Search

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]

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]

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]

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 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.)

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]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

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]

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]

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.)

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.)

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]

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]

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.)

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

Practical experiments drive important scientific discoveries in biology, but theory‐based research studies also contribute novel—sometimes paradigm‐changing—findings. Here, we appraise the roles of theory‐based approaches focusing on the experiment‐dominated wet‐biology research areas of microbial growth and survival, cell physiology, host–pathogen interactions, and competitive or symbiotic interactions. Additional examples relate to analyses of genome‐sequence data, climate change and planetary health, habitability, and astrobiology. We assess the importance of thought at each step of the research process; the roles of natural philosophy, and inconsistencies in logic and language, as drivers of scientific progress; the value of thought experiments; the use and limitations of artificial intelligence technologies, including their potential for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research; and other instances when theory is the most‐direct and most‐scientifically robust route to scientific novelty including the development of techniques for practical experimentation or fieldwork. We highlight the intrinsic need for human engagement in scientific innovation, an issue pertinent to the ongoing controversy over papers authored using/authored by artificial intelligence (such as the large language model/chatbot ChatGPT). Other issues discussed are the way in which aspects of language can bias thinking towards the spatial rather than the temporal (and how this biased thinking can lead to skewed scientific terminology); receptivity to research that is non‐mainstream; and the importance of theory‐based science in education and epistemology. Whereas we briefly highlight classic works (those by Oakes Ames, Francis H.C. Crick and James D. Watson, Charles R. Darwin, Albert Einstein, James E. Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Gilbert Ryle, Erwin R.J.A. Schrödinger, Alan M. Turing, and others), the focus is on microbiology studies that are more‐recent, discussing these in the context of the scientific process and the types of scientific novelty that they represent. These include several studies carried out during the 2020 to 2022 lockdowns of the COVID‐19 pandemic when access to research laboratories was disallowed (or limited). We interviewed the authors of some of the featured microbiology‐related papers and—although we ourselves are involved in laboratory experiments and practical fieldwork—also drew from our own research experiences showing that such studies can not only produce new scientific findings but can also transcend barriers between disciplines, act counter to scientific reductionism, integrate biological data across different timescales and levels of complexity, and circumvent constraints imposed by practical techniques. In relation to urgent research needs, we believe that climate change and other global challenges may require approaches beyond the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inland waters are among the most threatened biodiversity hotspots. Ponds located in alpine areas are experiencing more rapid and dramatic water temperature increases than any other biome. Despite their prevalence, alpine ponds and their biodiversity responses to climate change have been poorly explored, reflecting their small size and difficult access. To understand the effects of climate change on alpine pond biodiversity, we performed a comprehensive literature review for papers published since 1955. Through analysis of their geographic distribution, environmental features, and biodiversity values, we identified which environmental factors related to climate change would have direct or indirect effects on alpine pond biodiversity. We then synthesized this information to produce a conceptual model of the effects of climate change on alpine pond biodiversity. Increased water temperature, reduced hydroperiod, and loss of connectivity between alpine ponds were the main drivers of biodiversity geographic distribution, leading to predictable changes in spatial patterns of biodiversity. We identified three major research gaps that, if addressed, can guide conservation and restoration strategies for alpine ponds biodiversity in an uncertain future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the methodology for the construction of the KNMI'23 national climate scenarios for the Netherlands. We have developed six scenarios, that cover a substantial part of the uncertainty in CMIP6 projections of future climate change in the region. Different sources of uncertainty are disentangled as much as possible, partly by means of a storyline approach. Uncertainty in future emissions is covered by making scenarios conditional on different SSP scenarios (SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5, and SSP5‐8.5). For each SSP scenario and time horizon (2050, 2100, 2150), we determine a global warming level based on the median of the constrained estimates of climate sensitivity from IPCC AR6. The remaining climate model uncertainty of the regional climate response at these warming levels is covered by two storylines, which are designed with a focus on the annual and seasonal mean precipitation response (a dry‐trending and wet‐trending variant for each SSP). This choice was motivated by the importance of future water management to society. For users with specific interests we provide means how to account for the impact of the uncertainty in climate sensitivity. Since CMIP6 GCM data do not provide the required spatial detail for impact modeling, we reconstruct the CMIP6 responses by resampling internal variability in a GCM‐RCM initial‐condition ensemble. The resulting climate scenarios form a detailed storyline of plausible future climates in the Netherlands. The data can be used for impact calculations and assessments by stakeholders, and will be used to inform policy making in different sectors of Dutch society. Plain Language Summary: To prepare society for the effects of future climate change, we need to know what the future climate will be like. In this paper we explain the method that is used to construct six different scenarios that describe possible future climates of the Netherlands. The scenarios make assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions, and are based on the outcomes of climate models that simulate the response of the climate to these emissions. The KNMI'23 climate scenarios show that strongly reducing global emissions strongly reduces the expected changes in the climate of the Netherlands. In the scenario in which global emissions continue to rise until 2080, Dutch society will have to adapt to a much stronger increases in heat and precipitation extremes, increased risks of droughts with low river discharge in summer, and increased risk of flooding due to high river discharges in winter. In the coming years the climate scenario data will be used to evaluate what needs to be done to keep the country a safe place for people to live in and to thrive in, under changing climate conditions. Key Points: We present a methodology for the construction of regional climate scenarios using a storyline approach to partition uncertaintyResults from CMIP6 are reconstructed with a GCM‐RCM initial condition ensemble to produce high‐resolution scenario data for end‐usersSix scenario variants cover emission uncertainty (high, moderate, low) and uncertainty in the regional response (dry‐trending, wet‐trending) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Arctic and its rivers continue to warm, a better understanding of the possible future impacts on people would benefit from close partnership with Indigenous communities and scientists from diverse fields of study. We present efforts by the Arctic Rivers Project to conduct community‐engaged research to increase collective understanding of the historical and potential future impacts of climate change on rivers, fish, and Indigenous communities. Working in central to northern Alaska and the Yukon Territory in Canada, the project seeks to engage with Indigenous communities in ethical and equitable ways to produces science that is useful, useable, and used that may serve as an example for future research efforts. Toward this goal, we formed an Indigenous Advisory Council and together developed project‐specific knowledge co‐production protocols. This paper provides a novel model of design and implementation to co‐produce knowledge with communities across a large study domain. Plain Language Summary: The Arctic and rivers located in the Arctic and subarctic are warming due to climate change. To understand the impacts this warming will have on people, partnering with impacted Indigenous communities in the region is important. It is also important that these partnerships are ethical and equitable and produce science that is actionable. This paper discusses efforts undertaken by a specific project, the Arctic Rivers Project, to conduct ethical and equitable research with Indigenous communities and generate science that is useful to those communities. Through this research our goal is to better understand potential future impacts of climate change on rivers, fish, and Indigenous communities in central northern Alaska and the Yukon Territory in Canada. To achieve this goal, the project formed an Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) and together developed guidelines for how we can work collaboratively with Indigenous communities. Our specific process of forming an IAC and guidelines is, to our knowledge, a new way to approach collaborative research when working across a large geographic area. We present our process here so that it may provide an example for other research efforts. Key Points: Arctic climate information can be made useful, useable, and used by equitably accounting for diverse community adaptation needs through knowledge co‐productionInstitutional and community capacity, including means and ability, is necessary for equitable knowledge co‐production to occurWe present an approach for co‐producing knowledge with Indigenous communities that can serve as an example for other scientific efforts [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 dedication of the international anaesthetic community to reducing the environmental impact of healthcare is important and to be celebrated. When this is underpinned by robust science, it has the potential to make a real difference. However, volatile anaesthetic agents have been widely promoted in the medical literature as damaging to the climate, leading to a drive to remove them from clinical practice. This is based on notional 'CO 2 -equivalent' values created using the simple emission metric known as the global warming potential. Here, we assert that when proper consideration is given to the science of climate change, volatile anaesthetic gas emissions cannot be simply equated to real carbon dioxide emissions, and that their climate impact is vanishingly small. This paper gives anaesthetists a framework to make informed choices founded on climate science and calls for attention to be refocused on the urgent need to reduce the real carbon dioxide emissions associated with healthcare., (© 2024 Association of Anaesthetists.)

