Filtering by Subject: Sustainability
Published: 2021-08-19
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
The world’s forests are highly threatened, mainly by agricultural expansion, driving biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions, and disproportionately impacting rights and livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities. Zero-deforestation voluntary commitments to address deforestation have not significantly reversed deforestation and have made even less progress in related human [...]
Published: 2021-08-19
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Higher Education, Human Geography, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Outdoor Education, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Mineral Physics, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology, Remote Sensing, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Speleology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology, Water Resource Management
Ensuring taught fieldwork is a positive, generative, collective, and valuable experience for all participants requires considerations beyond course content. To guarantee safety and belonging, participants’ identities (backgrounds and protected characteristics) must be considered as a part of fieldwork planning and implementation. Furthermore, getting fieldwork right is an important step in [...]
Published: 2021-07-26
Subjects: Climate, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Instructional Media Design, International and Area Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Story-based futures serve an important role in climate change scenario development. Stories are particularly useful in exploring sea level rise possibilities, since we know many coastal areas are specifically vulnerable to accelerating rises in sea level. This discrete change in coastline is different from most other climate change impacts, and offers a clear basis for scientifically-informed, [...]
Published: 2021-07-13
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) represent a holistic and ambitious agenda for transforming the world towards societal well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. Achieving the SDGs is, however, challenged by the performance of interconnected sectors and the complexity of their interactions which drive non-linear system responses, tipping points, and spillover [...]
Published: 2021-07-01
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Glaciology, Life Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Glaciers are among the least explored environments on Earth, especially from a perspective of nutrient stoichiometry. In this study, we documented and compared the nutrient availabilities (concentrations) and composition (stoichiometric ratios) of nutrients (C, N, and P) in six distinct habitats of a glacier terminus in the Yangtze River Source area, including surface ice (SI), basal ice (BI), [...]
Published: 2021-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sustainability
Salt marshes are valuable but vulnerable coastal ecosystems that adapt to relative sea level rise (RSLR) by accumulating organic matter and inorganic sediment. The natural limit of these processes defines a threshold rate of RSLR beyond which marshes drown, resulting in ponding and conversion to open waters. We develop a simplified formulation for sediment transport across marshes to show that [...]
Published: 2021-06-10
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are increasingly proposed for effectively and adaptively addressing societal challenges such as water security and natural disasters. However, NBS that are exclusively reliant on natural processes are not fit-for-purpose for the provision of safe drinking water—some range of built technology is required. There is a wide spectrum of techno-ecological NBS—“green [...]
Published: 2021-05-24
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resource Economics, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
By adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries worldwide agreed to an agenda for achieving a prosperous, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable future for all1. This ambition, however, also exposes a critical knowledge gap since science-based insights on how to achieve the 17 SDGs simultaneously are lacking. Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could enable [...]
Published: 2021-04-09
Subjects: Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability
There are nearly 300 barrier islands between Maine and Texas, and of these, at least 70 are intensively developed. Mean population density along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts are the highest in the country. Such concentrated development exists and continues despite the fact that barrier islands are transient landscapes, not only over geologic time scales of millennia but also within human and [...]
Published: 2021-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Mapping the changing characteristics of Africa's smallholder-dominated agricultural systems, including the sizes and numbers of fields, is crucial for understanding food security and a range of other socioeconomic and environmental concerns. However, accurately mapping these systems is difficult because of 1) the spatial and temporal mismatch between satellite sensors and smallholder fields, and [...]
Published: 2021-02-23
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Construction Engineering and Management, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Heat-related mortality and flooding are pressing challenges for the >4 billion urban population worldwide, exacerbated by increasing urbanization and climate change. Urban greening, such as green roofs and parks, can potentially help address both problems, but the geographical variation of the relative hydrological and thermal performance benefits of such interventions are unknown. Here we [...]
Published: 2021-02-05
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Effects of the increasing use of motor vehicles are almost unnoticeable in large and congested megacities, urban areas, and metropolitan cities such as Mumbai and Delhi. Furthermore, a significant source of air pollution in several Indian cities is transportation. With the rapid growth in urbanization, industrialization, and modernization in such cities, alongside an increase in pollution, the [...]
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geomorphology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability
In the UK, coastal flooding and erosion are two of the primary climate-related hazards to communities, businesses, and infrastructure. To better address the ramifications of those hazards, now and into the future, the UK needs to transform its scattered, fragmented coastal data resources into a systematic, integrated, quality-controlled, openly accessible data portal. Such a portal would support [...]
Published: 2020-12-04
Subjects: Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
The shift from coal to natural gas (NG) in the power sector has led to significant reductions in carbon emissions. The shale gas revolution that led to this shift is now fueling a global expansion in liquefied natural gas (LNG) export infrastructure. In this work, we assess the viability of LNG expansion to reduce global carbon emissions through coal-to-gas switching in the power sector under [...]
Published: 2020-12-02
Subjects: Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Sustainability
Resilience is widely seen as an important attribute of coastal systems and, as a concept, is increasingly prominent in policy documents. However, there are conflicting ideas on what constitutes resilience and its operationalisation as an overarching principle of coastal management remains limited. In this paper, we show how resilience to coastal flood and erosion hazard could be measured and [...]