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International audience; Aim: Land use is the most pervasive driver of biodiversity loss. Predicting its impact on species richness (SR) is often based on indicators of habitat loss. However, the degradation of habitats, especially through land-use intensification, also affects species. Here, we evaluate whether an integrative metric of land-use intensity, the human appropriation of net primary production, is correlated with the decline of SR in used landscapes across the globe. Location Global. Time period Present. Major taxa studied Birds, mammals and amphibians. Methods: Based on species range maps (spatial resolution: 20 km × 20 km) and an area-of-habitat approach, we calibrated a “species–energy model” by correlating the SR of three groups of vertebrates with net primary production and biogeographical covariables in “wilderness” areas (i.e., those where available energy is assumed to be still at pristine levels). We used this model to project the difference between pristine SR and the SR corresponding to the energy remaining in used landscapes (i.e., SR loss expected owing to human energy extraction outside wilderness areas). We validated the projected species loss by comparison with the realized and impending loss reconstructed from habitat conversion and documented by national Red Lists. Results Species–energy models largely explained landscape-scale variation of mapped SR in wilderness areas (adjusted R2-values: 0.79–0.93). Model-based projections of SR loss were lower, on average, than reconstructed and documented ones, but the spatial patterns were correlated significantly, with stronger correlation in mammals (Pearson's r = 0.68) than in amphibians (r = 0.60) and birds (r = 0.57). Main conclusions: Our results suggest that the human appropriation of net primary production is a useful indicator of heterotrophic species loss in used landscapes, hence we recommend its inclusion in models based on species–area relationships to improve predictions of land-use-driven biodiversity loss.

Transforming the global food system is necessary to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries. A robust evidence base is crucial to assess the scale and combination of interventions required for a sustainable transformation. We developed a risk assessment framework, underpinned by a meta-regression of 60 global food system modeling studies, to quantify the potential of individual and combined interventions to mitigate the risk of exceeding the boundaries for land-system change, freshwater use, climate change, and biogeochemical flows by 2050. Limiting the risk of exceedance across four key planetary boundaries requires a high but plausible level of ambition in all demand-side (diet, population, waste) and most supply-side interventions. Attaining the required level of ambition for all interventions relies on embracing synergistic actions across the food system.

Land degradation continues to be an enormous challenge to human societies, reducing food security, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols, driving the loss of biodiversity, polluting water, and undermining a wide range of ecosystem services beyond food supply and water and climate regulation. Climate change will exacerbate several degradation processes. Investment in diverse restoration efforts, including sustainable agricultural and forest land management, as well as land set aside for conservation wherever possible, will generate co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and morebroadly for human and societal well-being and the economy. This review highlights the magnitude of the degradation problem and some of the key challenges for ecological restoration. There are biophysical as well as societal limits to restoration. Better integrating policies to jointly address poverty, land degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions and removals is fundamental to reducing many existing barriers and contributing to climate-resilient sustainable development.

With ongoing global urbanization processes and consumption patterns increasingly recognized as key determinants of environmental change, a better understanding of the links between urban consumption and biodiversity loss is paramount. Here we quantify the global biodiversity footprint (BDF) of Vienna's (Austria) biomass consumption. We present a state-of-the-art product specific approach to (a) locate the production areas required for Vienna's consumption and map Vienna's BDF by (b) linking them with data taken from a previously published countryside Species-Area-Relationship (cSAR) model with a representation of land-use intensity. We found that food has the largest share in Vienna's BDF (58 %), followed by biomass for material applications (28 %) and bioenergy (13 %). The total BDF occurs predominantly within Austria and in its neighbouring countries, with ~20 % located outside Europe. Although the per capita biomass consumption in Vienna is above the global average, global and Viennese per capita BDFs are roughly equal, indicating that Vienna sources its products from high-yield regions with efficient production systems and comparatively low native species richness. We conclude that, among others, dietary changes offer a key leverage point for reducing the urban BDF, while expanding the use of biomass for material and energy use may increase the BDF and requires appropriate monitoring.

Land use and biomass provision are the most critical resources for humanity. In contrast to a widespread view, a biomass-based economy will not provide a silver bullet to the climate change challenge due to intrinsic, systemic trade-offs in the land system and the critical, though often overlooked, time dimension.

