The major process providing nutrients to the euphotic layer is internal loading, which has been reduced as warming of the surface waters has increased the temperature gradient and the water column stability. Moreover, reduced velocity of trade winds during the dry season has affected the mixed layer depth and decreased internal nutrient fluxes. Therefore, the trend for large tropical lakes in a warming climate is oligotrophication, not eutrophication., In tropical South America, the rainfall increase is not the dominant scenario; thus, the predicted changes in plankton dynamics do not stand., Therefore, we believe that the predictions presented in the paper for tropical systems under a changing climate are invalid for most tropical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broad-scale spatial patterns of species richness are very strongly correlated with climatic variables. If there is a causal link, i.e. if climate directly or indirectly determines patterns of richness, then when the climatic variables change, richness should change in the manner that spatial correlations between richness and climate would predict. The present study tests this prediction using seasonal changes in climatic variables and bird richness. We used a grid of equal area quadrats (37 000 km2) covering North and Central America as far south as Nicaragua. Summer and winter bird distribution data were drawn from monographs and field guides. Climatic data came from published sources. We also used remotely sensed NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index — a measure of greenness). Bird species richness changes temporally (between summer and winter) in a manner that is close to, but statistically distinguishable from, the change one would predict from models relating the spatial variation in richness at a single time to climatic variables. If one further takes into account the seasonal changes in NDVI and within-season variability of temperature and precipitation, then winter and summer richness follow congruent, statistically indistinguishable patterns. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) and vegetation cover directly or indirectly influence patterns of bird species richness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the relative contributions of current vs. historical factors in explaining broad-scale diversity gradients using a combination of contemporary factors and a quantitative estimate of the temporal accessibility of areas for recolonization created by glacial retreat following the most recent Ice Age. The part of the Nearctic region of North America that was covered by ice sheets during the glacial maximum 20 000 BP. We used range maps to estimate the species richness of mammals and terrestrial birds in 48 400 km2 cells. Current conditions in each cell were quantified using seven climatic and topographical variables. Historical conditions were estimated using the number of years before present when an area became exposed as the ice sheets retreated during the post-Pleistocene climate warming. We attempted to tease apart contemporary and historical effects using multiple regression, partial regression and spatial autocorrelation analysis. A measure of current energy inputs, potential evapotranspiration, explained 76–82% of the variance in species richness, but time since deglaciation explained an additional 8–13% of the variance, primarily due to effects operating at large spatial scales. Because of spatial covariation between the historical climates influencing the melting of the ice sheet and current climates, it was not possible to partition their effects fully, but of the independent effects that could be identified, current climate explained two to seven times more variance in richness patterns than age. Factors acting in the present appear to have the strongest influence on the diversity gradient, but an historical signal persisting at least 13 000 years is still detectable. This has implications for modelling changes in diversity patterns in response to future global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tipping elements are features of the climate system that can display self‐reinforcing and non‐linear responses if pushed beyond a certain threshold (the "tipping point"). Models suggest that we may surpass several of these tipping points in the next few decades, irrespective of which emissions pathway humanity follows. Some tipping elements reside in the Arctic and Antarctic and could potentially be avoided or arrested via a stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) program applied only at the poles. This paper considers the utility of proactively developing the capacity to respond to emergent tipping element threats at the poles as a matter of risk management. It then examines both the air and ground infrastructure that would be required to operationalize such capability by 2040 and finds that this would require a funded launch decision by a financially credible actor by roughly 2030. Plain Language Summary: Stratospheric aerosol injection is a solar geoengineering method by which tiny particles cast into the stratosphere reflect a portion of incoming sunlight away from Earth. Recent work has demonstrated that SAI may be effective in preventing components of the climate system known as "tipping elements" from collapsing by cooling the atmosphere and thereby preventing the crossing of dangerous temperature thresholds. In particular, many of the highest risk tipping elements reside in the cryosphere and their minimum temperature thresholds are estimated to be passed in coming decades regardless of global mitigation pathways. An SAI program at high