Collaboration is strongly promoted as an effective means for cities to respond to climate change. While collaboration is perceived to offer opportunities to progress climate action in cities, little is known about how collaboration can enable low‐carbon transformation in practice. Furthermore, while collaboration is largely framed as a positive endeavour, there is a need to more carefully explore the challenges and barriers that may arise. This paper explores the aims, processes, and outcomes of collaboration within urban climate governance. Drawing on a policy review and semi‐structured interviews, we present empirical findings from the case study of Hong Kong. This paper identifies three types of collaboration that are structured by regulations, oriented to policy goals, and emerge as everyday practices within the governance of climate change and the energy system. The forms of collaboration challenge the assumptions that collaboration always brings positive outcomes in mobilising action for climate change. While collaboration opens up different modes of governance within cities, the paper highlights significant barriers in terms of the diverse roles of actors, ongoing power imbalances, and shifting governance spaces for intervention. Given the prevailing interest in working together, it is critical to review carefully how collaboration facilitates cities to achieve their climate goals and create momentum for action. The paper explores the opportunities and challenges of collaborative climate governance. It draws on a case study of Hong Kong and identifies three modes of collaborative climate and energy governance: regulatory, consensual, and participatory. The paper challenges the assumption that collaboration brings positive outcomes for action on climate change and offers new insights into potential barriers for climate action in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To address the central question of how climate change influences tree growth within the context of global warming, we used dendroclimatological analysis to understand the reactions of four major boreal tree species – Populus tremuloides, Betula papyrifera, Picea mariana, and Pinus banksiana– to climatic variations along a broad latitudinal gradient from 46 to 54°N in the eastern Canadian boreal forest. Tree-ring chronologies from 34 forested stands distributed at a 1° interval were built, transformed into principal components (PCs), and analyzed through bootstrapped correlation analysis over the period 1950–2003 to identify climate factors limiting the radial growth and the detailed radial growth–climate association along the gradient. All species taken together, previous summer temperature (negative influences), and current January and March–April temperatures (positive influences) showed the most consistent relationships with radial growth across the gradient. Combined with the identified species/site-specific climate factors, our study suggested that moisture conditions during the year before radial growth played a dominant role in positively regulating P. tremuloides growth, whereas January temperature and growing season moisture conditions positively impacted growth of B. papyrifera. Both P. mariana and P. banksiana were positively affected by the current-year winter and spring or whole growing season temperatures over the entire range of our corridor. Owing to the impacts of different climate factors on growth, these boreal species showed inconsistent responsiveness to recent warming at the transition zone, where B. papyrifera, P. mariana, and P. banksiana would be the most responsive species, whereas P. tremuloides might be the least. Under continued warming, B. papyrifera stands located north of 49°N, P. tremuloides at northern latitudes, and P. mariana and P. banksiana stands located north of 47°N might benefit from warming winter and spring temperatures to enhance their radial growth in the coming decades, whereas other southern stands might be decreasing in radial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An important component of the risks from climate change arises from outcomes that are very unlikely, but whose impacts if they were to occur would be extremely severe. Examples include levels of surface warming, or changes in the water cycle, that are at the extreme of plausible ranges, or crossing of a climate system "tipping point" such as ice sheet or ocean circulation instability. If such changes were to occur their impacts on infrastructure or ecosystems may exceed existing plans for adaptation. The traditional approach of ensemble climate change projections is not well suited to managing these High Impact‐Low Likelihood (HILL) risks, where the objective is to "prepare for the worst" rather than to "plan for what's likely." In this paper we draw together a number of ideas from recent literature, to classify four types of HILL climate outcome and to propose the development of a practical "toolkit" of physical climate information that can be used in future to inform HILL risk management. The toolkit consists of several elements that would need to be developed for each plausible HILL climate outcome, then deployed individually to develop targeted HILL risk management approaches for individual sectors. We argue that development of the HILL toolkit should be an important focus for physical climate research over the coming decade, and that the time is right for a focused assessment of HILL risks by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 7th Assessment Cycle. Plain Language Summary: To prepare for the risks that arise from climate change (and avoid them where possible), it is important to understand how climate is likely to change in future, and what the impacts are likely to be. Over many years, climate science has developed sophisticated climate projections to estimate these likely impacts, and these are widely used to plan how people and societies will need to adapt to climate change. However it is also important to understand possibilities that are unlikely, but would have even more severe impacts if they did occur—for example, global warming levels at the high end of plausible estimates, or crossing a "tipping point" for major changes in ice sheets or ocean currents. A different type of information is needed to plan for these risks. In this paper we propose a new set of climate information "tools" to respond to these high‐impact risks. The tools include plausible scenarios of extreme outcomes, and early warning systems to detect if they are on the horizon. Combining these new tools with existing climate projections will allow society to understand more fully the risks of climate change, and to plan for the likely effects while preparing for the worst. Key Points: Climate outcomes or events that have a high impact are a key component of climate risk, even if their likelihood is lowTraditional climate projections are of limited use to inform management of high impact‐low likelihood risksPhysical climate science needs an increased focus on storylines, early warning and monitoring to inform management of high impact risks [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire has always been an important component of many ecosystems, but anthropogenic global climate change is now altering fire regimes over much of Earth's land surface, spurring a more urgent need to understand the physical, biological, and chemical processes associated with fire as well as its effects on human societies. In 2020, AGU launched a Special Collection that spanned 10 journals, soliciting papers under the theme "Fire in the Earth System" to encourage state‐of‐the‐art publications in fire‐related science. The completed Special Collection comprises more than 100 papers. Here, we summarize the articles published in this collection, considering them to be grouped into seven themes: paleofire and its ties to climate; evolution of fire patterns in the recent past and the future, including the effects of ongoing climate change; physical (atmospheric) and chemical processes associated with fire; ecosystem effects, including on biogeochemical cycles; physical landscape change after fire and its associated hazards; fire effects on water quality, air quality, and human health; and new methods and technologies applied to fire research. Plain Language Summary: In 2020, AGU launched a Special Collection that spanned 10 journals, soliciting papers under the theme "Fire in the Earth System" to encourage state‐of‐the‐art publications in fire‐related science. The completed Special Collection comprises more than 100 papers. This Introduction summarizes the articles published in the Special Collection. Key Points: This introduction summarizes papers published through the Fire in the Earth System Special Collection [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is central to sustainable development as established in the official report of the High Level Panel on Water of the United Nations and World Bank. Such strategic importance of water justifies global demand for investment from all sources in the water sector to not only provide much needed infrastructure but also enhance the capacity of management and governance necessary to cope with complex water problems and risks, particularly under changing conditions characterized by climate change, urbanization, and environmental degradation. Yet, how to finance the investment need to build a strong water sector for sustainability is a practical question that has been gaining wide attention globally. This paper synthesizes current knowledge and understanding of water investment finance. It examines and characterizes water finance and challenges, encompassing economics and practice of financing water investment needs, the commonly considered finance model, and barriers for water finance in relation to the unique features of water investment needs and the water sector. It introduces some promising practices adopted or advocated to address the financing challenges, and highlights key governance and institutional strategies to help bridge the funding gap in the water sector. Based on the synthesis, the paper offers some discussion on the water finance issue in the end. This paper hopes to connect academia and development practice to stimulate communication while informing policy and management reform to better promote financing water investment for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether environmental management activities and corporate commitment to tackle climate change concerns play a role in hedging a company's market valuation after a political or economic shock. Based on the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and insurance‐like effects, this study advances knowledge on the impact of companies' engagement to tackle climate change on share price variation after the 2016 Brexit Referendum. The study also contributes to the limited number of studies using a difference‐in‐differences (DID) methodology in the CSR and climate change research area. Specifically, it uses DID, a natural experimental research design, and a multi‐variate regression analysis. The paper concludes that companies' concrete commitment to climate change has a buffer role in mitigating uncertainty related to Brexit. As the study found that financial markets reward companies that pay attention through the adoption of concrete actions and best practices on environmental issues during uncertain periods with respect to those that do not, the findings are in line with previous literature suggesting that corporate environmental commitment plays a buffering role during troubling periods. Results on the buffer role played by screenings, assessments, or disclosure activities to address environmental issues are unclear. We thus argue that during uncertain times, markets sustain companies taking proactive actions to tackle climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather