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The action required to stem the environmental and social implications of climate change depends crucially on how humankind shapes technology, economy, lifestyle and policy. With transport CO2 emissions accounting for about a quarter of the total, we examine the contribution of CO2 output by scientific travel. Thankfully for the reputation of the scientific community, CO2 emissions associated with the trips required to present a paper at a scientific conference account for just 0.003% of the yearly total. However, with CO2 emissions for a single conference trip amounting to 7% of an average individual’s total CO2 emissions, scientists should lead by example by demonstrating leadership in addressing the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is an ongoing topic in nearly all areas of society since many years. A discussion of climate change without referring to scientific results is not imaginable. This is especially the case for policies since action on the macro scale is required to avoid costly consequences for society. In this study, we deal with the question of how research on climate change and policy are connected. In 2019, the new Overton database of policy documents was released including links to research papers that are cited by policy documents. The use of results and recommendations from research on climate change might be reflected in citations of scientific papers in policy documents. Although we suspect a lot of uncertainty related to the coverage of policy documents in Overton, there seems to be an impact of international climate policy cycles on policy document publication. We observe local peaks in climate policy documents around major decisions in international climate diplomacy. Our results point out that IGOs and think tanks–with a focus on climate change–have published more climate change policy documents than expected. We found that climate change papers that are cited in climate change policy documents received significantly more citations on average than climate change papers that are not cited in these documents. Both areas of society (science and policy) focus on similar climate change research fields: biology, earth sciences, engineering, and disease sciences. Based on these and other empirical results in this study, we propose a simple model of policy impact considering a chain of different document types: The chain starts with scientific assessment reports (systematic reviews) that lead via science communication documents (policy briefs, policy reports or plain language summaries) and government reports to legislative documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This bibliometric study of a large publication set dealing with research on climate change aims at mapping the relevant literature from a bibliometric perspective and presents a multitude of quantitative data: (1) The growth of the overall publication output as well as (2) of some major subfields, (3) the contributing journals and countries as well as their citation impact, and (4) a title word analysis aiming to illustrate the time evolution and relative importance of specific research topics. The study is based on 222,060 papers (articles and reviews only) published between 1980 and 2014. The total number of papers shows a strong increase with a doubling every 5–6 years. Continental biomass related research is the major subfield, closely followed by climate modeling. Research dealing with adaptation, mitigation, risks, and vulnerability of global warming is comparatively small, but their share of papers increased exponentially since 2005. Research on vulnerability and on adaptation published the largest proportion of very important papers (in terms of citation impact). Climate change research has become an issue also for disciplines beyond the natural sciences. The categories Engineering and Social Sciences show the strongest field-specific relative increase. The Journal of Geophysical Research, the Journal of Climate, the Geophysical Research Letters, and Climatic Change appear at the top positions in terms of the total number of papers published. Research on climate change is quantitatively dominated by the USA, followed by the UK, Germany, and Canada. The citation-based indicators exhibit consistently that the UK has produced the largest proportion of high impact papers compared to the other countries (having published more than 10,000 papers). Also, Switzerland, Denmark and also The Netherlands (with a publication output between around 3,000 and 6,000 papers) perform top—the impact of their contributions is on a high level. The title word analysis shows that the term climate change comes forward with time. Furthermore, the term impact arises and points to research dealing with the various effects of climate change. The discussion of the question of human induced climate change towards a clear fact (for the majority of the scientific community) stimulated research on future pathways for adaptation and mitigation. Finally, the term model and related terms prominently appear independent of time, indicating the high relevance of climate modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models used to investigate impacts of climatic changes on spatio-temporal vegetation dynamics need to balance required accuracy with computational feasibility. To enhance the computational efficiency of these models, upscaling methods are required that maintain key fine-scale processes influencing vegetation dynamics. In this paper, an adjustable method – the dynamic two-layer classification concept (D2C) – for the upscaling of time- and space-discrete models is presented. D2C aims to separate potentially repetitive calculations from those specific to single grid cells. The underlying idea is to extract processes that do not require information about a grid cell's neighbourhood to a reduced-size non-spatial layer, which is dynamically coupled to the original two-dimensional layer. The size of the non-spatial layer is thereby adaptive and depends on dynamic classifications according to pre-specified similarity criteria. I present how D2C can be used in a model implementation on the example of TreeMig-2L, a new, efficient version of the intermediate-complexity forest-landscape model TreeMig. To discuss the trade-off between computational expenses and accuracy, as well as the applicability of D2C, I compare different model stages of TreeMig-2L via simulations of two different application scenarios. This comparison of different model stages demonstrates that applying D2C can strongly reduce computational expenses of processes calculated on the new non-spatial layer. D2C is thus a valuable upscaling method for models and applications in which processes requiring information about the neighbourhood constitute the minor share of the overall computational expenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable numerical simulation plays a critical role in climate change study. The reliability includes bitwise identical reproducibility, i.e. bitwise identical result of numerical simulation can be reproduced. It is important to Earth system modeling and has already been used intra modeling groups for the model development. However, it is rarely considered in a wider range even worldwide. To help achieve the worldwide bitwise identical reproducibility, we introduce the detailed implementations for the bitwise identical reproducibility on the Community Coupler (C-Coupler) platform, a uniform runtime software environment that configures, builds and runs the models in the same manner. Moreover, we share a series of experiences and suggestions regarding the bitwise identical reproducibility. We believe that these implementations, experiences and suggestions can be easily extended to other model software platforms and can prospectively advance the model development and scientific researches in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which focuses on the development of an algorithm for the representation of large spectral variations of albedo over vegetation surfaces based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) observations. The traditional approaches for estimating the MODIS enhanced vegetation albedo (MEVA) are outlined. It also emphasizes the significance of MEVA in understanding climate processes and climate change.