latitudes could effectively manage some of the associated risks by cooling the Arctic and Antarctic, thereby preventing tipping elements from collapsing. This paper investigates the ground and air infrastructure that would be required to operate such a solar geoengineering program by the year 2040. We first describe the logistics of such a program, including airport base location choice, plane procurement and modification strategies, and projected costs. We find that infrastructure development for a polar solar geoengineering program would need to commence by 2030 or sooner in order to successfully safeguard cryospheric tipping elements, suggesting that research and decision‐making processes for a stratospheric aerosol injection program should be approached with urgency. Key Points: We risk crossing tipping thresholds in mid‐century that mitigation could not prevent, though geoengineering could rescue the situationA polar solar geoengineering program potentially delay or avoid crossing tipping thresholdsPolar solar geoengineering capability by 2040 would require a funded program launch by or before roughly 2030 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projecting future climate variables is essential for comprehending the potential impacts on hydroclimatic hazards like floods and droughts. Evaluating these impacts is challenging due to the coarse spatial resolution of global climate models (GCMs); therefore, bias correction is widely used. Here, we applied two statistical methods—standard empirical quantile mapping (EQM) and a hybrid approach, EQM with linear correction (EQM‐LIN)—to bias correct precipitation and air temperature simulated by nine GCMs. We used historical observations from 20 weather stations across South Florida to project future climate under three shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). Compared to the EQM, the hybrid EQM‐LIN method improved R2 of daily quantiles by up to 30% over the historical period and improved MAE up to 70% in months that contain most extreme values. Projected extreme precipitation at the weather stations showed that, compared to the EQM‐LIN, the EQM method underestimates the high quantiles by up to 26% in SSP585. The projected changes in annual maximum precipitation from historical period (1985–2014) to near future (2040–2069) and far future (2070–2100) were between 2% and 16% across the study area. Projected future precipitation suggested a slight decrease during summer but an increase in fall. This, along with rising summer temperatures, suggested that South Florida can experience rapid oscillations from warmer summers and increased flooding in fall under future climate. Additionally, our comparative analyses with globally and nationally downscaled studies showed that such coarse scale studies do not represent the climatic extremes well, particularly for high quantile precipitation. Plain Language Summary: Natural hazards, such as flooding and extreme heat, can damage our infrastructure and local communities. These hazards often stem from extreme weather conditions such as heavy precipitation and hot temperatures. Global climate change is expected to affect precipitation and air temperature, leading to more extreme weather events and hazards in the future. Predicting frequency and severity of these future events is key to protect our infrastructure and communities. Climate models have been widely used to project statistics of future extremes. However, they come with uncertainties due to numerical approximations, low spatial resolutions etc. Consequently, predictions generated by these models are inherently uncertain. This paper used a new approach to improve future projections of extreme climatic events, focusing on South Florida. Our findings revealed substantial improvements in projecting future events, particularly for extreme precipitation. We also showed that nationally and globally derived simulations may not be suitable for accurately projecting heavy precipitation, but can suffice for air temperature and low/medium precipitation rates. This paper offers promising avenues for refining projections of future weather events. By enhancing our ability to anticipate upcoming weather events more accurately, we can better protect our infrastructure and communities against the challenges posed by climate change. Key Points: A hybrid statistical approach to improve bias correction of GCM precipitation and air temperature simulationsMajor improvements in both climatic variables, especially extreme precipitation, using our hybrid statistical approach in South FloridaCoarse resolution downscaled data may be insufficient for deriving high quantile precipitation at the regional scale [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amazon forest has the highest biodiversity on Earth. However, information on Amazonian vertebrate diversity is still deficient and scattered across the published, peer‐reviewed, and gray literature and in unpublished raw data. Camera traps are an effective non‐invasive method of surveying vertebrates, applicable to different scales of time and space. In this study, we organized and standardized camera trap records from different Amazon regions to compile the most extensive data set of inventories of mammal, bird, and reptile species ever assembled for the area. The complete data set comprises 154,123 records of 317 species (185 birds, 119 mammals, and 13 reptiles) gathered from surveys from the Amazonian portion of eight countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela). The most frequently recorded species per taxa were: mammals: Cuniculus paca (11,907 records); birds: Pauxi tuberosa (3713 records); and