and climate‐related human mobility (climate mobilities) including displacement are often viewed as security concerns. The recent coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic adds yet another layer of complexity which calls for unpacking these connections. This paper explores how existing patterns of migration and displacement that are driven by climate change impacts are compounded by the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic. First, the paper outlines the links between extreme weather events and human mobility to then explore how the impacts from COVID‐19 interact, cascade and compound pre‐existing vulnerabilities of people on the move. Examining the ways in which climate change is potentially driving or shifting patterns of climate mobility allows a shared understanding of this complex issue to be gained. This paper contextualises the compounding impacts with a geographical focus on Bangladesh, a well‐known climate hotspot. The paper contributes to the debates on impacts and human responses to climate change and concludes with a set of policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper systematically reviews the burgeoning but fragmented body of literature on climate change disclosure in the first two decades of the 21st century. Although there is an increasing trend for organizations to engage in climate change disclosure, the level of transparency, which is the key to allowing organizations to be responsible and accountable, varies significantly. We have synthesized current research findings on disclosure practice, antecedents, and outcomes into an integrative framework. In light of this framework, a more theoretically informed construct of carbon transparency is introduced in this review paper. We further highlight some research gaps supplementing with promising theorizing opportunities to encourage future works that can go beyond the extant scope of inquiry. Given the urgency of the current carbon budget, more studies are encouraged to examine the mechanism under which carbon transparency can lead to enhanced carbon performance in addressing climate change at the micro‐organization level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising temperatures associated with climate change have been shown to negatively affect the photosynthetic rates of boreal forest tree saplings at their southern range limits. To quantify the responses of ectomycorrhizal ( EM) fungal communities associated with poorly performing hosts, we sampled the roots of Betula papyrifera and Abies balsamea saplings growing in the B4Warmed (Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in Danger) experiment. EM fungi on the root systems of both hosts were compared from ambient and +3.4 °C air and soil warmed plots at two sites in northern Minnesota. EM fungal communities were assessed with high-throughput sequencing along with measures of plant photosynthesis, soil temperature, moisture, and nitrogen. Warming selectively altered EM fungal community composition at both the phylum and genus levels, but had no significant effect on EM fungal operational taxonomic unit ( OTU) diversity. Notably, warming strongly favored EM Ascomycetes and EM fungi with short-contact hyphal exploration types. Declining host photosynthetic rates were also significantly inversely correlated with EM Ascomycete and EM short-contact exploration type abundance, which may reflect a shift to less carbon demanding fungi due to lower photosynthetic capacity. Given the variation in EM host responses to warming, both within and between ecosystems, better understanding the link between host performance and EM fungal community structure will to clarify how climate change effects cascade belowground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural production systems currently face multiple challenges: Climate change, natural resource depletion, and supply chain disruption, together with global population growth. As sustainable agriculture must simultaneously deliver myriad services (e.g. provide food security, maintain natural resources, retain and improve framers' profitability, and sustain biodiversity), a systemic and multidisciplinary approach is thus needed. In this context, new technologies based on sensors, automatic machines, robots, and digital applications show much potential. The special section of the Agronomy Journal, entitled, "Agricultural and Biological Sciences: Plant, Soil, Animal and Environment Nutrient Management," brings together a coherent set of research studies. All papers published in this special section address current, relevant topics for agriculture, biology and environmental sciences with a multidisciplinary approach aimed at generating new scientific information on digital technologies, bioinformatics, plant science, soil resources, agricultural waste, and environmentally conscious approaches. A total of 58 papers were submitted, each of which was evaluated by expert reviewers using a double‐blind reviewing process and 25 full text papers were accepted for publication in the special section. The present paper highlights the findings of the published papers, with the aim of bringing cutting‐edge innovation to applied research in agriculture and biology. The published papers here provide new knowledge and viable solutions for better performance in agricultural and biological sciences. New technologies will change the concept of farming and agribusiness making it more profitable, efficient, safer, attractive, simple, smart, and finally sustainable. Rural development and food security policies must support and finance the easiest possible access to new technologies for agricultural producers. Core Ideas: New technologies in agriculture are pivotal for innovative cropping systems that improve climate resilience.Modern farms get significant benefits from new technologies.The special section, "Agricultural and Biological Sciences: Plant, Soil, Animal and Environment nutrient Management," provides both new knowledge from the cutting‐edge research and practical solutions to serious problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has impacted the world as we know it and will continue to do so unless radical steps are taken. These steps involve complex ethical decisions that will need to be made by leaders worldwide. This systematic literature review on the ethics of climate change from 1992 to 2020 reveals three key areas of research: the ethics of who bears the cost of climate change, market solutions, and geoengineering and non‐market solutions. Emerging research areas relate to the ethics of population, displacement and resettlement, and leadership. This paper reveals an intrinsic relationship between ethics and climate change that extends beyond a purely economic and emissions‐based perspective. An ethical perspective must be utilised to ensure that any amelioration efforts are equitable and consider those at the margins, including those in developing nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In situ data are an essential need in the analyses of past and current climate change. All over the world, different data rescue activities try to extend existing time series and to retrieve data in spatial and temporal data sparse regions. Also in Europe, part of the historic data is still only available in paper archives, without any digital access to these sources. The EUMETNET Data Rescue activity was started in order to investigate the potential for additional long‐term stations, to monitor the progress of data rescue in European countries and to support participants with know‐how exchange and international connections to facilitate data exchange. The activity raised the awareness of the need for data rescue and ongoing activities. This paper will provide information on the data rescue activities of 4 EUMETNET countries focusing on different aspects and in different states of the data rescue process. While Austria, Croatia and Slovenia are connected by a partly common history which is also displayed in the history of their meteorological network, Catalonia has a different historical background. Nevertheless, the problems data rescue is confronted with are similar for all activities. Therefore, the selected countries will provide a good overview of the problems and solutions discussed during the EUMETNET meetings. This paper wants to offer insight into different strategies for data rescue as well as into ongoing activities. Moreover, the importance of cooperation in regard to data rescue is underlined and examples of possible partnerships are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: The 3 spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) subspecies in North America (i.e., northern spotted owl [S. o. caurina], California spotted owl [S. o. occidentalis], Mexican spotted owl [S. o. lucida]) have all experienced population declines over the past century due to habitat loss and fragmentation from logging. Now, the emerging influences of climate change, high‐severity fire, and barred owl (Strix varia) invasion also appear to be synergistically and differentially affecting population trends of each subspecies. Our objective was to review the existing literature on the spotted owl to describe historical and emerging threats and whether those threats have been adequately examined for each subspecies. Using 527 publications from a Web of Science search of the literature from 1900–2015, we statistically evaluated the emphasis placed on each subspecies regarding 4 influences: mechanical tree removal, fire, climate change, and barred owl invasion. There were 98 papers that explicitly examined the effects of ≥1 of these influences. Most of these papers were focused on the northern spotted owl, and for all 3 subspecies, most papers examined short‐term effects only. We used our results to identify significant information gaps relative to historical and emerging threats. Commercial timber harvesting remains a potential threat for all 3 spotted owl subspecies, but effects from forest thinning may be increasing because of the heightened emphasis on fuels reduction and forest restoration treatments on public lands. Owl response to mechanical tree removal, especially forest thinning, remains understudied. Climate change also may threaten all 3 subspecies. Changes in climate likely affect survival and reproduction of spotted owls and their prey, and alter habitat availability by affecting disturbance regimes and vegetation composition and succession, but little empirical information is available describing specific responses to climate change. The literature on response to high‐severity fire is sparse for some subspecies, primarily short‐term in nature, and not consistent. Barred owl invasion is a major threat to the northern spotted owl and the California spotted owl but does not currently threaten the Mexican spotted owl. Rigorous research on the response of spotted owls to all factors influencing population change, particularly for the Mexican spotted owl, is needed. The most useful information for predicting owl response to these threats stems primarily from long‐term studies of owl demography. The lack of such studies within the range of the Mexican spotted owl greatly limits our understanding of its population dynamics and our ability to predict the effects of various threats on Mexican spotted owl populations. For all 3 subspecies, we encourage long‐term studies of their responses to threats, using uniquely marked owls across large spatial extents to account for spatiotemporal variability in ecological conditions within and among subspecies. © 2018 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: For the 70th Anniversary of the establishment of the British Society of Soil Science, this short paper explores the idea that research on soil organic matter has remained a central theme within soil science over the past 70 