The numerous benefits of Open Science (OS) and of the four FAIR foundational principles - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable - are increasingly valued in academia, although what OS and FAIR entail is still largely misunderstood. In such conditions, putting into practice OS and applying the FAIR principles is challenging and underrated. However, realising OS is perfectly within our grasp provided that an infrastructure supporting the management of the research lifecycle is available. ROHub (https://www.rohub.org/) is a Research Object (RO) management platform implementing three complementary technologies: Research Objects, Data Cubes and Text Mining services. ROHub enables researchers to collaboratively manage, share and preserve their research while they are still working on it (rather than after the work is finished). In this paper, three communities from Earth Sciences, namely Geohazards, Sea Monitoring and Climate Change, demonstrate how ROHub helped them to understand each other and to work openly and, more importantly, how communities of practice play an important role in facilitating reuse and interdisciplinary collaboration. These findings are illustrated with several use cases from these various communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing and length of burning seasons in different parts of the world depend on climate, land cover characteristics, and human activities. In this study, global fire data from satellite-based instruments are used in conjunction with global gridded distributions of agricultural land cover types (defined as the sum of cropland and pasture area) to separate the seasonality of agricultural burning practices from that of non-agricultural fire. The results presented in this study show that agricultural and non-agricultural land experience broadly different fire seasonality patterns that are not always linked to climate conditions. We highlight these differences on a regional basis, examining variations in both agricultural land cover and associated cultural practices to help explain our results. While we discuss two land cover categories, the methods can be generalized to derive seasonality for any number of land uses or cover types. This will be useful as global fire models evolve to be fully interactive with land use and land cover change in the next generation of Earth system models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Hadley Centre Global Environment Model version 2 (HadGEM2) family of climate configurations that comprises a range of specific model configurations. It offers a detailed descriptions and evaluations of HadGEM2 family members and its overall performance using a set of model metrics. It notes that HadGEM2 family of configurations includes atmosphere and ocean components with well-resolved stratosphere and earth-system.

Dispersal knowledge is essential for conservation management, and demand is growing. But are we accumulating dispersal knowledge at a pace that can meet the demand? To answer this question we tested for changes in dispersal data collection and use over time. Our systematic review of 655 conservation-related publications compared five topics: climate change, habitat restoration, population viability analysis, land planning (systematic conservation planning) and invasive species. We analysed temporal changes in the: (i) questions asked by dispersal-related research; (ii) methods used to study dispersal; (iii) the quality of dispersal data; (iv) extent that dispersal knowledge is lacking, and; (v) likely consequences of limited dispersal knowledge. Research questions have changed little over time; the same problems examined in the 1990s are still being addressed. The most common methods used to study dispersal were occupancy data, expert opinion and modelling, which often provided indirect, low quality information about dispersal. Although use of genetics for estimating dispersal has increased, new ecological and genetic methods for measuring dispersal are not yet widely adopted. Almost half of the papers identified knowledge gaps related to dispersal. Limited dispersal knowledge often made it impossible to discover ecological processes or compromised conservation outcomes. The quality of dispersal data used in climate change research has increased since the 1990s. In comparison, restoration ecology inadequately addresses large-scale process, whilst the gap between knowledge accumulation and growth in applications may be increasing in land planning. To overcome apparent stagnation in collection and use of dispersal knowledge, researchers need to: (i) improve the quality of available data using new approaches; (ii) understand the complementarities of different methods and; (iii) define the value of different kinds of dispersal information for supporting management decisions. Ambitious, multi-disciplinary research programs studying many species are critical for advancing dispersal research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article presents abstracts on earth sciences topic which include adaptive wet season water harvesting in Alabama, water use sustainability and global climate change trendmodelling and irrigation water withdrawal models.