reptiles: Tupinambis teguixin (716 records). The information detailed in this data paper opens up opportunities for new ecological studies at different spatial and temporal scales, allowing for a more accurate evaluation of the effects of habitat loss, fragmentation, climate change, and other human‐mediated defaunation processes in one of the most important and threatened tropical environments in the world. The data set is not copyright restricted; please cite this data paper when using its data in publications and we also request that researchers and educators inform us of how they are using these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Drought is intensifying globally with climate change, creating an urgency to understand ecosystem response to drought both during and after these events end to limit loss of ecosystem functioning. The literature is replete with studies of how ecosystems respond during drought, yet there are far fewer studies focused on ecosystem dynamics after drought ends. Furthermore, while the terms used to describe drought can be variable and inconsistent, so can those that describe ecosystem responses following drought. With this review, we sought to evaluate and create clear definitions of the terms that ecologists use to describe post‐drought responses. We found that legacy effects, resilience and recovery were used most commonly with respect to post‐drought ecosystem responses, but the definitions used to describe these terms were variable. Based on our review of the literature, we propose a framework for generalizing ecosystem responses after drought ends, which we refer to as 'the post‐drought period'. We suggest that future papers need to clearly describe characteristics of the imposed drought, and we encourage authors to use the term post‐drought period as a general term that encompasses responses after drought ends and use other terms as more specific descriptors of responses during the post‐drought period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threats to the health of our environment are numerous. Much research in science and engineering is devoted to documenting, understanding, and attempting to mitigate the harm itself. The root challenge for sustainability, however, is human behavior. As such, changes to human behaviors and the internal processes that drive them are also essential. Critical to understanding sustainability‐related behaviors is the individual's conceptualization of the natural world and its components and processes. The papers in this topiCS issue address these conceptualizations by drawing from anthropological, linguistic, educational, philosophical, and social cognitive perspectives as well as traditional psychological approaches to the study of concepts and their development in children. They engage with many domains bearing on environmental sustainability including climate change, biodiversity, land and water conservation, resource use, and design of the built environment. They coalesce around four broad themes: (a) What people know (or believe) about nature broadly and about specific aspects of nature, and how they acquire and use this knowledge; (b) how knowledge is expressed and shared via language; (c) how knowledge and beliefs interact with affective, social, and motivational influences to yield attitudes and behaviors; and (d) how members of different cultures and speakers of different languages differ in these ways. The papers also point to lessons for advancing sustainability via public policy and public messaging, education, conservation and nature management, and design of the built environment. The root challenge for environmental sustainability is human behavior. Critical to understanding sustainability‐related behaviors is the individual's conceptualization of the natural world and its components and processes. The papers in this issue address these conceptualizations by drawing from anthropological, linguistic, educational, philosophical, and social cognitive perspectives as well as traditional psychological approaches to the study of concepts and their development in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia dominated by Dipterocarpaceae show a unique reproductive event, general flowering. This paper records long‐term seed production of a tropical rainforest in Pasoh Forest Reserve, Peninsular Malaysia. Study site is a lowland dipterocarp forest dominated by Dipterocarpaceae and Fabaceae. Seed and other litter production data are essential for analyzing general flowering and evaluating net primary production (NPP) of rainforest ecosystems under climate change. Unfortunately, there is a lack of long‐term litter production data in Dipterocarp forests. This paper presents such a long‐term litter data from 1992 to 2017. We collected litter samples every month from May 1992 to December 2017 in Pasoh F.R., Peninsular Malaysia (2°59′N, 102°18′E, 120–152 m a.s.l.). Litter was collected using 100 litter traps spaced evenly within a 2‐ha core area of the 6‐ha study plot. Each litter trap was made of 1 mm mesh with a circular area of 0.5 m2 from May 8, 1992 to December 22, 1998. Then litter trap was changed to a square type with 4 mm mesh until now. Litter samples were collected and separated to leaf, flower, seed and others (debris). After sorting litter samples were dried at 85°C for 48 hr and weighed. Seeds and flowers were separated according to tentative morphological types and identified. This data paper contains two data sets. Litter data set contains weight of each litter fractions. Seed data set contains number and weight of morphological seed types and identified scientific name. This data paper presents litter