years, albeit with changing emphasis and application. The number of publications on soil organic matter has increased greatly in recent decades; for example, there were almost 35 000 journal papers with this theme in the decade 2007–2016. Several topics in research on soil organic matter, such as soil fertility, have endured for a number of decades, with publications found on soil organic matter and fertility in the decade 1947–1956. A search with other keywords occurring with soil, such as climate change, biodiversity, fertility, quality, health and security, showed that several topics did not appear before the 1970s and 1980s, but since then the sub‐topics and applications have diversified. Carbon is a keyword that has become more associated with publications on soil organic matter; carbon is in over half of soil organic matter publications of the last decade. A closer examination of research on agricultural soil carbon sequestration since 1990 reveals that the focus of papers in the literature has changed over this period. A closer examination of papers on modelling shows that the next generation of soil organic matter models is developing from pseudo first‐order decay models using conceptual pools and prescribed controls of turnover time to vertically resolved, microbially explicit models representing mineral surface and plant interactions. Given its higher policy profile during the last 2 years, research on soil organic matter and soil carbon sequestration is predicted to have a bright future. Highlights: The number of publications on soil organic matter has increased greatly in recent decades. Soil fertility research has endured for many decades, whereas other topics have diversified. Soil organic matter has been increasingly associated with carbon, which has changed the focus of papers since 1990. Expanding policy attention to soil organic matter research during the last 2 years suggests a bright future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the stabilization properties of fixed versus flexible exchange rate regimes and aims to answer this research question: Does greater exchange rate flexibility help an economy's adjustment to weather shocks? To address this question, the impact of weather shocks on real per capita GDP growth is quantified under the two alternative exchange rate regimes. We find that although weather shocks are generally detrimental to per capita income growth, the impact is less severe under flexible exchange rate regimes. Moreover, the medium‐term adverse growth impact of a 1°C increase in temperature under a pegged regime is about −1.4 percentage points on average, while under a flexible regime, the impact is less than one half that amount (−0.6 percentage point). This finding bolsters the idea that exchange rate flexibility not only helps mitigate the initial impact of the shock but also promotes a faster recovery. Importantly, there is evidence of nonlinear effects, whereby greater exchange rate flexibility can be more beneficial for EMDCs with hotter climates. In terms of mechanisms, our findings suggest that the depreciation of the nominal exchange rate under a flexible regime supports real export growth. In contrast to standard theoretical predictions, we find that countercyclical fiscal policy may not be effective under pegged regimes amid high debt, highlighting the importance of the policy mix and precautionary (fiscal) buffers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we contemplate the future of forest landscapes under changing climate conditions and land‐use demands, there is increasing value in studying historic forest conditions and how these landscapes have changed following past disturbances. Historic landscape paintings are a potential source of data on preindustrial forests with highly detailed, full‐color depictions of overstory and understory environments. They display key details about forest community composition, microhabitat features, and structural complexity from a time well before the advent of color photography. Despite these paintings' potential, their scientific applications have been impeded by questions of validity. How truly accurate are the images portrayed in these paintings? How much of an image is an artist's manipulation of a scene to best illustrate an allegory or romanticized view of nature? Following an established assessment model from historical ecology for evaluating resource validity, we demonstrate how scholarship on art history can be integrated with ecological understanding of forest landscapes to follow this model and address these questions of image veracity in 19th century American art. Further, to illustrate the potential use of these historic images in ecological studies, we present in a case study assessing microhabitat features of 10 different paintings. While this paper explores 19th century landscape art broadly, we focus our art historical review in particular on Asher Durand, a prolific and influential artist associated with the so‐called "Hudson River School" in the mid‐1800s. Durand left clear records about his perspectives on accurately depicting nature, and from a review of images and writings of Durand, we find support for the potential use of many of his paintings and sketches in historic forest ecology research. However, we also identify important caveats regarding potential ecological interpretations from these images. More broadly, because 19th century landscape paintings are not always directly transcriptive, and because regional art cultures differed in the 1800s, we cannot within this paper speak about landscape image veracity across all 19th century landscape art. However, in following established methods in historical ecology and integrating tools from art history research, we show that one can identify accurate historic landscape paintings for application in scientific studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pitt Review of the 2007 summer floods in the UK, published in 2008, commended the potential of natural flood management (NFM) for reducing flood risk. NFM is a nature‐based approach that has since gained substantial interest from both practitioners and academics. The review further highlighted the need for catchment‐based flood management (CBFM) to enhance resilience to flooding and climate change by incorporating NFM and wider nature‐based solutions into hard flood protection systems. Such integrated approaches are considered to be more sustainable and adaptable than the traditional hard‐engineered measures. More recently, the European Commission's European Green Deal also highlighted the need for greater use of nature‐based solutions including NFM for managing flood risk. Whilst there have been many attempts to quantify the effects of NFM through hydraulic and hydrological modelling, there is still no systematic review conducted for these modelling works. This review aims to summarise the current NFM modelling approaches, as well as discussing their key limitations related to data, model methods, and real‐world applications. This paper then goes further to highlight potential solutions to some of these challenges and provides guidance to assist modellers to improve future modelling and data collection process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of and gaps in knowledge in research on carbon accounting based on a systematic review of 117 papers published in influential accounting journals between 2005 and 2018. The review shows the literature has developed into four major streams of carbon accounting: carbon disclosure, management, performance and assurance, and that carbon accounting is emerging as a distinct discipline. Finally, our paper highlights future research opportunities to improve carbon accounting, so it can play an even more important role to help business achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: As climate change increases the frequency and severity of droughts in many regions, conservation during drought is becoming a major challenge for ecologists. Droughts are multidimensional climate events whose impacts may be moderated by changes in temperature, water availability or food availability, or some combination of these. Simultaneously, other stressors such as extensive anthropogenic landscape modification may synergize with drought. Useful observational models for guiding conservation decision‐making during drought require multidimensional, dynamic representations to disentangle possible drought impacts, and consequently, they will require large, highly resolved data sets. In this paper, we develop a two‐stage predictive framework for assessing how drought impacts vary with species, habitats and climate pathways. Location: Central Valley, California, USA. Methods: We used a two‐stage counterfactual analysis combining predictive linear mixed models and N‐mixture models to characterize the multidimensional impacts of drought on 66 bird species. We analysed counts from the eBird participatory science data set between 2010 and 2019 and produced species‐ and habitat‐specific estimates of the impact of drought on relative abundance. Results: We found that while fewer than a quarter (16/66) of species experienced abundance declines during drought, nearly half of all species (27/66) changed their habitat associations during drought. Among species that shifted their habitat associations, the use of natural habitats declined during drought while use of developed habitat and perennial agricultural habitat increased. Main Conclusions: Our findings suggest that birds take advantage of agricultural and developed land with artificial irrigation and heat‐buffering microhabitat structure, such as in orchards or parks, to buffer drought impacts. A working lands approach that promotes biodiversity and mitigates stressors across a human‐induced water gradient will be critical for conserving birds during drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world's glaciers recede in response to a warming atmosphere, a change in the magnitude and frequency of related hazards is expected. Among the most destructive hazards are glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs), and their future evolution is concerning for local populations and sustainable development policy. Central to this is a better understanding of triggers. There is a long‐standing assumption that earthquakes are a major GLOF trigger, and seismic activity is consistently included as a key hazard assessment criterion. Here, we provide the first empirical evidence that this assumption is largely incorrect. Focusing on the Tropical Andes, we show that, of 59 earthquakes (1900–2021) the effects of which intersect with known glacier lakes, only one has triggered GLOFs. We argue that, to help develop climate resilient protocols, the focus for future assessments should be on understanding other key GLOF drivers, such as thawing permafrost and underlying structural geology. Plain Language Summary: Climate change is increasing glacier melt in high mountains and increasing the size and number of glacial lakes. Over time, these lakes may drain catastrophically to generate glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs), which can devastate downstream communities and destroy valuable infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and hydroelectric power facilities. As a result, many risk assessments have been carried out to understand what the triggers of GLOFs might be, in order to better predict their occurrence. One of the main triggers has been assumed to be earthquakes, but this association has not been properly tested. In this paper, we use earthquake and GLOF data from the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes to test this and find that there is little association between earthquakes and GLOFs. We conclude by arguing that focus needs to be on other GLOF triggers, and earthquake activity should be used as