Significant progress has been made in the past few years in the development of recommendations, policies, and procedures for creating and promoting citations to data sets, software, and other research infrastructures like computing facilities. Open questions remain, however, about the extent to which referencing practices of authors of scholarly publications are changing in ways desired by these initiatives. This paper uses four focused case studies to evaluate whether research infrastructures are being increasingly identified and referenced in the research literature via persistent citable identifiers. The findings of the case studies show that references to such resources are increasing, but that the patterns of these increases are variable. In addition, the study suggests that citation practices for data sets may change more slowly than citation practices for software and research facilities, due to the inertia of existing practices for referencing the use of data. Similarly, existing practices for acknowledging computing support may slow the adoption of formal citations for computing resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antibiotic resistance is a pressing global, one health and planetary health challenge. Links between climate change, antibiotic use, and the emergence of antibiotic resistance have been well documented, but less attention has been given to the impact(s) of earth systems on specific bacterial livestock diseases at a more granular level. Understanding the precise impacts of climate change on livestock health—and in turn the use of antibiotics to address that ill-health—is important in providing an evidence base from which to tackle such impacts and to develop practical, implementable, and locally acceptable solutions within and beyond current antibiotic stewardship programs. In this paper, we set out the case for better integration of earth scientists and their specific disciplinary skill set (specifically, problem-solving with incomplete/fragmentary data; the ability to work across four dimensions and at the interface between the present and deep/geological time) into planetary health research. Then, using a case study from our own research, we discuss a methodology that makes use of risk mapping, a common methodology in earth science but less frequently used in health science, to map disease risk against changing climatic conditions at a granular level. The aim of this exercise is to argue that, by enabling livestock farmers, veterinarians, and animal health observatories to better predict future disease risk and risk impacts based on predicted future climate conditions, earth science can help to provide an evidence base from which to influence policy and develop mitigations. Our example—of climate conditions' impact on livestock health in Karnataka, India—clearly evidences the benefit of integrating earth scientists into planetary health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the consequences of ignoring the clustered data structure on allometric models. Clustered data, in the form of multiple trees sampled from multiple forest stands is commonly used to develop biomass allometric models. Of 102 reviewed papers published between 2012 and 2016 that reported biomass allometric models, 84 (82%) have used a clustered sampling design. However, in as many as 80% of these, the clustered data structure was ignored, potentially violating the independence assumption in ordinary least squares methods. The consequences of ignoring clustered data structure were empirically validated using two clustered biomass datasets (of 110 and 220 trees, with the cluster size of 5 and 10 trees respectively). We showed that when Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was higher than zero, ignoring the clustered data structure returned underestimated standard errors, affecting further the confidence interval and t-test results. The underestimation level depended on ICC (which shows the variance proportion that was caused by the forest stand) and on cluster size (the number of trees sampled from one forest stand). We also showed that using first-order autocorrelation tests, such as the traditional Durbin-Watson statistic, to detect the autocorrelation due to clustered structure could be misleading as the test may show lack of autocorrelation even though ICC is different from zero. In conclusion, when ICC is higher than zero, ignoring the clustered data structure yields over-confident biomass predictions (due to underestimated confidence interval) and/or incorrect research conclusions (due to overestimated evidence against null hypothesis in t-test). Therefore, using a modelling approach that accounts for the hierarchical structure of the data is highly recommended when any form of clustering can be identified, even if the autocorrelation is not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local and indigenous knowledge is being transformed globally, particularly being eroded when pertaining to ecology. In many parts of the world, rural and indigenous communities are facing tremendous cultural, economic and environmental changes, which contribute to weaken their local knowledge base. In the face of profound and ongoing environmental changes, both cultural and biological diversity are likely to be severely impacted as well as local resilience capacities from this loss. In this global literature review, we analyse the drivers of various types of local and indigenous ecological knowledge transformation and assess the directionality of the reported change. Results of this analysis show a global impoverishment of local and indigenous knowledge with 77% of papers reporting the loss of knowledge driven by globalization, modernization, and market integration. The recording of this loss, however, is not symmetrical, with losses being recorded more strongly in medicinal and ethnobotanical knowledge. Persistence of knowledge (15% of the studies) occurred in studies where traditional practices were being maintained consiously and where hybrid knowledge was being produced as a resut of certain types of incentives created by economic development. This review provides some insights into local and indigenous ecological knowledge change, its causes and implications, and recommends venues for the development of replicable and comparative research. The larger implication of these results is that because of the interconnection between cultural and biological diversity, the loss of local and indigenous knowledge is likely to critically threaten effective conservation of biodiversity, particularly in community-based conservation local efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This bibliometric analysis deals with research on the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire in connection with climate change. Based on the Web of Science (WoS) database, we applied a combination of three different search queries for retrieving the relevant literature: (1) on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in general, (2) more specifically on the downfall in connection with a changing climate, and (3) on paleoclimatic research in combination with the time period of the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity. Additionally, we considered all references cited by an ensemble of selected key papers and all citing papers of these key papers, whereby we retrieved additional publications (in particular, books and book chapters). We merged the literature retrieved, receiving a final publication set of 85 publications. We analyzed this publication set by applying a toolset of bibliometric methods and visualization programs. A co-authorship map of all authors, a keyword map for a rough content analysis, and a citation network based on the publication set of 