weight and seed production data sets from 1992 to 2017 in a lowland dipterocarp forests in Pasoh Forest Reserve, Peninsular Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, environmental pollution control, and resource utilization efficiency, as well as food security, sustainable agriculture, and water supply are among the main challenges facing society today. Expertise across different academic fields, technologies, and disciplines is needed to generate new ideas to meet these challenges. This "white paper" aims to provide a written summary by describing the main aspects and possibilities of the technology. It shows that plasma science and technology can make significant contributions to address the mentioned issues. The paper also addresses to people in the scientific community (inside and outside plasma science) to give inspiration for further work in these fields. Climate change, environmental pollution control, and resource utilization efficiency, as well as food security, sustainable agriculture, and water supply are among the main challenges facing society today. Expertise across different academic fields, technologies, and disciplines is needed to generate new ideas to meet these challenges. This "white paper" aims to provide a written summary by describing the main aspects and possibilities of the technology. It shows that plasma science and technology can make significant contributions to address the mentioned issues. The paper also addresses to people in the scientific community (inside and outside plasma science) to give inspiration for further work in these fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in simulated flood inundation areas and depths (6%-31% for different GCMs) in the future showed the importance of improving flood management tools for the sustainable development of urban water environments. The paper by Burch et al. (2010) addresses a different aspect of flood risk management in response to climate change and illustrates an advance in best practice for flood risk management and climate change planning. In terms of flood risk management, NBSs include natural flood management measures (NFMs), and these are the subject of the paper in this VSI by Dittrich et al. (2019). [Extracted from the article]

Background and Aims: Two main problems the globe currently facing are migration and weather variation. Weather change has a significant impact on the agricultural industry, which affects the majority of poor people. There is a dearth of adequate methodological documentation when examining the relationship between weather variation, agricultural output, and migration. We aimed to identify methodological reporting difficulties by reviewing the quantitative literature on weather‐related migration through agricultural channels. Methods: A systematic evaluation was conducted using papers published between January 2010 and June 2022, indexed in the SCOPUS, PUBMED, and Google Scholar databases. Using inclusion/exclusion criteria, we selected 22 original research articles out of 18,929 distinct articles for review, in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. We extracted data from each study to understand how various concepts, research designs, and investigative techniques influence our understanding of migration patterns related to weather in the agricultural sector. Results: The majority (64%) of the study's data consisted of time series data. In 50% of the studies, secondary data were used. Additionally, 55% of these studies did not state the sample size. In 40% of the studies, model assumptions were fully adhered to, whereas in 36% of the studies, they were not followed at all. The majority of the articles used the Ordinary Least Squares technique, while about 41% applied the Two‐Stage Least Squares technique. Various tests were conducted across these studies, such as robustness checks (59.1%), endogeneity tests (31.8%), omitted variable bias tests (22.7%), sensitivity analyses (22.7%), and weak instrument tests (13.6%), to name a few. In the research we selected, the methodology section had various shortcomings and lacked organization. Furthermore, the justifications for deviations from model assumptions were unclear, potentially affecting the study outcomes. Conclusion: This study has important indications for researchers in studying climatic (weather) migration through agricultural channels besides for policymakers by giving a thorough review of the methods and techniques. Key points: Providing narrative insights on how various issues, research designs, and analytical techniques shape our understanding of the association between weather variation and migration via agricultural production.Providing a broad overview of the pertinent literature, covering 22 articles, as a complement to earlier studies.Our study has important ramifications for researchers studying climatic (weather) migration through agricultural channels as well as for policymakers by giving a thorough review of the methods and techniques currently used in this sector.Future studies on weather variation, agricultural production, and migration should use prudent and comparable models that capture whole climatic (weather) impacts on migration through mediating factors like agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Near‐term freshwater forecasts, defined as sub‐daily to decadal future predictions of a freshwater variable with quantified uncertainty, are urgently needed to improve water quality management as freshwater ecosystems exhibit greater variability due to global change. Shifting baselines in freshwater ecosystems due to land use and climate change prevent managers from relying on historical