a secondary – not primary – indicator in GLOF susceptibility studies. Key Points: Glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are a major risk concern, with earthquakes being commonly considered effective triggers in hazard assessmentsOf 59 earthquakes (1900–2021), the effects of which intersect lakes in the Tropical Andes, only one triggered GLOFsWe suggest that earthquake activity should be used as a secondary – not primary – susceptibility indicator for GLOFs [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to update our understanding of the carbon cycle in the Himalayas, the most intense collisional orogeny globally, by providing new insight into its impact on Cenozoic climate cooling through the use of isotopic variations in both organic and inorganic carbon and an isotopic mass balance model. Our results from 20 selected hot springs show that the relative contributions of dissolved carbon from the mantle, metamorphic decarbonization, aqueous dissolution, and soil organic matter are approximately 2%, 82%, 6%, and 10%, respectively. Approximately 87% ± 5% of CO2 generated in the deep crust precipitates as calcite, while approximately 5.5% ± 1% of this carbon is converted to biomass through microbial chemosynthesis at depths less than 2 km. Our random forests approach yielded a metamorphic carbon flux from the entire Himalayan orogenic belt of approximately 2.7 ∼ 4.5 × 1012 mol/yr. The minor CO2 released into the atmosphere (2.5 ∼ 4.2 × 1011 mol/yr) is comparable to the carbon consumption driven by Himalayan weathering. This paper provides new insights into deep carbon cycling, notably that approximately 93% of deeply sourced carbon is trapped in the shallow crust, rendering orogenic processes carbon neutral and possibly acting as one of the major triggers of long‐term climate cooling in the Cenozoic. Plain Language Summary: Large‐scale deep metamorphic decarbonization and CO2 release into the atmosphere during continental collision orogenesis worldwide have had significant impacts on Cenozoic global climate change. However, the carbon sources and sinks and the mechanisms underlying their impacts on climate change are not fully understood. This paper reports the chemistry of aqueous solutions, carbon isotopic compositions of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and helium and carbon isotopic compositions of free gases from hot springs in southern Tibet. The carbon isotope fractionation model between gas and aqueous solutions revealed that the carbon released from depth underwent six different stages. Based on the random forests machine learning algorithm, we estimated the metamorphic carbon flux across the Himalayan orogenic belt. Furthermore, only a small fraction (7%) of deep carbon is eventually released into the atmosphere, and this volume is the same magnitude as the amount of carbon absorbed by silicate weathering on the Tibetan Plateau. This paper emphasizes that the carbon sequestration process in the upper crust may have resulted in nearly carbon‐neutral geological bodies in the Himalayan orogenic belt, thus playing a critical role in Cenozoic climate cooling. Key Points: Approximately 87% of deeply sourced carbon precipitates as calcite, while approximately 5.5% is sequestered as biomass in the shallow crustThe carbon flux across the Himalayan orogenic belt was estimated by the random forests approachCrustal thickening has attenuated long‐term deep carbon emissions from the Himalayas [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic climate change has an unprecedented impact on ecosystems and their services, with severe consequences for human well‐being, particularly for the marginalised and vulnerable members of society in the Global South. The well‐being of communities relies not only on material and regulating services ecosystems provide but also on non‐material services.In this paper, we unravel the diverse ways that climate change impacts affect Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) and the well‐being of rural populations in four sites in Madagascar—a biodiversity hotspot but one of the economically poorest countries in the world. We conducted participatory community workshops, mapping and semi‐structured interviews with local residents across social subgroups to understand the mechanisms of climate‐related degradation and the resulting impacts on different dimensions of human well‐being through an NCP lens.We found that non‐material services are generally more often associated with well‐being effects. Climate change degrades material and non‐material services through sea level rise, biodiversity loss, drought, precipitation and temperature variability, with consequences for materials, companionship and labour, food and feed, and physical and psychological experiences. Loss of land and forests is expressed through ecological grief.The outcome of our research provides evidence‐based information to local policymakers, conservation practitioners, and climate change agencies.This information can help improve government efforts toward holistic conservation and climate change adaptation by addressing the impacts on the physical and mental well‐being of the most vulnerable communities. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teachers' conceptions of climate change knowledge, contributing to the growing body of work on the geographies of climate change. The paper focuses on the data generated through in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with a sample of 48 teachers in India to address the research question: What discourses about climate change knowledge are being constructed by teachers in India? We argue that teachers' lesson planning and searches for information are at the forefront of the changing ways in which individuals engage with, find out and construct meaning about climate change. These teachers' beliefs about climate change are very strongly held, even in the face of a perceived lack of expertise or understanding: climate change is described as the 'need of the hour', which this work understands as not only involving material impacts and processes but also important epistemological, collaborative needs through which education might contribute to public reasoning about climate change. Through this analysis we present a 'certainty problematic' as a heuristic device that foregrounds tensions between the inherent uncertainty of knowledge and (against climate denialism) certainty about anthropogenic climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change stands at the forefront of the worldwide agenda. Although its consequences are harmful to all humanity, some regions across the world remain more vulnerable than others. Sub‐Saharan Africa is one of the most suffering regions. In this paper, we investigate the climate change‐income inequality nexus in a panel of sub‐Saharan countries over the period 1990–2019. A greater emphasis is put on the potential transmission channels that drive this relationship. By using the recently developed method of moments quantile regression, we find that income inequality is exacerbated by the vulnerability to climate change. This relationship is still robust across all the quantiles with a greater effect at the highest quantile. The empirical findings reveal also the moderating role of agriculture, education, and gender through which the effect of climate change on income inequality is channeled. In light of the outcomes, the sub‐Saharan African region still needs appropriate combined mitigation and adaptation measures to efficiently combat the adverse effects of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic changes can cause unpredictability in flood regimes that traditional flood risk management (FRM) approaches may struggle with. Therefore, flood resilience is seen as a supplementation to these approaches, putting a larger emphasis on flood acceptance and minimising consequences. An (emergent) group contributing towards flood resilience is civil society. This paper examines how civil society contributions can be furthered and guided in the Netherlands as well as exploring potential limitations in doing so. To achieve this, England is used as a good practice example due to a more developed and defined role for civil society being present here. Data were collected on both actual (England and the Netherlands) and potential (The Netherlands) civil society contributions. These were compared to identify potential avenues for Dutch civil society contributions to flood resilience that can be further investigated. The research shows that the most promising avenues are improving advocacy from citizens, improving local flood awareness and developing relationships between FRM authorities and existing citizen groups that can be harnessed and mobilised to support flood resilience. Additionally, the research also provides insights into potential limitations for transferring resilience approaches from one context to another beyond the cases discussed in this publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture is weather dependent, and changes in climate can have a drastic impact on our ability to feed, fuel, and clothe the world's population. Climate change is causing more frequent and unprecedented extreme weather events that are already negatively affecting agriculture. We need to assess the effects of extreme temperatures and rainfall on agriculture. Patterns of short‐term extreme weather events, such as elevated temperatures, flooding, and strong winds, are not predictable enough to design field experiments around. Process‐based crop and soil simulation models allow us to explore new management options and thus provide whole‐system‐based knowledge and management guides for different locations over variable climate conditions. By using crop simulation models, researchers can test different adaptation strategies and assess their effectiveness in reducing the impacts of climate change on agricultural production. In this paper, we discuss the development of crop models and how they have been used to assess the effects of a changing climate on agricultural productivity and propose methods for agriculture to adapt to those changes. We describe potential applications of crop models to assess regional issues such as irrigation demand, greenhouse gas emissions, and policy decisions. Better understanding of how weather and climate forecasts at various scales are provided and the reliability of these forecasts is important for using crop models as a planning tool. Different approaches for simulating long‐term climate change impacts on crop yield and seasonal yield forecasting are discussed. The use of ensemble models to better assess climate change impacts is also discussed. Core Ideas: Assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture requires a systems approach.Agriculture is weather dependent, and changes in climate can have a drastic impact on food production.Crop models can extend the results of physical experiments to better assess long‐term climate change effects on agriculture.Crop models are critical in assessing climate change impacts and developing adaptation and mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photogrammetry can be an important source of data for detecting climate change and, indeed, many other applications requiring monitoring of the earth's environment. Indeed, the first paper in this virtual issue by Bernard et al. ([1]) discusses the use of such techniques to detect changes in the Arctic using UAV images from 2015 and 2016, and then comparing these with orthophoto data from 2010. However, both lidar and radar are more modern techniques than aerial photography and, although they may provide historical data over future decades, currently they do not provide the temporal profile, spanning several decades, that aerial photography is capable of in detecting climate change. [Extracted from the article]