85 papers are presented. We also considered news mentions in this study to identify papers with impacts beyond science. According to the literature retrieved, a multitude of paleoclimatic data from various geographical sites for the time of late antiquity indicate a climatic shift away from the stability of previous centuries. Recently, some scholars have argued that drought in Central Asia and the onset of a cooler climate in North-West Eurasia may have put Germanic tribes, Goths, and Huns on the move into the Roman Empire, provoking the Migration Period and eventually leading to the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. However, climate is only one variable at play; a combination of many factors interacting with each other is a possible explanation for the pattern of long-lasting decline and final collapse. Currently, the number of records from different locations, the toolbox of suitable analytic methods, and the precision of dating are evolving rapidly, contributing to an answer for one of the most classic of all historical questions. However, these studies still lack the inevitable collaboration of the major disciplines involved: archeology, history, and climatology. The articles of the publication set analyzed mainly result from research in the geosciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since both the EU Erasmus+ program and UNESCO Global Geoparks aim at developing models of best practices, a shared playground for common activities can be found in high geodiversity and rich geoheritage areas to promote innovative education and professional perspectives in the ecological transition. Two consecutive Erasmus+ cooperative partnerships (GEOclimHOME and GEOclimHOME-PRO) involved schools, research institutions, and three European geoparks (Rokua, Finland; Sesia Val Grande, Italy; Chablais, France) for improved perception of climate and environmental changes and appraisal of geoheritage. The common pedagogical approach is presented in this review paper as well as the different methodological solutions for (1) understanding climate change and (2) recognising its natural and human factors, by environmental research and professional experiences. Activities were first addressed to explore the "secret" values of geoheritage for awareness on climate changes. Later, active/passive roles of humans toward the environment have been analysed, which are related to the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). Results of educational activities demonstrated enhanced students' awareness of social and environmental responsibility. Moreover, the actions highlighted new job opportunities, accomplishing the local and global needs of sustainable development, future skills, and lifestyles within geopark territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically explores a 40-year collaboration between a geomorphologist and a relief printmaker from the perspective of the emerging art-science paradigm in the geosciences. Drawing on the authors' work and practice worldwide, 'standard art-science' (the artist as communicator and observer) and emerging 'transdisciplinary/paradisciplinary' practices are explored in the watery realm. While standard art-science 'encounters' were viewed favourably from the viewpoint of community engagement, especially by commissioning bodies, they did not measurably improve the explanation of science to the public nor offer new avenues for creative investigation. In light of this, the authors undertook a series of explicitly interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary 'entanglements' by co-conceiving projects, carrying out joint fieldwork and 'data' collection and, most importantly, working together in the studio and laboratory. These projects suggest that multi-scalar approaches are required when using art-geoscience to explore environmental issues which impact significantly on individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its official establishment in 2010, Google Earth Engine (GEE) has developed rapidly and has played a significant role in the global remote sensing community. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on 1995 peer-reviewed articles related to GEE, indexed in the Scopus database up to December 2022 to investigate its trends and main applications. Our main findings are as follows: (1) The number of GEE-related articles has increased rapidly, with nearly 85% of them published in the last three years; (2) The top three domains where GEE has been extensively applied are earth and planetary sciences, environmental science, and agricultural and biological sciences. The majority of GEE-related articles were authored by scholars from China and the US, accounting for 58% of the total, with US scholars having the largest impact on the community, contributing to over 50% of the total citations; (3) Remote Sensing published the highest number of articles (26.82%), whereas Remote Sensing of Environment received the highest number of citations (30.40%); (4) The applications of GEE covered a broad range of topics, with a focus on land applications, water resource applications, climate change, and crop mapping; (5) Landsat imagery were the most popular and widely used dataset; and (6) Random forest, decision trees, support vector machines were the most commonly used machine learning algorithms in GEE. Although having a few limitations, this type of analysis should be conducted regularly to observe the development of this field on a regular basis, as the number of publications related to GEE is expected to continue to increase strongly in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coarse-resolution climate and weather forecast models cannot accurately parameterize small-scale, nonlinear processes without accounting for subgrid-scale variability. To do so, some models integrate over the subgrid variability analytically. Although analytic integration methods are attractive, they can be used only with physical parameterizations that have a sufficiently simple functional form. Instead, this paper introduces a method to integrate subgrid variability using a type of Monte Carlo integration. The method generates subcolumns with suitable vertical correlations and feeds them into a microphysics parameterization. The subcolumn methodology requires little change to the parameterization source code and can be used with a wide variety of physical parameterizations. Our subcolumn generator is multivariate, which is important for physical processes that involve two or more hydrometeor species, such as accretion of cloud droplets by rain drops. In order to reduce sampling noise in the integrations, our subcolumn generator employs two variance-reduction methods, namely importance and stratified (Latin hypercube) sampling. For this reason, we name the subcolumn generator the Subgrid Importance Latin Hypercube Sampler (SILHS). This paper tests SILHS in interactive, single-column simulations of a marine stratocumulus case and a shallow cumulus case. The paper then compares simulations that use SILHS with those that use analytic integration. Although the SILHS solutions exhibit considerable noise from time step to time step, the noise is greatly damped in most of the timeaveraged profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer-reviewed publications focusing on climate change are growing exponentially with the consequence that the uptake and influence of individual papers varies greatly. Here, we derive metrics of narrativity from psychology and literary theory, and use these metrics to test the hypothesis that more narrative climate change writing is more likely to be influential, using citation frequency as a proxy for influence. From a sample of 732 scientific abstracts drawn from the climate change literature, we