Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Environmental and ecological changes across the Permian–Triassic transition in Türkiye: integrating virtual outcrop models and new fieldwork data
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences
The Permian–Triassic transition is characterized by major environmental changes (e.g., hyperthermals, perturbations in carbon cycle) and the largest known mass extinction event in the Phanerozoic. However, successions with a relatively complete sedimentological and paleontological record across the Permian–Triassic are limited to a few well-known sections in Europe and South China. Here, we [...]
The Grand Challenges of WPI-AIMEC: Executive Summary
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Climate, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Marine Biology, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Remote Sensing, Sustainability
The ocean has a heat capacity 1,000 times greater than that of the atmosphere and stores 50 times more carbon comparatively, thus, constituting a major sink of anthropogenically released greenhouse gases. Warming effects of human activities on the climate system are now undeniably shown to impact marine life and ecosystems, both directly via warming of the ocean and/or indirectly altering ocean [...]
Bridging Ancestral Knowledge and Ecosystem Science for Coastal Restoration in Latin America
Published: 2025-08-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Peer-review status: This manuscript has not been peer-reviewed. It is a preprint submitted for public dissemination and open feedback. This study documents the CALISUR methodology, a community-based mangrove restoration model rooted in ancestral ecological knowledge and applied across six intervention sites in the Gulf of Guayaquil. The methodology integrates scientific and traditional practices [...]
From Maps to Mandates: Multitemporal Vegetation Cover Analysis as a Tool to Evaluate Environmental Judicial Decisions
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
This study examines the use of multitemporal vegetation cover analysis as a tool to assess the ecological effectiveness of judicial decisions that recognize the rights of nature, using Colombia’s 2016 T-622 decision on the Atrato River as a case study. Using satellite data from MapBiomas and generalized additive models (GAMs), we evaluated changes in ten types of vegetation cover between 2006 and [...]
Predator response diversity to warming enables ecosystem resilience in the Galápagos
Published: 2025-05-29
Subjects: Biodiversity
An important impact of global warming in nature is the decline of ecological functions such as primary production, habitat provision, and carbon sequestration. These functions can be disrupted when the species that perform them are impaired by anthropogenic warming or other stressors. Where there is a diversity of responses to warming among the species filling these roles, the function is more [...]
Coral Reefs Span Borders, So Must Solutions: A Blueprint for International Cooperation for Coral Reef Conservation in Complex Political Environments
Published: 2025-05-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology
Coral reefs face escalating threats from climate change, yet reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will not ensure their survival. Local and regional conservation efforts are urgently needed to address immediate, human-induced stressors and build resilience. Although conservation often begins locally, the interconnected nature of reef systems that span borders demands transboundary management, [...]
Counter intuitive effects of an extreme Indian Ocean Dipole event on a coupled human and natural system in Southern Myanmar.
Published: 2025-05-03
Subjects: Biodiversity
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is a major climate cycle that occurs across the tropical Indian Ocean which has become more variable over time substantially influencing weather extremes and broader climate patterns worldwide. Importantly, these large scale global and regional scale climatic events have strong unexpected impacts on coupled human and natural systems at local scales. One of the [...]
Proactive Tundra Conservation Strategy for a Rapidly Changing Arctic
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Warming induced forest expansion, permafrost thaw, and human activities are major drivers affecting the biodiversity and ecosystem functions of the Arctic tundra. While the pace of climate warming is fastest in the Arctic, some important stressors, like forest expansion, seem relatively slow. The slow response might provide the opportunity to safeguard Arctic biodiversity and ecosystem function [...]
From natural variability to flow homogenisation: how dams, water diversions, and climate change reduced seasonal flows in Australia’s Murrumbidgee River
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
River regulation and climate change have profoundly altered seasonal flow dynamics globally, with cascading ecological impacts on freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. Magnitude and timing are key components of the flow regime, connecting rivers with floodplains and driving feeding and breeding cues for aquatic organisms. We investigated the separate and combined effects of water resource [...]
The State of Global Catastrophic Risk Research: A Bibliometric Review
Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Geography, Other Life Sciences
The global catastrophic risk (GCR) and existential risk (ER) literature focuses on analysing and preventing potential major global catastrophes including a human extinction event. Over the past two decades, the field of GCR/ER research has grown considerably. However, there has been little meta-research on the field itself. How large has this body of literature become? What topics does it cover? [...]
Harnessing nature-based solutions for economic recovery: a systematic review
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
Nature-based solutions (NbS) involve working with nature to address societal challenges in ways that benefit communities and biodiversity locally. However, their role supporting economic recovery from crises, such as those arising from conflicts or pandemics remains underexplored. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic review of 66 reviews on the economic impact of nature-based [...]
Unearthed from old soils: New records of Antarctic tardigrades, nematodes, and rotifers in the Prince Charles Mountains based on partial sequences of Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences
Despite only 0.3% of Antarctica being ice-free, those areas harbor diverse small organisms such as tardigrades, nematodes, and rotifers. The habitats of these cryptic organisms face threats from human activity, climate change, and pollution. Biodiversity surveys are essential for managing their protection and such surveys have been proven well possible in Antarctica using environmental DNA (eDNA) [...]
Private protected areas exhibit greater bias towards unproductive land compared to public protected areas
Published: 2024-09-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Globally, private protected areas (PPAs) have become an important tool for biodiversity conservation. While they are expanding in size and number, there is limited evidence on their potential impact on avoiding biodiversity loss, and how this impact compares to the public protected areas (PAs). The impact of protection is measured as the actual biodiversity outcome within the area protected [...]
Mapping current and future European potential vegetation to support restoration planning
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
The extent and intactness of natural ecosystems is a key factor enabling species populations to thrive. However, the distribution of ecosystems is changing owing to both climatic and anthropogenic factors. Recently negotiated European policy directives, such as the Nature Restoration Law, argue for the restoration of natural ecosystems. Yet to determine what is to be restored the range of [...]
Trends, cycles and seasonality in rainfall, temperature, NDVI, DMI and SOI in the Greater Mara-Serengeti Ecosystem: Insights for biodiversity conservation
Published: 2024-02-22
Subjects: Biodiversity
Understanding climate and vegetation trends and variations is essential for conservation planning and ecosystem management. These elements are shaped by regional manifestations of global climate change, impacting biodiversity conservation and dynamics. In the southern hemisphere, global climate change is partially reflected through trends in the hemispheric El Niño-Southern Oscillation (SOI) and [...]