Forest ecosystems provide a wide variety of ecosystem services to society. In harsh mountain environments, the regulating services of forests are of particular importance. Managing mountain forests for regulating services is a cost- and labor intensive endeavor. Yet, also unmanaged forests regulate the environment. In the context of evidence-based decision making it is thus important to scrutinize if current management recommendations improve the supply of regulating ecosystem services over unmanaged development trajectories. A further issue complicating decision making in the context of regulating ecosystem services is their high sensitivity to climate change. Climate-mediated increases in natural disturbances, for instance, could strongly reduce the supply of regulating services from forests in the future. Given the profound environmental changes expected for the coming decades it remains unclear whether forest management will still be able to significantly control the future trajectories of mountain forest development, or whether the management effect will be superseded by a much stronger climate and disturbance effect. Here, our objectives were (i) to quantify the future regulating service supply from a 6456 ha landscape in the Stubai valley in Tyrol, Austria, and (ii) to assess the relative importance of management, climate, and natural disturbances on the future supply of regulating ecosystem services. We focused our analysis on climate regulation, water regulation, and erosion regulation, and used the landscape simulation model iLand to quantify their development under different climate scenarios and management strategies. Our results show that unmanaged forests are efficient in providing regulating ecosystem services. Both climate regulation and erosion regulation were higher in unmanaged systems compared to managed systems, while water regulation was slightly enhanced by management. Overall, direct effects of climate change had a stronger influence on the future supply of regulating services than management and natural disturbances. The ability of management to control ecosystem service supply decreased sharply with the severity of future climate change. This finding highlights that forest management could be severely stymied in the future if climate change continues to proceed at its current rate. An improved quantitative understanding of the drivers of future ecosystem service supply is needed to more effectively combine targeted management efforts and natural ecosystem dynamics towards sustaining the benefits society derives from forests in a rapidly changing world.

Vegetation biomass carbon stocks play a vital role in the climate system, but the analysis of long-term carbon budgets is hindered by the lack of benchmarked estimates from the 20th century. Here, by integrating inventory-based information on land use and carbon densities in a closed-budget land accounting approach, we establish a mid-20th century global carbon stocks account. Our approach integrates global forest assessments from the mid-20th century, previously ignored in global land change studies, and inventory-based land use reconstructions across the 20th century with contemporaneous information on potential carbon stocks, the likely presence/absence of woody cover and the extent of shifting cultivation in the tropics. In a scenario-based analysis, we find that vegetation stored 540 PgC in biomass (median of 1728 cases per world region; inner quantiles 455-618 PgC). We focus on two Focal Cases, with total carbon stocks of 454-469 PgC, representing reasonable assumptions of carbon densities in forests and other wooded lands to reveal the distribution of carbon stocks across 8 land categories and 14 world regions. We found that ecosystems in Southern America, Western Africa and the erstwhile Soviet Union stored more than 27, 16 and 12% of all carbon stocks, predominantly in forests. Carbon stocks in Other Vegetated Lands, calculated as a residual from all known land uses, demonstrated the highest uncertainties. Comparisons with early-21st century carbon stocks estimates revealed significant reductions in global carbon stocks, but with distinct subcontinental characteristics, providing first evidence of a carbon stocks transition following a forest area transition underway in industrialised regions in the Global North as well as indicating the maximum possible carbon sequestration from restoration initiatives in a realistic timeframe in the future. Our integrative methodology can be used to reconstruct global carbon stocks over the 20th century to supplement other carbon flux-based modelling efforts, thus helping to constrain present and future simulations of global biomass carbon stocks.

Spatial patterns of settlements and transport infrastructures are known to influence per-capita energy use and CO2 emissions at the urban level1–4. At the national level, other potential determinants of energy use and CO2 emissions, primarily GDP, received much attention5–7, whereas the role of settlements and infrastructure patterns was disregarded due to lacking data. We present a set of novel national-level indicators derived from global satellite- and crowd-sourced maps to characterize extent and spatial patterns of settlements and infrastructures. We quantify these indicators for 113 countries and statistically analyze the results along with final energy use and territorial CO2 emissions, as well as factors usually considered in IPAT (impact = population x affluence x technology) approaches. We find that our indicators have similar explanatory power for energy use and CO2 emissions as GDP and IPAT factors. Covariates include built-up area, urban population density, the spatial clustering of built-up land, as well as transport networks, in addition to the effect of GDP. We conclude that the extent and spatial layout of settlements and infrastructures strongly affects resource use and emissions. Resource-sparing settlements and transport networks are under-appreciated options for reducing energy use and CO2 emissions.