find that articles with more narrative abstracts are cited more often. This effect is closely associated with journal identity: higher-impact journals tend to feature more narrative articles, and these articles tend to be cited more often. These results suggest that writing in a more narrative style increases the uptake and influence of articles in climate literature, and perhaps in scientific literature more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recognition of the impacts of climate change and air pollution, a special issue was prepared to address the response and adaptation of agricultural ecosystems to global changes. A total of thirteen papers were published, delving into the mechanisms underlying the effects on crops and agroecosystems and adding important insights into the modeling and adaptation of agroecosystems to global change through optimized management practices. This collection of papers has a broad relevance to numerous areas in agriculture, ecology, and environmental and earth sciences. • A special issue dedicated to 'agricultural ecosystems response and adaptation to global changes'. • A total of thirteen papers were published. • Studies concerned ozone, precipitation, warming, management, and modelling. • This Editorial discusses the content of the publications included in the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the idea of geoengineering, understood as large‐scale interventions in the planet's climate to counteract anthropogenic climate change, has steadily increased its visibility. Presented explicitly as an approach to climate change, geoengineering is positioned as a response, a reactive fix. Geoengineering, however, has a longer and broader history than the current climate crisis. It has long been an umbrella term for large‐scale projects in which various Earth sciences meet dreams about human ecosphere interventions, especially regarding lithosphere and climate and weather modifications. In this paper, we review the history of geoengineering, focusing specifically on climate geoengineering and lithosphere geoengineering. We draw attention to the difference between "proactive" ("high‐modernist"), aimed at mastery over nature, and "reactive" forms of geoengineering, hoping to address anthropogenic environmental degradation technologically. Additionally, we trace historical (dis)continuities between the older, proactive, form of geoengineering and their recent reframing as a technological fix—specifically around the question to what extent nature's complex systems can be known and controlled. Finally, we argue for the need to further research the intersections and shared histories between various forms of geoengineering. This article is categorized under:Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper evidence of anthropogenic influence over the warming of the 20th century is presented and the debate regarding the time-series properties of global temperatures is addressed in depth. The 20th century global temperature simulations produced for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report and a set of the radiative forcing series used to drive them are analyzed using modern econometric techniques. Results show that both temperatures and radiative forcing series share similar time-series properties and a common nonlinear secular movement. This long-term co-movement is characterized by the existence of time-ordered breaks in the slope of their trend functions. The evidence presented in this paper suggests that while natural forcing factors may help explain the warming of the first part of the century, anthropogenic forcing has been its main driver since the 1970’s. In terms of Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, significant anthropogenic interference with the climate system has already occurred and the current climate models are capable of accurately simulating the response of the climate system, even if it consists in a rapid or abrupt change, to changes in external forcing factors. This paper presents a new methodological approach for conducting time-series based attribution studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The 17 United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) represent a powerful guide to foster actions to achieve a more sustainable planet. This paper aims to analyze the challenges and opportunities of SDGs based on an interview conducted with climate scientist Dr Carlos Nobre. In this interview, Nobre addresses the opportunities and challenges of the SDGs. More broadly, the aim is to raise awareness among scholars, policymakers and citizens about what is considered to be the most important societal questions of the times. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyze the interview conducted with this prominent and experienced climate scientist through academic lenses of interpretive approach. Further, the authors are bringing important reflections from this interview and linking it to Rasche et al.'s (2017) model, which cut across different levels and take into consideration the individual, organizational and societal levels in the relationship for SDG. Findings: The interview reveals that all SDGs are interlinked and are of equal importance. However, the authors discuss three important challenges and opportunities addressed by Dr Nobre regarding the implementation of the SDGs. These are education, climate change and peace. Originality/value: To better understand the challenges and opportunities of SDGs and how to act on them as citizens and management scholars, the authors believe that it is imperative to consider the viewpoint of climate scientists who, through their knowledge on earth science, have been contributing globally to the United Nations SDGs agenda at global and local levels. In this paper, the authors analyze the challenges and opportunities of SDGs based on an interview conducted with climate scientist Dr Carlos Nobre. In this interview, Nobre addresses the opportunities and challenges of the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Climate change and extreme temperatures pose increasing challenges to individuals and their health with older adults being one of the most vulnerable groups. The aim of this paper is to better understand the roles that tangible assets (e.g., physical or financial) and intangible assets (e.g., human or social) play in the way older adults adapt to extreme temperatures, the types of adaptive responses they implement, limits and constraints, as well opportunities for better adaptation. Rather than focusing exclusively on extremes of heat, or considering each type of asset in isolation, the important and novel contribution of this paper is to take an integrated and multi-seasonal qualitative and quantitative approach, that conjointly investigates all categories of assets in relation to the adaptations that independently-living older adults make to both extreme heat and extreme cold. Methods and findings: The paper examines the contribution of assets to adaptation to extreme temperatures among older adults living independently in their homes. An innovative mixed methods study with an inter-seasonal approach was implemented in Lisbon, Portugal with interviews and surveys during summer for extreme heat and winter for extreme cold. The ability of participants to adapt to extreme temperatures was found to be dependent on asset context and diversity, and the dynamics through which extreme temperatures enhanced or reduced the stock of assets available. As a result, participants engaged in activities of assets replacement, exchange or substitutions. Despite this, many participants recognised many constraints and limits to their ability to adapt and protect their health and well-being ranging from reduced income, high energy