Summary: In this study, we used material flow analysis and life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts and impact reductions related to wood consumption in Japan from 1970 to 2013. We then conducted future projections of the impacts and reductions until 2050 based on multiple future scenarios of domestic forestry, wood, and energy use. An impact assessment method involving characterization, damage assessment, and integration with a monetary unit was used, and the results were expressed in Japanese yen (JPY). We found that environmental impacts from paper consumption, such as climate change and urban air pollution, were significant and accounted for 56% to 83% of the total environmental impacts between 1970 and 2013. Therefore, reductions of greenhouse gas, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur oxide emissions from paper production would be an effective measure to reduce the overall environmental impacts. An increase in wood use for building construction, civil engineering, furniture materials, and energy production could lead to reductions of environmental impacts (via carbon storage, material substitution, and fuel substitution) amounting to 357 billion JPY in 2050, which is equivalent to 168% of the 2013 levels. Particularly, substitution of nonwooden materials, such as cement, concrete, and steel, with wood products in building construction could significantly contribute to impact reductions. Although an increase of wood consumption could reduce environmental impacts, such as climate change, resource consumption, and urban air pollution, increased wood consumption would also be associated with land‐use impacts. Therefore, minimizing land transformations from forest to barren land will be important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of elevated carbon dioxide [CO2] and ozone [O3] and their interaction on wood chemistry and anatomy of five clones of 3-year-old trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.). Wood chemistry was studied also on paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh.) and sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) seedling-origin saplings of the same age. Material for the study was collected from the Aspen Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment in Rhinelander, WI, USA, where the saplings had been exposed to four treatments: control (C; ambient CO2, ambient O3), elevated CO2 (560ppm during daylight hours), elevated O3 (1.5 × ambient during daylight hours) and their combination (CO2 + O3) for three growing seasons (1998–2000). Wood chemistry responses to the elevated CO2 and O3 treatments differed between species. Aspen was most responsive, while maple was the least responsive of the three tree species. Aspen genotype affected the responses of wood chemistry and, to some extent, wood structure to the treatments. The lignin concentration increased under elevated O3 in four clones of aspen and in birch. However, elevated CO2 ameliorated the effect. In two aspen clones, nitrogen in wood samples decreased under combined exposure to CO2 and O2. Soluble sugar concentration in one aspen clone and starch concentration in two clones were increased by elevated CO2. In aspen wood, α-cellulose concentration changed under elevated CO2, decreasing under ambient 03 and slightly increasing under elevated O3. Hemicellulose concentration in birch was decreased by elevated CO2 and increased by elevated O3. In aspen, elevated O3 induced statistically significant reductions in distance from the pith to the bark and vessel lumen diameter, as well as increased wall thickness and wall percentage, and in one clone, decreased fibre lumen diameter. Our results show that juvenile wood properties of broadleaves, depending on species and genotype, were altered by atmospheric gas concentrations predicted for the year 2050 and that CO2 ameliorates some adverse effects of elevated O3 on wood chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Riparian communities in developing countries such as Bangladesh, whose livelihoods depend especially on fisheries and other subsistence activities, are under considerable pressure due to climate change. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how the dynamics of riparian communities are influenced by climate change and how its impacts can be assessed. Using Bangladesh as an example, this paper describes the various climate stressors affecting riparian communities and their socio‐economic impacts, and it outlines some measures needed to increase their resilience to a changing climate. The results show that riparian communities are not only quite vulnerable to the impacts of climate change but also have a rather low level of resilience. This challenge can, at least in part, be attributed to their fragile living conditions, which intensify the socio‐economic impacts of extreme events. One lesson from the paper is that handling climate‐induced risks in riparian communities requires implementing strategic measures to improve local climate and livelihood resilience, such as effective public health infrastructure and a resilient built environment. Win‐win scenarios comprise strategies that offer multiple benefits including better water storage, flood control, and improved riparian habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) plays an important role in promoting developing countries to reduce carbon emission and meet the requirement for carbon reduction under carbon neutral and carbon peak targets. To evaluate the incentive effect of subsidization mechanisms on CCS investment, the paper incorporates two incentives into the model, considers the effects of the carbon trading price, electricity price, and other uncertain factors on the investment behaviors for CCS projects under uncertainty and explores incentive intensity of two policies on investment based on the real option method. The results show that even in the case of full operating cost subsidies and double electricity price subsidies, the power plant still delays CCS investment due to the imperfection of carbon market. The most appropriate policies for supporting immediate investment in CCS project are identified in the paper by considering the critical carbon price and electricity price in different scenarios. Additionally, the findings show that it is more efficient for the electricity price subsidy than cost subsidy with same subsidy proportion under single policy condition, while the minimum subsidy amount required to invest immediately is 32.86 million CNY in the combination of the two policies. This provides environmental policymakers with valuable insights on promoting CCS deployment under the context of carbon reduction. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From television news bulletins, newspapers and magazines, documentaries and films, social media memes and cartooning, to protest and art – even to the images that spontaneously come into our minds – polar bears are now ubiquitously associated with climate change. Indeed, polar bear visuals now often mean nothing but climate change. Why do polar bear images, as a particular type of climate change imagery, continue to thrive and to circulate – and indeed, to haunt – our imaginings of climate change? This paper seeks to understand the tangled social, cultural, political, and scientific histories of polar bear visuals through defining a new concept, a 'visual metonym'. This concept is worked through using a longitudinal analysis of visual evidence arising from political, social, scientific, and cultural domains and using a hauntological approach that is sensitive to the spectre‐like nature of polar bear imagery. This reveals three periods in which the work that polar bear visuals has undertaken has changed: polar bear (1990s–mid‐2000s), political bear (mid‐2000s), and climate bear (mid‐2000s onwards). By the time of the 'climate bear' period, polar bear images had become entrenched and irreducible from (i.e., they haunt) climate change. As polar bear images came to stand in for much wider debates – of climate scepticism and political (in)action – they became a visual metonym. The paper concludes by presenting the visual metonym concept as a way to explore and understand how particular image types gain power, agency, and meaning and how they come to act as signalling devices representing complex engagements with contemporary issues. The visual metonym concept can be used to understand, interrogate, and critique naturalised and pervasive issue‐led imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that repeated concerns about the nature of academic accounting research should be taken seriously. It proposes engaged research as a means of deepening our social license. Anchored in the argument of Chua and Fiedler (2022), engaged research is characterised as follows. It engages with complex relations of practice, is a crosscultural journey and it co‐produces research on matters that matter (to practitioners, regulators, academics, communities). The paper outlines how accounting research could engage with a contemporary business landscape characterised by pervasive digitisation as well as new risks and opportunities brought about by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Earth is currently undergoing a sixth global‐scale ecological crisis. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2021 highlighted a need to curb global heating at 1.5 degrees above the pre‐industrial baseline, and outlined a range of likely impacts of climate change on global societies should no action be taken, particularly in relation to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Despite this need, policy‐based action at a nation state level is lacking, with talks at COP25 failing to reach necessary agreements. In response to this, and as we approach COP26, a significant global youth movement has been activated, with children and young people taking it upon themselves to highlight a need for climate and environmental action, calling for others to follow. This paper follows the emotional journey of one of its co‐authors, 11‐year‐old environmental activist, Lucie. Through the innovative approach of co‐production with Lucie, in this paper we detail the role of emotion in one youth activist's journey. From her initial reactions watching BBC's Blue Planet II, to the multifaceted highs and lows that have followed as she strives for change, we illuminate the emotional implications such experiences may have on children and young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change poses increasingly severe risks for coastal ecosystems and coastal communities all around the globe. This condition requires implementing climate adaptation policy and advancing scientific knowledge to adapt to the current and future climate risks. However, implementing climate adaptation policy in coastal areas is still in its infancy. This paper provides insight into 650 peer‐reviewed empirical research studies on coastal climate adaptation from the past two decades, providing global evidence on the status quo and distilling six relevant research gaps: (a) minimal contribution to the implementation phase of the adaptation policy cycle; (b) geographical imbalance toward specific ecoregions and coastal sub‐systems; (c) less attention to regional scale; (d) lack of sectoral integration; (e) poor contextualization within policy and coastal governance instruments and management arrangements; (f) limited economic and financial focus. Therefore, this paper identifies areas where future empirical research can help fill current knowledge gaps and improve coastal communities' ability to adapt to climate change. This increased knowledge will enhance the resilience of coastal social‐ecological systems in the face of environmental challenges. Plain Language Summary: Coastal regions are complex environments and are severely threatened by climate change. These regions are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, altered precipitation patterns, and higher ocean temperatures. These changes can pose pervasive threats to coastal communities, ecosystems, infrastructure, and economic activities. This manuscript reviews the last 20 years of coastal adaptation science and provides evidence of six areas where further research is needed. In our analysis, we adopt a worldwide scale and multidisciplinary perspective to review 650 publications and