Forest-based mitigation strategies will play a pivotal role in achieving the rapid and deep net-emission reductions required to prevent catastrophic climate change. However, large disagreement prevails on how to forge forest-based mitigation strategies, in particular in regions where forests are currently growing in area and carbon density. Two opposing viewpoints prevail in the current discourse: (1) A widespread viewpoint, specifically in countries in the Global North, favours enhanced wood use, including bioenergy, for substitution of emissionsintensive products and processes. (2) Others instead focus on the biophysical, resource-efficiency and time-response advantages of forest conservation and restoration for carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, whilst often not explicitly specifying how much wood extraction can still safeguard these ecological benefits. We here argue for a new perspective in sustainable forest research that aims at forging “no-regret” forest-based climate change mitigation strategies. Based on the consideration of forest growth dynamics and the opportunity carbon cost associated with wood use, we suggest that, instead of taking (hypothetical) wood-for-fossil substitution as starting point in assessments of carbon implications of wood products and services, analyses should take the potential and desired carbon sequestration of forests as starting point and quantify sustainable yield potentials compatible with those carbon sequestration potentials. Such an approach explicitly addresses the possible benefits provided by forests as carbon sinks, brings research on the permanence and vulnerability of C-stocks in forests, of substitution effects, as well as explorations of demand-side strategies to the forefront of research and, in particular, aligns better with the urgency to find viable climate solutions.

Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, currently existing global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. Here, we use a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide range of plausible global futures through to 2050. We adapted the widely used “two axes” scenario analysis approach to develop four families of four scenarios each, resulting in 16 scenarios that were later clustered into four contrasting sets of futures. Our analysis highlights that socioeconomic developments and technological innovation have the potential to shape biological invasions, in addition to well-known drivers, such as climate and human land use change and global trade. Our scenarios partially align with the shared socioeconomic pathways created by the climate change research community. Several factors that drive differences in biological invasions were underrepresented in the shared socioeconomic pathways; in particular, the implementation of biosecurity policies. We argue that including factors related to public environmental awareness and technological and trade development in global scenarios and models is essential to adequately consider biological invasions in global environmental assessments and thereby obtain a more integrative picture of future social–ecological developments This research was funded through the COST Action “Alien Challenge” [Grant number TD1209]; the 2017–2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA-Net COFUND programme, and with the funding organisations AEI, FWF and BMBF [grant numbers AEI PCI2018-092966 (NRP)/FWF project 4011-B32 (FE, SD, GL, BeL)/BMBF projects 01LC1807A (HS) and 01LC1807B (JMJ)]; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant numbers InDyNet, JE 288/8-1; JE 288/9-1, 9-2 (JMJ)/via iDiv FZT 118, 202548816 (MW)]; OP RDE grant EVA4.0 [grant number CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803] (AML); CONICYT [grant number AFB170008] (AP); UK-SCAPE programme, Natural Environment Research Council [grant number NE/R016429/1] (HER)

Highlights • We map provisioning ESS and their relation to ecosystem functioning across the EU. • The HANPP framework allows to calculate ESS proxy indicators. • EU agricultural systems deliver high provisioning ESS per area. • Livestock generates higher HANPP than total cropland and grassland production. • Livestock systems exceed agroecosystem capacity in one third of all regions. • Grassland areas and perennial crops reduce ecosystem pressures., Human intervention on land enhances the supply of provisioning ecosystem services, but also exerts pressures on ecosystem functioning. We utilize the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) framework to assess these relations in European agriculture, for 220 NUTS2 regions. We put a particular focus on individual land system components, i.e. croplands, grasslands, and livestock husbandry and relate associated biomass flows to the potential net primary productivity NPP. For the reference year 2012, we find that 469 g dm/m2/yr (38% of NPPpot) of used biomass were harvested on total agricultural land, and that one tonne of annually harvested biomass is associated with 1.67 tonnes dry matter (dm) of HANPP, ranging from 0.8 to 8.1 tonnes dry matter (dm) across all regions. EU livestock systems are a large consumer of these provisioning ecosystem services, and invoking higher HANPP flows than current HANPP on cropland and grassland within the EU, even exceeding the potential NPP in one fifth of all NUTS2 regions. NPP remaining in ecosystems after provisioning society with biomass is essential for the functioning of ecosystems and is 563 g dm/m2/yr or 46% of NPPpot on all agricultural land. We conclude from our analysis that the HANPP framework provides useful indicators that should be integrated in future ecosystem service assessments.