costs and lack of social networks. Opportunities for improving older adults’ adaptation were found to exist and strategies, action and investment have been identified by older adults which included life-long education, incentives to improve insulation and local activities. Conclusions: The paper suggests that the implementation of the proposed asset-based approach linking assets and adaptation to extreme temperatures, illustrates the key pathway that individuals, their families and carers, governments, policymakers, researchers and practitioners can follow to ensure effective adaptation and promote health and well-being. Supporting older adults’ adaptation to extreme temperatures is possible and can be complemented with efforts to reduce older adults’ vulnerability and building resilience to extreme temperatures. These findings pose concrete implications for policy and practice, including for example the need for implementation of measures and actions to reduce poverty, reduce energy costs, improve the quality of the housing stock and improve older adults’ social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although substantial attention has focused on efforts by the new Administration to block environmental policies, climate politics have been contentious in the US since well before the election of Donald Trump. In this paper, we extend previous work on empirical examinations of echo chambers in US climate politics using new data collected on the federal climate policy network in summer 2016. We test for the similarity and differences at two points in time in homophily and echo chambers using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) to compare new findings from 2016 to previous work on data from 2010. We show that echo chambers continue to play a significant role in the network of information exchange among policy elites working on the issue of climate change. In contrast to previous findings where echo chambers centered on a binding international commitment to emission reductions, we find that the pre-existing echo chambers have almost completely disappeared and new structures have formed around one of the main components of the Obama Administration’s national climate policy: the Clean Power Plan. These results provide empirical evidence that science communication and policymaking at the elite level shift in relation to the policy instruments under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last 50 years have witnessed a set of changes in the scale of humankind's ecological imagination toward 'thinking globally'. Developments in earth and planetary sciences have elaborated a creation story that dethroned humans from a position of claimed supremacy to a status on a par with other systemic forces that have shaped the planet. So marked is the human imprint that it has earned its own name in the annals of geology, environmental history, and geopolitics: the anthropocene. The scientific refutation of human exceptionalism has not elicited either instant humility or greater self-awareness in the uses of expert knowledge to combat global problems such as climate change. This paper looks at sites of struggle between a persistent human imperialism, expressed through the continued commodification of nature, and more humble ways of knowing and guiding humanity's planetary future from standpoints in ethics, politics and law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change adds an additional layer of complexity to existing sustainable development and biodiversity conservation challenges. The impacts of global climate change are felt locally, and thus local governance structures will increasingly be responsible for preparedness and local responses. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) options are gaining prominence as relevant climate change solutions. Local government officials seldom have an appropriate understanding of the role of ecosystem functioning in sustainable development goals, or access to relevant climate information. Thus the use of ecosystems in helping people adapt to climate change is limited partially by the lack of information on where ecosystems have the highest potential to do so. To begin overcoming this barrier, Conservation South Africa in partnership with local government developed a socio-ecological approach for identifying spatial EbA priorities at the sub-national level. Using GIS-based multi-criteria analysis and vegetation distribution models, the authors have spatially integrated relevant ecological and social information at a scale appropriate to inform local level political, administrative, and operational decision makers. This is the first systematic approach of which we are aware that highlights spatial priority areas for EbA implementation. Nodes of socio-ecological vulnerability are identified, and the inclusion of areas that provide ecosystem services and ecological resilience to future climate change is innovative. The purpose of this paper is to present and demonstrate a methodology for combining complex information into user-friendly spatial products for local level decision making on EbA. The authors focus on illustrating the kinds of products that can be generated from combining information in the suggested ways, and do not discuss the nuance of climate models nor present specific technical details of the model outputs here. Two representative case studies from rural South Africa demonstrate the replicability of this approach in rural and peri-urban areas of other developing and least developed countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main manifestations of climate change will be increased rainfall variability. How to deal with this in agriculture will be a major societal challenge. In this paper we explore flexibility in land use, through deliberate seasonal adjustments in cropped area, as a specific strategy for coping with rainfall variability. Such adjustments are not incorporated in hydro-meteorological crop models commonly used for food security analyses. Our paper contributes to the literature by making a comprehensive model assessment of inter-annual variability in crop production, including both variations in crop yield and cropped area. The Ganges basin is used as a case study. First, we assessed the contribution of cropped area variability to overall variability in rice and wheat production by applying hierarchical partitioning on time-series of agricultural statistics. We then introduced cropped area as an endogenous decision variable in a hydro-economic optimization model (WaterWise), coupled to a hydrology-vegetation model (LPJmL), and analyzed to what extent its performance in the estimation of inter-annual variability in crop production improved. From the statistics, we found that in the period 1999–2009 seasonal adjustment in cropped area can explain almost 50% of variability in wheat production and 40% of variability in rice production in the Indian part of the Ganges basin. Our improved model was well capable of mimicking existing variability at different spatial aggregation levels, especially for wheat. The value of flexibility, i.e. the foregone costs of choosing not to crop in years when water is scarce, was quantified at 4% of gross margin of wheat in the Indian part of the Ganges basin and as high as 34% of gross margin of wheat in the drought-prone state of Rajasthan. We argue that flexibility in land use is an important coping strategy to rainfall variability in water stressed regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is ample evidence that biotic factors, such as biotic interactions and dispersal capacity, can affect species distributions and influence species’ responses to climate change. However, little is known about how these factors affect predictions from