draw some conclusions and recommendations around which science could benefit coastal adaptation to climate change. Overall, we find a geographical imbalance of knowledge production which mostly neglects the global south, and that science needs to boost cooperation across borders and economic sectors and services. Key Points: Scientific contribution to the adaptation policy cycle needs an implementation perspectiveAdaptation research must advance knowledge in highly climate‐sensitive ecoregions, across borders and sectorsEconomic barriers to coastal adaptation have been overlooked globally [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reference or "no‐feedback" radiative response to warming is fundamental to understanding how much global warming will occur for a given change in greenhouse gases or solar radiation incident on the Earth. The simplest estimate of this radiative response is given by the Stefan‐Boltzmann law as −4σTe‾3≈−3.8 ${-}4\sigma {\overline{{T}_{e}}}^{3}\approx -3.8$ W m−2 K−1 for Earth's present climate, where Te‾ $\overline{{T}_{e}}$ is a global effective emission temperature. The comparable radiative response in climate models, widely called the "Planck feedback," averages −3.3 W m−2 K−1. This difference of 0.5 W m−2 K−1 is large compared to the uncertainty in the net climate feedback, yet it has not been studied carefully. We use radiative transfer models to analyze these two radiative feedbacks to warming, and find that the difference arises primarily from the lack of stratospheric warming assumed in calculations of the Planck feedback (traditionally justified by differing constraints on and time scales of stratospheric adjustment relative to surface and tropospheric warming). The Planck feedback is thus masked for wavelengths with non‐negligible stratospheric opacity, and this effect implicitly acts to amplify warming in current feedback analysis of climate change. Other differences between Planck and Stefan‐Boltzmann feedbacks arise from temperature‐dependent gas opacities, and several artifacts of nonlinear averaging across wavelengths, heights, and different locations; these effects partly cancel but as a whole slightly destabilize the Planck feedback. Our results point to an important role played by stratospheric opacity in Earth's climate sensitivity, and clarify a long‐overlooked but notable gap in our understanding of Earth's reference radiative response to warming. Plain Language Summary: Earth's climate is stable because a warmer planet loses more energy to space, at infrared wavelengths invisible to the naked eye. The rate of change of this energy loss as the planet warms provides an estimate how Earth's energy balance responds to warming, which is simple enough to write on a small piece of paper. When scientists investigate the warming predicted by climate models, they often start from a similar but not identical calculation of how Earth's energy balance responds to warming. This calculation, based on model output, is about 15% less stabilizing than the simple pencil‐and‐paper estimate. In this paper, we explore the causes of this 15% difference between the pencil‐and‐paper estimate and the calculations using climate models. We show that the difference is primarily caused by the lack of assumed warming in climate models high in Earth's atmosphere, where temperatures are not closely linked to surface warming. This lack of warming acts as a hidden destabilizing feedback in current analysis of climate models. Key Points: Earth's reference radiative response, or "Planck feedback," is ∼0.5 W m−2 K−1 less stabilizing than a Stefan‐Boltzmann estimateWe find this deviation is mostly due to the assumed lack of stratospheric warming in calculations of the Planck feedbackThe lack of stratospheric warming serves as an implicit positive feedback in analysis of climate model warming [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Irrigation & Drainage is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We are in the midst of a crisis of climate change and environmental degradation that will only get worse, unless significant changes are rapidly made. Globally, the healthcare sector causes a large share of our total environmental footprint: 4.4% of greenhouse gases. Sustainable healthcare has emerged as a way for healthcare sectors in high‐income countries to help mitigate climate change by reducing their emissions. Whether global health should be sustainable and what ethical grounds might exist to support such a claim are not questions that have been investigated. The paper argues that global health practice—the delivery of health services to underserved populations in resource‐poor areas of the world—should be sustainable as a matter of climate justice and solidarity. Reducing climate change‐related risks and harms for the vulnerable is integral to the mission of global health and thus it is necessary to consider the climate impact of its practice. The field has a duty to provide sustainable health services that are responsive to climate change‐related changes in the local burden of disease and to build sustainable health system infrastructure. Specific responsibilities for global health funders, managers, and implementers to uphold the duty are proposed. To conclude, the paper considers what limits might be placed on the duty to deliver sustainable global healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Each year, wild and managed fires burn roughly 4 million km2 [~400 million hectares (Mha)] of savanna, forest, grassland and agricultural ecosystems. Land use and climate change have altered fire regimes throughout the world, with a trend toward higher‐severity fires found from Australia, the Americas, Europe and Asia, to the Arctic. In 2020, there were notable catastrophic fires in Australia (in the 2019/20 Austral fire season), the Western United States, South America and Siberia. These fires defined much of the global fire year and were compounded by the socio‐economic disruption of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. Location: Global. Time period: 2020. Major taxa studied: Flora and fauna. Methods: The Global Ecology and Biogeography special issue, 'Increasing threat of wildfires: the year 2020 in perspective', includes 18 papers that catalogue these fire events, their drivers and their impacts on flora and fauna. Results: Collectively, these papers highlight the importance of fire response traits, exposure and sensitivity to interacting threats in determining fire impacts. Main conclusions: The scale of the 2020 megafires has helped identify new research areas required to more comprehensively assess fire impacts on biodiversity and biogeochemistry and to inform ecosystem management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land‐use change is considered the greatest threat to nature, having caused worldwide declines in the abundance, diversity, and health of species and ecosystems. Despite increasing research on this global change driver, there are still challenges to forming an effective synthesis. The estimated impact of land‐use change on biodiversity can depend on location, research methods, and taxonomic focus, with recent global meta‐analyses reaching disparate conclusions. Here, we critically appraise this research body and our ability to reach a reliable consensus. We employ named entity recognition to analyze more than 4000 abstracts, alongside full reading of 100 randomly selected papers. We highlight the broad range of study designs and methodologies used; the most common being local space‐for‐time comparisons that classify land use in situ. Species metrics including abundance, distribution, and diversity were measured more frequently than complex responses such as demography, vital rates, and behavior. We identified taxonomic biases, with vertebrates well represented while detritivores were largely missing. Omitting this group may hinder our understanding of how land‐use change affects ecosystem feedback. Research was heavily biased toward temperate forested biomes in North America and Europe, with warmer regions being acutely underrepresented despite offering potential insights into the future effects of land‐use change under novel climates. Various land‐use histories were covered, although more research in understudied regions including Africa and the Middle East is required to capture regional differences in the form of current and historical land‐use practices. Failure to address these challenges will impede our global understanding of land‐use change impacts on biodiversity, limit the reliability of future projections and have repercussions for the conservation of threatened species. Beyond identifying literature biases, we highlight the research priorities and data gaps that need urgent attention and offer perspectives on how to move forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Irrigation & Drainage is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) connect trends in future socioeconomic and technological development with impacts on the environment, such as global climate change. They occupy a critical position at the global science‐policy interface. IAMs and associated scenarios have come under intense scrutiny, with critiques addressing both methodological and substantive issues, such as land use, carbon dioxide removal and technology performance. Criticisms have also addressed the transparency of IAM methods and assumptions as well as the transparency of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of IAMs. This paper, authored by the co‐chairs of IPCC Working Group III and members of the Technical Support Unit, documents activities aiming to enhance the transparency of IAMs and their assessment. It includes a history of IPCC's approach to scenarios covering the formation of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC) in 2007 and the emergence of the approach by which IPCC facilitates the development of scenarios, but does not produce them itself. An IPCC Expert Meeting at the start of the current assessment cycle made transparency recommendations targeted at both the research community and IPCC. The community has taken steps to "open the black box" by moving toward open‐source and web‐publishing IAM documentation. IPCC has included an Annex to its next report focusing on scenarios and modeling methodologies. An open call for scenario data linked to the current IPCC report includes an expanded set of input and output variables. This paper ends with suggested criteria for measuring the success of these efforts to improve transparency. This article is categorized under:Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Applications of Integrated Assessment to Climate ChangeIntegrated Assessment of Climate Change > Integrated Assessment Modeling [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a commentary on the paper in GCB by Moinet et al. (2023) entitled "Carbon for soils, not soils for carbon". The paper challenges two claims often made for soil carbon sequestration: (1) Sequestration of C in agricultural soils can make a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation. (2) Increasing SOC will routinely lead to increased crop yields and contribute to global food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy production may offer advantages to human health by way of less pollution and fewer climate-change associated ill-health effects. Limited data suggests that renewable energy will also offer benefits to workers in the form of reduced occupational injury, illness and deaths. However, studies of worker safety and health in the industry are limited. The Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center (MAP ERC) Energy Summit held in April 2011 explored issues concerning worker health and safety in the renewable energy industry. The limited information on hazards of working in the renewable energy industry emphasizes the need for further research. Two basic approaches to guiding both prevention and future research should include: (1) applying lessons learned from other fields of occupational safety and health, particularly the extractive energy industry; and (2) utilizing knowledge of occupational hazards of specific materials and processes used in the renewable energy industry. Am. J. Ind. Med. 56:1359-1370, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [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]