Achieving a global forest transition, that is, a shift from net deforestation to reforestation, is essential for climate change mitigation. However, both land-based climate change mitigation policy and research on forest transitions neglect key processes that relieve pressure from forests, but cause emissions elsewhere (‘hidden emissions’). Here, we identify three major causes of hidden emissions of forest transitions, that is, emissions from agricultural intensification, from woodfuel substitution, and from land displacement. Taken together, these emissions may compromise the climate change mitigation effect of national forest transitions. We propose to link analyses of hidden emissions of forest transitions with quantifications of full socio-ecological greenhouse-gas accounts and analyses of their politics. Such an integration allows for drawing lessons for effective and just climate change mitigation policies.

Aim: Ecological theory is not often applied to human appropriation of net primaryproduction (HANPP), which estimates reduction of natural net primary production(NPP) due to harvest and land use. Here we use predator–prey theory to evaluateHANPP as “predation”. Macroecology and adaptive life history strategies also helpevaluate relationships among global terrestrial HANPP, NPP, and plant biomass (B). Location: Lands worldwide. Time period: 2000. Major taxa studied: Terrestrial plants. Methods: HANPP and potential NPP allometric scaling were estimated for terrestrialecoregions (N = 819, for 86% of global land surface area) in the year 2000. HANPPand NPP scaling were compared and projected to current and year 2050 conditions. NPP scaling for potential versus actual conditions were also compared, as were biomassturnover rates (T; per year). Results: Global HANPP scales predictably with B; consistent with predator–prey theory,HANPP scaling is not clearly satiated at greater B. NPP scaling supports adaptivelife history strategies theory. HANPP scaling is c. 16% of NPP scaling; a conservative estimate compared to a grid-based 22%. HANPP scaling could become 25–35%of potential NPP scaling by 2050 due to population growth, or be constrained to20–26% of potential NPP scaling if resource use efficiency improves. However, B ismore sensitive than NPP to human effects, and human population size and HANPPnow dominate as predictors of T. Main conclusions: Three ecological theories converged here to broadly support priorempirical estimates and enable novel insights. B and T are more sensitive to global human impacts than is NPP and should be priorities for carbon budgets and conservation.Human population growth and resource use efficiency strongly affect terrestrialplant HANPP, B and T, and thus global carbon budget. Both human “top-down”effects (evaluated here) and “bottom-up” drivers (e.g., climate, nutrients, CO2) needto be incorporated into global carbon models.

Land-use activities are increasingly globalized and industrialized. While this contributes to a reduction of pressure on domestic ecosystems in some regions, spillover effects from these processes represent potential obstacles for global sustainable land-use. This contribution scrutinizes the complex global resource nexus of national land-use intensity, international trade of biomass goods, and resource footprints in land-use systems. Via a systematic account of the global human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) and input–output modelling, we demonstrate that with growing income countries reduce their reliance on local renewable resources, while simultaneously consuming more biomass goods produced in other countries requiring higher energy and material inputs. The characteristic 'outsourcing' country appropriates 43% of its domestic net primary production, but net-imports a similar amount (64 gigajoules per capita and year) from other countries and requires energy (11 GJ/cap/yr) and material (~400 kg/cap/yr) inputs four to five times higher as the majority of the global population to sustain domestic land-use intensification. This growing societal disconnect from domestic ecological productivity enables a domestic conservation of ecosystems while satisfying growing demand. However, it does not imply a global decoupling of biomass consumption from resource and land requirements., Security: staffonly

Sustainable food systems face trade-offs between demands of low environmental pressures per unit area and requirements of increasing production. Organic farming has lower yields than conventional agriculture and requires the introduction of nitrogen (N) fixing legumes in crop rotations. Here we perform an integrated assessment of the feasibility of future food systems in terms of land and N availability and the potential for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results show that switching to 100% organic farming without additional measures results in N deficiency. Dietary change towards a reduced share of animal products can aggravate N limitations, which can be overcome through the implementation of a combination of agroecological, circular economy and decarbonization strategies. These measures help to recycle and transfer N from grassland. A vegan diet from fully decarbonized conventional production performs similarly as the optimized organic scenario. Sustainable food systems hence require measures beyond the agricultural sector.