species distribution models (SDMs) with respect to spatial grain and extent of the models. Objectives: Understanding how spatial scale influences the effects of biological processes in SDMs is important because SDMs are one of the primary tools used by conservation biologists to assess biodiversity impacts of climate change. Data sources and study eligibility criteria: We systematically reviewed SDM studies published from 2003–2015 using ISI Web of Science searches to: (1) determine the current state and key knowledge gaps of SDMs that incorporate biotic interactions and dispersal; and (2) understand how choice of spatial scale may alter the influence of biological processes on SDM predictions. Synthesis methods and limitations: We used linear mixed effects models to examine how predictions from SDMs changed in response to the effects of spatial scale, dispersal, and biotic interactions. Results: There were important biases in studies including an emphasis on terrestrial ecosystems in northern latitudes and little representation of aquatic ecosystems. Our results suggest that neither spatial extent nor grain influence projected climate-induced changes in species ranges when SDMs include dispersal or biotic interactions. Conclusions: We identified several knowledge gaps and suggest that SDM studies forecasting the effects of climate change should: 1) address broader ranges of taxa and locations; and 1) report the grain size, extent, and results with and without biological complexity. The spatial scale of analysis in SDMs did not affect estimates of projected range shifts with dispersal and biotic interactions. However, the lack of reporting on results with and without biological complexity precluded many studies from our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use change can significantly affect the provision of ecosystem services and the effects could be exacerbated by projected climate change. We quantify ecosystem services of bioenergy-based land use change and estimate the potential changes of ecosystem services due to climate change projections. We considered 17 bioenergy-based scenarios with Miscanthus, switchgrass, and corn stover as candidate bioenergy feedstock. Soil and Water Assessment Tool simulations of biomass/grain yield, hydrology, and water quality were used to quantify ecosystem services freshwater provision ( FWPI), food ( FPI) and fuel provision, erosion regulation ( ERI), and flood regulation ( FRI). Nine climate projections from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase-3 were used to quantify the potential climate change variability. Overall, ecosystem services of heavily row cropped Wildcat Creek watershed were lower than St. Joseph River watershed which had more forested and perennial pasture lands. The provision of ecosystem services for both study watersheds were improved with bioenergy production scenarios. Miscanthus in marginal lands of Wildcat Creek (9% of total area) increased FWPI by 27% and ERI by 14% and decreased FPI by 12% from the baseline. For St. Joseph watershed, Miscanthus in marginal lands (18% of total area) improved FWPI by 87% and ERI by 23% while decreasing FPI by 46%. The relative impacts of land use change were considerably larger than climate change impacts in this paper. Editor's note: This paper is part of the featured series on SWAT Applications for Emerging Hydrologic and Water Quality Challenges. See the February 2017 issue for the introduction and background to the series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have some kind of energy-system transformation either planned or ongoing for various reasons, such as to curb carbon emissions or to compensate for the phasing out of nuclear energy. One important component of these transformations is the overall reduction in energy demand. It is generally acknowledged that the domestic sector represents a large share of total energy consumption in many countries. Increased energy efficiency is one factor that reduces energy demand, but behavioral approaches (known as “sufficiency”) and their respective interventions also play important roles. In this paper, we address citizens’ heterogeneity regarding both their current behaviors and their willingness to realize their sufficiency potentials—that is, to reduce their energy consumption through behavioral change. We collaborated with three Swiss cities for this study. A survey conducted in the three cities yielded thematic sets of energy-consumption behavior that various groups of participants rated differently. Using this data, we identified four groups of participants with different patterns of both current behaviors and sufficiency potentials. The paper discusses intervention types and addresses citizens’ heterogeneity and behaviors from a city-based perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a wide spectrum of data, case studies, monitoring, and experimental and numerical simulation techniques, the multidisciplinary approach of material, environmental, and computer science applied to the conservation of cultural heritage offers several opportunities for the heritage science and conservation community to map and monitor the state of the art of the knowledge referring to natural and human-induced climate change impacts on cultural heritage—mainly constituted by the built environment—in Europe and Latin America. The special issue "Preservation of Cultural Heritage and Resources Threatened by Climate Change" of Geosciences—launched to take stock of the existing but still fragmentary knowledge on this challenge, and to enable the community to respond to the implementation of the Paris agreement—includes 10 research articles. These papers exploit a broad range of data derived from preventive conservation monitoring conducted indoors in museums, churches, historical buildings, or outdoors in archeological sites and city centers. Case studies presented in the papers focus on a well-assorted sample of decay phenomena occurring on heritage materials—e.g., surface recession and biomass accumulation on limestone, depositions of pollutant on marble, salt weathering on inorganic building materials, and weathering processes on mortars in many local- to regional-scale study areas in the Scandinavian Peninsula, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, Greece, and Panama. Besides monitoring, the methodological approaches that are showcased include, but are not limited to, original material characterization, decay product characterization, and climate and numerical modelling on material components for assessing environmental impact and climate change effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marion Island is a peak of a shield volcano located in the southern Indian Ocean. The island is strategically important for the collection of climatological data and marine and terrestrial research in a vast, oceanic region of the globe. This paper reviews the series of earth science programmes on Marion Island over the last 25 years, provides a synthesis of the research outcomes and demonstrates how field and laboratory methods have developed over time. Marion Island has, globally, one of the most active soil frost environments in a distinctive periglacial setting and understanding this contemporary periglacial environment has been a key objective of the research programmes. Geomorphological processes have important implications for local ecosystem functioning and define the regional and global significance for diurnal soil frost environments and climate change. Keeping abreast with the advancements of appropriate methodologies and technologies and the continued employment of a mix of new and established methods has driven the earth science research in this unique island environment. A series of short vignettes present