As the consequences of climate change become better understood, there is growing agreement among development practitioners and academics on the need for mainstreaming climate adaptation into social protection. This review paper assesses the progress in mainstreaming efforts, revealing that there has been considerable progress made to date. However, a number of critical issues relating to the challenges of such mainstreaming in the context of developing countries and the conceptual framework needed to assess the outcomes of such developmental programmes are yet to be addressed. These issues are examined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The soil respiration (Rs) of forests is a major component of global Rs, yet few studies have focused on it. This study aimed to estimate global forest Rs and its changes at a resolution of 30 m via an artificial neural network (ANN) model. Five input candidates representing forest type, climatic, soil, and geographical information, as well as 1472 satisfactory forest Rs records, were used to build the ANN model and evaluate the model performance via a 10‐fold cross‐validation scheme. Global forest change data sets were used to accurately define the extent of forests and their changes, which was achievable because of the dynamic information and high resolution (30 m) of the data sets. The results indicate that the average annual global forest Rs from 2000 to 2020, as estimated by the optimal ANN model with an r2 value of 0.67 and a root‐mean‐square error of 252.6 g C m−2 yr−1, was 46.24 ± 5.86 Pg C yr−1. From 2001 to 2019, the average theoretical annual global forest Rs loss was 0.22 ± 0.06 Pg C yr−1 due to an average forest loss area of 23.4 million ha yr−1. In addition, the annual Rs theoretically increased by 0.75 Pg C in 2012 due to a global forest gain area of 80.5 million from 2001 to 2012. The presented data sets of global forest Rs and its changes can provide an accurate benchmark for discussing the carbon cycle and climate change at global to regional scales, even when operating over a small forest area (i.e., dozens of ha), which is a scale that has been ignored in other global Rs studies. Plain Language Summary: This paper discusses the soil respiration (written as Rs) of global forests, which has rarely been the focus of other Rs studies. Soil respiration is defined as the amount of Carbon Dioxide released from the soil surface into the atmosphere. The goal of this study was to estimate global forest Rs and its changes at a resolution of 30 m using the artificial intelligence model. The model had five input candidates representing forest type, climatic, soil, and geographical information. Additionally, 1472 satisfactory forest Rs records were used to build the model and evaluate its performance via a cross‐validation scheme. Global forest change data sets have a high 30 m‐resolution and provide dynamic information, and were thus chosen to accurately define the extent of forests and their changes in this research. This results show that the estimated average annual global forest Rs from 2000 to 2020 was 46.24 ± 5.86 quadrillion gram of carbon. The data sets produced by this study is able to act as an accurate benchmark used to discuss the carbon cycle and climate change at global to regional scales, and they can even make it possible to operate over a smaller forest area, such as dozens of ha. Key Points: 30‐m resolution global data sets of forest soil respiration and its changes from 2000 to 2020 are providedThe average annual global forest soil respiration from 2000 to 2020 was 46.24 ± 5.86 Pg C yr−1An accurate benchmark is provided for discussing the carbon cycle and climate change at global to regional scales, even over a small forest area (i.e., dozens of ha) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the point that our current political‐economic‐climate conjuncture demands new engagements at the dynamic interface of climate capitalism. Using two cases of climate capitalist responses to climate challenges, I demonstrate the reparative potentials that emerge from the tensions and ambiguities that typify that conjuncture. In the first case, I examine financialised climate infrastructure in Jakarta, Indonesia, that promises to protect the city from flooding while enriching city elites, but against which diverse social movements and collectives have organised. The second case is about a cooperative energy provider in Australia, operating on the terrain of a neoliberalised electricity market and climate change, and working towards multifaceted repair by collectivising and redistributing surplus and modelling democratic engagement. Those involved in these vastly different cases both pursue repair and reparations through climate capitalist projects by reckoning with historical and present climate debts while constructing forward‐looking programs. As such, they chart the first steps towards reparative climate futures. This paper identifies the political and socioecological potentials from two key climate capitalist projects: flood protection infrastructures in Jakarta and cooperative energy in Australia. From this, it builds a framework of repair and reparations for engaging with climate capitalism and argues that the emerging tensions and ambiguities facilitate steps towards reparative climate futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper reviews four dimensions of the climate change (CC) debate concerning perception, framing, and political and economic dimensions of CC. It attempts to address the question posed by sociological research as to what can be done to reduce the social forces driving CC. In doing so, it attempts to uncover mechanisms that delay or prevent the social change required to combat CC. Such mechanisms call into question the Ecological Modernization Theory's assumption that modern societies embrace environmental sustainability with no radical intervention to change the social, political, and economic order. It specifically considers how the representation of CC as a distant phenomenon, in both temporal and physical terms, might contribute to social disengagement. A reflection on the interdependencies among science, political economy, media, and individual perceptions guides this paper. All these social forces also shape the CC discourse in diverse ways according to the evolution of the phenomenon over time (in scientific, but also in political and economic terms) and in relation to its spatial dimension (global/national/local). The variety of climate discourses contributes to increasing political uncertainty; however, this is not the only factor that generates confusion around the CC. Multiple and contrasting information might trigger a "blaming/empowering game" that works at various levels. This mechanism simultaneously promotes the necessity for sustainable development and perpetuates "business as usual‐oriented" practices. Implementing sustainable development is therefore constantly undermined by a difficulty in identifying "heroes" and "devils" in the context of CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pacific Small Island Developing State (SIDS) of Kiribati has met the formal, minimal criteria for graduation from the Least Developed Country (LDC) category of the United Nations on multiple occasions from 2003 to 2018. Nevertheless, in light of both structural, long‐standing constraints and severe more recent challenges – such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, the Russia‐Ukraine conflict and the exacerbation of the climate crisis – that past assessments took into only partial consideration, the country still appears, at present, unready to lose the support measures that come with the LDC inclusion and to graduate, once and for all, with sustained "momentum." The analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats conducted in this paper suggests the need to further delay any decisions on graduation until more holistic, thorough readiness assessments can be conducted on the basis of new, additional indicators closely reflecting the full range of vulnerabilities that Kiribati, and other similar SIDS, currently face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate crisis threatens and violates human rights to development, education, food, health, housing, life, meaningful and informed participation, self‐determination, and water. Climate injustices refer to how some communities are shouldering the disproportionate brunt of the negative effects of climate change while being the least responsible. With a human rights‐based approach focused on protection and participation rights, this paper reviews climate injustices based on age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, geography, income, Indigenous identity, migratory status, race, refugee and internally displaced status, and their intersections. Policy recommendations include increasing climate education, utilizing disaggregated data, and expanding mental health services. Cross‐cutting themes throughout the paper are that climate change is interconnected with other crises, thereby compounding inequalities, and that a diversity of interdisciplinary and international perspectives and knowledge centered on the voices of frontline communities are essential for addressing the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of policy uncertainty caused by climate change has attracted widespread attention, but there are few studies on the relationship between climate policy uncertainty and corporate green innovation performance. This paper uses a sample of the A‐share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2007 to 2020 to explore the impact of climate policy uncertainty on corporate green innovation performance. And this paper also studies the moderating effect of organizational inertia and the joint moderating effects of managerial openness and organizational inertia, as well as managerial risk‐taking propensity and organizational inertia. The results show that climate policy uncertainty positively affects corporate green innovation performance. And organizational inertia can positively moderate the impact of climate policy uncertainty on corporate green innovation performance. Besides, managerial openness and organizational inertia, as well as managerial risk‐taking propensity and organizational inertia, jointly moderate the impact of climate policy uncertainty on corporate green innovation performance. When both managerial openness and organizational inertia are higher, the positive impact of climate policy uncertainty on corporate green innovation performance is the strongest. When both managerial risk‐taking propensity and organizational inertia are lower, the positive impact of climate policy uncertainty on corporate green innovation performance is the weakest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does militarism impact the natural environment? There is a growing body of scholarly work interrogating the intersection of environmental impacts and military activities from what can be referred to as a "footprint" perspective, which documents the tangible environmental impacts. Further, this paper introduces an alternative perspective on militarism's environmental impacts, which emphasizes Indigenous people's relationship to the environment, which this paper calls the relational perspective. This review paper argues that the emerging research concerning the environmental impacts of the US military bases in Okinawa employs the relational perspective, which echoes insights from Indigenous studies that see land as a field of the relationship of things to each other. Overall, this paper acknowledges that there is a reciprocal relationship that bridges humans and nonhuman subjectivity, including the natural environment, animals, and plants, and some places, like Okinawa, prioritize this perspective, which gives us a different angle on how we see the natural environment, the long‐lasting impacts of militarism, and countermeasures to the climate crisis. Military bases necessitate natural resources to exist. However, it is not only those material resources that get affected. Relationships with the natural environment, an essential aspect of Indigenous epistemology, are also impacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term carbon (C) sequestration has not just become a buzzword but is something of a siren's call to scientific communicators and media outlets. Carbon sequestration is the removal of C from the atmosphere and the storage, for example, in soil. It has the potential to partially compensate for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and is, therefore, an important piece in the global climate change mitigation puzzle. However, the term C sequestration is often used misleadingly and, while likely unintentional, can lead to the perpetuation of biased conclusions and exaggerated expectations about its contribution to climate change mitigation efforts. Soils have considerable potential to take up C but many are also in a state of continuous loss. In such soils, measures to build up soil C may only lead to a reduction in C losses (C loss mitigation) rather than result in real C sequestration and negative emissions. In an examination of 100 recent peer‐reviewed papers on topics surrounding soil C, only 4% were found to have used the term C sequestration correctly. Furthermore, 13% of the papers equated C sequestration with C stocks. The review, further, revealed that measures leading to C sequestration will not always result in climate change mitigation when non‐CO2 greenhouse gases and leakage are taken into consideration. This paper highlights potential pitfalls when using the term C sequestration incorrectly and calls for accurate usage of this term going forward. Revised and new terms are suggested to distinguish clearly between C sequestration in soils, SOC loss mitigation, negative emissions, climate change mitigation, SOC storage, and SOC accrual to avoid miscommunication among scientists and stakeholder groups in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]