averages for predicting future conditions, necessitating near‐term forecasts to mitigate freshwater risks to human health and safety (e.g., flash floods, harmful algal blooms) and ecosystem services (e.g., water‐related recreation and tourism). To assess the current state of freshwater forecasting and identify opportunities for future progress, we synthesized freshwater forecasting papers published in the past 5 years. We found that freshwater forecasting is currently dominated by near‐term forecasts of water quantity and that near‐term water quality forecasts are fewer in number and in the early stages of development (i.e., non‐operational) despite their potential as important preemptive decision support tools. We contend that more freshwater quality forecasts are critically needed and that near‐term water quality forecasting is poised to make substantial advances based on examples of recent progress in forecasting methodology, workflows, and end‐user engagement. For example, current water quality forecasting systems can predict water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and algal bloom/toxin events 5 days ahead with reasonable accuracy. Continued progress in freshwater quality forecasting will be greatly accelerated by adapting tools and approaches from freshwater quantity forecasting (e.g., machine learning modeling methods). In addition, future development of effective operational freshwater quality forecasts will require substantive engagement of end users throughout the forecast process, funding, and training opportunities. Looking ahead, near‐term forecasting provides a hopeful future for freshwater management in the face of increased variability and risk due to global change, and we encourage the freshwater scientific community to incorporate forecasting approaches in water quality research and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments in the Global South have recently started to align their public procurement regulations considering Green Public Procurement (GPP) guidelines to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 12. In this context, it is important to establish environmental criteria to help decision making after analyzing the variety of options available in the market. Thus, using as examples two of the most acquired products in public procurement in Peru: Medium‐density particleboard melamine furniture and paper offset, the aim of this paper is to determine the main environmental hotspots and therefore show the path to foster GPP in Peru. To achieve this goal, a Life Cycle Assessment was carried out considering it is a suitable environmental management tool to quantify environmental impacts. For this, a set of scenarios were modeled and compared for each of the two products selected, covering different geographical and technological options that are currently purchased by the Peruvian government. Results demonstrated that it is possible to attain considerable reductions in the environmental impact of the products analyzed if the main critical stages throughout their life cycle are identified and adequate solutions are applied to avoid burden shifting. Moreover, we argue that it is important for developing countries to carry out case‐specific life‐cycle inventories as they provide higher‐quality information based on the particular characteristics of regional or local industries, allowing the determination of more realistic environmental impact mitigation benchmarks. Nevertheless, the inclusion of lifecycle‐based criteria in GPP must be performed cautiously, avoiding command and control regulations, as numerous challenges remain in terms of capacity building, environmental awareness, and environmental information, and transparency in emerging and developing economies. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:1206–1220. © 2021 SETAC Key Points: Latin American governments are currently aligning their public procurement regulations with Green Public Procurement (GPP) guidelines to comply with international environmental recommendations, such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or nationally determined contributions (NDCs).Considering that these nations struggle to develop empirical data to support GPP initiatives, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is presented as an attractive environmental management tool to quantify environmental impacts and orient GPP regulations.Two of the most acquired public procurement products in Peru, melamine furniture and paper offset, were evaluated using LCA to identify environmental hotspots, the sensitivity of the results through scenario analysis, and improvement actions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts.Despite the existing challenges linked to building environmental information in Peru, case‐specific life‐cycle inventories for regional industries have proved to allow the determination of realistic environmental impact mitigation benchmarks to include in GPP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on an important and under‐researched issue: The sources of information about climate change that teachers use. Utilising a 'scoping review' methodological approach, we analysed over 600 papers to address two main questions: What sources of information about climate change are teachers using? In what ways are teachers using these sources of information? Through our use of inclusive search terms and detailed analysis of papers, we found only 13 studies of relevance, none of which primarily focus on the sources of information teachers use. The 13 studies are all located in the Global North, and within this nearly half are in the USA. Methodologically, all