Understanding the carbon (C) balance in global forest biomass is key for climate change mitigation. However, land-use and environmental drivers affecting forest C fluxes remain poorly isolated and quantified. Following a counterfactual modelling approached based on global Forest Resource Assessments, we show that in the hypothetical absence of changes in forest (i) area, (ii) harvest or (iii) burnt area, global forest biomass would reverse from an actual cumulative net C source of c. 2.4 GtC to a net C sink of 23.6, 2.7 and 5.2 GtC, respectively in 1990–2020. In contrast, cumulative emissions would be 12.9 GtC, i.e. 6 times higher, in the absence of forest growth changes. A typology systematically assessing C flux drivers reveals that enhanced growth, more than reforestation, counteracted C emissions. This sink function may, however, be discontinued in the future, thus alerting to the need for safer strategies to effectively preserve or enhance C sequestration.

Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, current global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. We used a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide breadth of plausible global futures through 2050. We adapted the widely used “two axes” scenario analysis approach to develop four families of four scenarios each, resulting in 16 scenarios that were later clustered into four contrasting sets of futures. Our analysis highlighted that socio-economic developments and changes in sustainability policies and lifestyle have the potential to shape biological invasions, in addition to well-known ecological drivers, such as climate and human land use change. Our scenarios align fairly well with the recently developed shared socio-economic pathways, but the factors that drive differences in biological invasions are underrepresented there. Including these factors in global scenarios and models is essential to adequately consider biological invasions in global environmental assessments, and obtain a more integrative picture of future socio-ecological developments.

Biomass production generates land use impacts in the form of emissions from Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU), i.e. due to changes in ecosystem carbon stocks. Recently, consumption-based accounting (CBA) approaches have emerged as alternatives to conventional production-based accounts, quantifying FOLU emissions associated with biomass consumption, for example, of particular territories. However, the quantification and allocation of FOLU emissions to individual biomass products, a fundamental part of CBA approaches, is a complex endeavour. Existing studies make diverging methodological choices, which are rarely critically discussed. In this study, we provide a structured overview of existing CBA approaches to estimating FOLU emissions. We cluster the literature in a two-by-two grid, distinguishing the primary element under investigation (impacts of changing consumption patterns in a region vs. impacts of consumption on production landscapes) and the analytical lens (prospective vs retrospective). Further, we identify three distinct dimensions which characterise the way in which different studies allocate FOLU emissions to biomass products: the choice of reference system and the spatial and temporal scales. Finally, we identify three frontiers that require future attention: (1) overcoming structural biases which underestimate FOLU emissions from territories that experienced deforestation in the distant past, (2) explicitly tackling the interdependence of proximate causes and ultimate drivers of land use change, and (3) assessing uncertainties and understanding the effects of land management. In this way, we enable a critical assessment of appropriate methods, support a nuanced interpretation of results from particular approaches as well as enhance the informative value of CBA approaches related to FOLU emissions. Our analysis contributes to discussions on sustainable land use practices with respect to biomass consumption and has implications for informing international climate policy in scenarios where consumption-based approaches are adopted in practice.

This paper investigates to what extent the theories of Thomas Robert Malthus and Ester Boserup are still useful to analyse population and land-use trajectories in an industrial society at a regional scale. Following a model-based approach toward long-term socio-ecological research, we built two system dynamic models, each representing one theory, and calculated socio-ecological trajectories from 1961 to 2011 for a study region located within the Eisenwurzen region in Austria. Comparing the model trajectories with empirical data reveals opposing results for the fit of the dynamics of ‘population and technology’ compared to ‘land use and technology’. Technology strongly influenced population development, whereas its impact on land-use intensity faded over time. Although these theories are usually seen as opposing, both models identify population development as a main driver for land-use changes, mainly population decreases that contributed to farmland abandonment. We find out-migration to be essential when applying the investigated theories to contemporary societies.