apart from two rely on teachers' reports rather than observation or other methods. Four types of sources of information were frequently mentioned: The Internet; government sources; mass media and professional development courses. The 'superabundance' of information now available to teachers (particularly online), the importance of high‐quality information for students' understandings of climate change, and the limited research on the sources of information about climate change that teachers use makes this is a significant blind spot for research to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One key aspect of the Anthropocene is the inherent disparities between the Global North and the Global South. These differences manifest in the causes and impacts of pollution, climate change, and species extinctions, but are they also present in the ways we write about the Anthropocene? We examine 77 peer‐reviewed papers spanning 2009–2019 that explicitly feature conservation in an Anthropocene context. We compare these papers to a control group of papers that feature conservation but do not engage specifically with the Anthropocene literature. We found that both "Anthropocene" and "conservation" papers include a disproportionately large number of authors with affiliations in the Global North, despite half of the research taking place in the Global South. Moreover, this overrepresentation occurs regardless of author position or journal impact factor. We find that 84% of Anthropocene articles and 91% of conservation articles occurring in the Global North had a first author from the country of study, as opposed to only 55% of Anthropocene articles and 62% of conservation articles from the Global South. Studies occurring in the Global North almost always had at least one coauthor from the country of study (96% of Anthropocene articles and 97% of conservation articles). In contrast, only 81% of Anthropocene articles and 83% of conservation articles occurring in the Global South had any local coauthors. We used two text‐mining algorithms to characterize the authorship networks and topics occurring in Anthropocene and conservation papers. These analyses showed that while both groups are interdisciplinary, Anthropocene papers had more distributed authorship networks and greater linkages across topics, and therefore have a flatter "topic surface" than the conservation papers. Our work suggests that conservation research programs that are explicitly grounded in the Anthropocene as a theoretical framework are more likely to reach across disciplinary lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note offers a glimpse of the author's PhD thesis on the Limits of Bioenergy, which was defended at Imperial College London in 2014. The thesis was also presented as a conference paper in the 59th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in Berlin, 2015, receiving the Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award. This research note gives a brief overview on the proposed complex systems approach to land use dynamics and constraints, as a contribution to the climate change debate. A full scientific article with the whole methodology and original results is already under publication process by the author and his colleagues. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies on risk constitute a core topic of risk analysis and risk science, and it is common at risk conferences to present real‐life cases of such policies, for example related to the handling of climate change and pandemics. Although these are of broad interest, showing how important issues in society are dealt with, it can be questioned to what extent and how these cases contribute to enhancing risk analysis and risk science. The present paper addresses this concern. It is argued that, in order to learn from the cases, they need in general to be more thoroughly followed up with discussions of concepts, principles, approaches, and methods for assessing, characterizing, communicating and handling risk. Describing a governmental policy on, for example, the handling of COVID‐19 is a point of departure for interesting discussions concerning its justification and performance, in particular in relation to risk and the most updated knowledge from the risk analysis field. Such discussions are, however, often lacking. The paper points to some key obstacles and challenges for the learning process, including the difficulty of distinguishing between policies, policy analysis, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers included in this special issue have been selected from those presented at the 2019 International Conference on Regional Science held in Castellón, Spain, at the University Jaume I on November 20-22, 2019, organized by the Spanish Regional Science Association and the Local Development Institute of University Jaume I. The conference theme on 'Tackling with societal, technological, and climate challenges in pheripheral territories' was selected because peripheral regions have become an essential objective of regional science. In any case, the results suggest that increasing the share of creative industries would have significant positive effects for most Mediterranean regions. They associate the positive results with spillover effects on highly skilled workers' productivity that more than compensate for the low-skilled workers' loss in productivity due to their exclusion. [Extracted from the article]

The article invites research papers from scholars for the special issue of the "British Journal of Management" in 2018, that should focus on topics including global climate change, sustainable marketing, and organizational behaviour.

China introduced sponge city development (SCD) as a policy initiative to address the complex, interlinked water challenges, such as urban pluvial flooding and water pollution, faced by urban development under climatic change and rapid urbanization. The initiative relies on low‐impact development (LID) techniques to integrate ecosystem conservation and urban development, with the aim to maintain or restore natural landscapes and their water regulating capacity as a way to mitigate urban flooding and associated pollution while augmenting water supply. While the country prepares for SCD demonstration and upscaling after pilot implementation since 2014, the initiative is subject to a design deficit in policy implementation that has received little consideration in both the literature and the policy arena but that negatively affects the effectiveness of SCD and its long run impact as intended by the policy. In this paper, we examine the design deficit by mapping and analyzing the policy implementation for SCD in the framework of theory of change (TOC). We present key conditions for individual components in SCD implementation to deliver causal pathways from program inputs to long‐term impacts, with identified issues characterizing the design deficit. We provide an overview of the literature on SCD to shed some light on current research while identifying knowledge gaps. The paper proposes and justifies the framework of ecosystem services as an innovative design tool to deliver a systematic approach needed to address the design deficit, paving the pathways for SCD from inputs to impacts fully developing the policy potential for green urban transition with resilience and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent conceptualizations of policy coherence for sustainable development focus primarily on the roles of intra‐governmental policy processes and institutional interactions in shaping coherence between various agendas and policies. These technocratic understandings of coherence overlook the more political drivers of coherence, such as the vested interests or ideologies that may encourage or hinder efforts to achieve coherence. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the comparative politics literature to facilitate a political understanding of policy coherence. It introduces an analytical framework hypothesizing how ideas, institutions, and interests (the three I's) may influence policy coherence at different policy stages. As such, it includes measures of how policy coherence is applied by different actors and institutions, and whose ideas and interests may be served by pursuing or not pursuing coherence. This article provides an example of how the framework can be applied to study policy coherence between two prominent international agendas: Agenda 2030 (incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals) and the Paris Agreement. Overall, the paper argues that the three I's influence policy options and shape the ambition and importance given to different agendas, goals and actors in pursuing or resisting policy coherence. This framework is suited for assessing the political divers of policy coherence through being applied to empirical data at global or national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Males and females often desynchronise their mating activity during the breeding season (intersexual phenological asynchrony). This suggests that the two sexes differentially use environmental cues to initiate seasonal reproduction, and climate change may cause phenological shifts in a sex‐specific manner, subsequently altering frequency distribution of mating attempts over time and influencing the emergence timing and recruitment success of juveniles. In this article, we tested these hypotheses through literature reviews and theoretical modelling. We found that the sex specificity of environmental cues and phenological shifts remain poorly understood in most sexually reproducing animal taxa because of sex‐specific publication bias and data limitations. Meanwhile, our theoretical model predicted that the ecological consequences of phenological shifts are sexually asymmetric, with earlier mating onset of males having generally greater negative effects on population growth than that of females. We therefore suggest that further research is necessary to collect and incorporate sex‐specific information on seasonal reproduction into the theory of phenological mismatch, for which previous work has mostly focused on interspecific trophic asynchrony. We also outline a future research agenda to better understand the consequences of sex‐specific phenological shifts on seasonal population dynamics and long‐term persistence of species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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