Global food systems contribute to climate change, the transgression of planetary boundaries and deforestation. An improved understanding of the environmental impacts of different food system futures is crucial for forging strategies to sustainably nourish a growing world population.We here quantify the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of global food systemscenarios within a biophysically feasible “option space” in 2050 comprising all scenarios inwhich biomass supply – calculated as function of agricultural area and yields – is sufficient to cover biomass demand – derived fromhuman diets and the feed demand of livestock.We assessed the biophysical feasibility of 520 scenarios in a hypothetical no-deforestation world. For all feasible scenarios, we calculate (in) direct GHG emissions related to agriculture. We also include (possibly negative) GHG emissions fromland-use change, including changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) and carbon sinks fromvegetation regrowth on land spared from food production.We identify 313 of 520 scenarios as feasible. Agricultural GHG emissions (excluding land use change) of feasible scenarios range from 1.7 to 12.5 Gt CO2e yr−1. When including changes in SOC and vegetation regrowth on spare land, the range is between−10.7 and 12.5 Gt CO2e yr−1. Our results show that diets are the main determinant of GHG emissions, with highest GHG emissions found for scenarios including high meat demand, especially if focused on ruminant meat and milk, and lowest emissions for scenarios with vegan diets. Contrary to frequent claims, our results indicate that diets and the composition and quantity of livestock feed, not crop yields, are the strongest determinants of GHG emissions from food-systems when existing forests are to be protected.

Tree cover (TC) and biomass carbon stocks (CS) are key parameters for characterizing the states and dynamics of tropical ecosystems. Despite the presence of several datasets with high spatial resolution, differences among data products prevail and systemic inter-relations between TC and CS remain poorly quantified. Further, the role of land use in explaining disagreements among datasets remains largely unexplored. Here, by combining established spatially-explicit estimates of TC and CS over contemporary timescales, we analyse uncertainties between these two ecosystem parameters across the global tropics (~ 23.4°N to 23.4°S). We quantify land use effects by contrasting actual and potential (ie. in the hypothetical absence of land use) states of vegetation and by correlating TC and CS changes with land use intensity. Our results show that land use strongly alters both TC and CS, with disproportionate impacts on CS and large variations across tropical ecozones. Differences between potential and actual vegetation CS remain above 50% across the tropics except for rainforests (34%). Differences within corresponding TC estimates are more variable, and higher among sparsely-vegetated landscapes (81% for shrublands), highlighting the overwhelming extent of land use impacts. Cross-comparisons across available TC and CS datasets reveal large spatial disagreements. More than a third of all identified co-located TC and CS change datasets show disagreements in the direction of change (Gain vs Loss), and these divergences persist as a function of land use intensities. Our results provide a characterization of the prevailing uncertainty structures of input datasets and the spatial patterns of land use-induced disturbances at the pixel and ecozone-levels. This assumes added significance in light of the stock-taking exercises envisaged as part of the Paris Agreement, the advancement of terrestrial carbon modelling initiatives as well as emerging, novel remote sensing products.

Enhancing the capacity of social‐ecological systems (SES) to adapt to climate change is of crucial importance. While gradual climate change impacts have been the main focus of much recent research, much less is known about how SES are impacted by climate extremes and how they adapt. Here, based on an advanced conceptualization of social‐ecological resilience, performed by an interdisciplinary group of scientists, we outline three major challenges for operationalizing the resilience concept with particular focus on climate extremes. First, we discuss the necessary steps required to identify and measure relevant variables for capturing the full response spectrum of the coupled social and ecological components of SES. Second, we examine how climate extreme impacts on coupling flows in SES can be quantified by learning from past societal transitions or adaptations to climate extremes and resulting changes in ecosystem service supply. Last, we explore how to identify management options for maintaining and enhancing social‐ecological resilience under a changing regime of climate extremes. We conclude that multiple pathways within adaptation and mitigation strategies which enhance the adaptive capacity of SES to absorb climate extremes will open the way toward a sustainable future.