the most recent advancements on old key questions and indicate that new techniques continuously challenge us to re-evaluate the most basic of assumptions that exist within our research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remnant populations of Betula papyrifera Marshall have persisted in the Great Plains after the Wisconsin Glaciation along the Niobrara River Valley, Nebraska. Population health has declined in recent years, which has been hypothesized to be due to climate change. We used dendrochronological techniques to assess the response of B. papyrifera to microclimate (1950-2014) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from satellite imagery (Landsat 5 TM (1985-2011) and MODIS (2000-2014)) as a proxy for population health. Growing-season streamflow and precipitation were positively correlated with raw and standardized tree-ring widths and basal area increment increase. Increasing winter and spring temperatures were unfavorable for tree growth, while increasing summer temperatures were favorable in the absence of drought. The strongest predictor for standardized tree rings was the Palmer Drought Severity Index, suggesting that B. papyrifera is highly responsive to a combination of temperature and water availability. The NDVI from the vegetation community was positively correlated with standardized tree-ring growth, indicating the potential of these techniques to be used as a proxy for ex situ monitoring of B. papyrifera. These results aid in forecasting the dynamics of the species in the face of climate variability and change in both remnant populations and across its current distribution in northern latitudes of North America. Key words: paper birch, tree rings, riparian, MODIS, Landsat, NDVI, water, temperature, Nebraska Sandhills. Des populations reliques de Betula papyrifera Marshall ont persiste dans les grandes plaines apres la glaciation du Wisconsin le long de la vallee de la riviere Niobrara, au Nebraska. L'etat de sante des populations s'est deteriore au cours des recentes annees, vraisemblablement a cause des changements climatiques. Nous avons utilise les techniques dendrochronologiques pour evaluer la reaction de B. papyrifera au microclimat (1950-2014), ainsi que l'indice de vegetation NDVI derive de l'imagerie satellitaire (Landsat 5 TM (1985-2011) et MODIS (2000-2014)) en tant que substitut refletant l'etat de sante des populations. La precipitation et l'ecoulement fluvial durant la saison se croissance etaient positivement correles avec l'augmentation de l'accroissement de la surface terriere et la largeur brute et standardisee des cernes annuels. L'augmentation des temperatures hivernales et printanieres etait defavorable pour la croissance des arbres tandis que l'augmentation des temperatures estivales etait favorable en l'absence de secheresse. Le meilleur predicteur pour les cernes annuels standardises etait l'indice de severite de la secheresse de Palmer, ce qui indique que B. papyrifera est tres sensible aune combinaison de temperature et de disponibilite de l'eau. L'indice NDVI de la communaute vegetale etait positivement correle a la croissance des cernes annuels standardises, ce qui indique que ces techniques peuvent etre utilisees comme substitut pour le suivi ex situ de B. papyrifera. Ces resultats vont aider a predire la dynamique de cette espece face aux changements climatiques tant dans les populations reliques que partout dans son aire de repartition actuelle sous les latitudes septentrionales de l'Amerique du Nord. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: bouleau blanc, cernes annuels, riverain, MODIS, Landsat, indice de vegetation NDVI, eau, temperature, dunes du Nebraska., 1. Introduction Paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marshall) is a widely distributed deciduous tree species across continental North America. It grows in the boreal forest from Newfoundland in eastern Canada all [...]

Soil Research, 2019, 57, 467-481. doi: 10.1071/SR18139 The publisher regrets that errors were introduced into several figure legends during the production of this paper. In Figure 1 'NARCliM domin' should [...]

Background and objectives: Heat related mortality is of great concern for public health, and estimates of future mortality under a warming climate are important for planning of resources and possible adaptation measures. Papers providing projections of future heat-related mortality were critically reviewed with a focus on the use of climate model data. Some best practice guidelines are proposed for future research. Methods: The electronic databases Web of Science and PubMed/Medline were searched for papers containing a quantitative estimate of future heat-related mortality. The search was limited to papers published in English in peer-reviewed journals up to the end of March 2017. Reference lists of relevant papers and the citing literature were also examined. The wide range of locations studied and climate data used prevented a meta-analysis. Results: A total of 608 articles were identified after removal of duplicate entries, of which 63 were found to contain a quantitative estimate of future mortality from hot days or heat waves. A wide range of mortality models and climate model data have been used to estimate future mortality. Temperatures in the climate simulations used in these studies were projected to increase. Consequently, all the papers indicated that mortality from high temperatures would increase under a warming climate. The spread in projections of future climate by models adds substantial uncertainty to estimates of future heat-related mortality. However, many studies either did not consider this source of uncertainty, or only used results from a small number of climate models. Other studies showed that uncertainty from changes in populations and demographics, and the methods for adaptation to warmer temperatures were at least as important as climate model uncertainty. Some inconsistencies in the use of climate data (for example, using global mean temperature changes instead of changes for specific locations) and interpretation of the effects on mortality were apparent. Some factors which have not been considered when estimating future mortality are summarised. Conclusions: Most studies have used climate data generated using scenarios with medium and high emissions of greenhouse gases. More estimates of future mortality using climate information from the mitigation scenario RCP2.6 are needed, as this scenario is the only one under which the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2°C or less could be realised. Many of the methods used to combine modelled data with local climate observations are simplistic. Quantile-based methods might offer an improved approach, especially for temperatures at the ends of the distributions. The modelling of adaptation to warmer temperatures in mortality models is generally arbitrary and simplistic, and more research is needed to better quantify adaptation. Only a small number of studies included possible changes in population and demographics in their estimates of future mortality, meaning many estimates of mortality could be biased low. Uncertainty originating from establishing a mortality baseline, climate projections, adaptation and population changes is important and should be considered when estimating future mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selecting appropriate environmental variables is a key step in ecology. Terrain attributes (e.g. slope, rugosity) are routinely used as abiotic surrogates of species distribution and to produce habitat maps that can be used in decision-making for conservation or management. Selecting appropriate terrain attributes for ecological studies may be a challenging process that can lead users to select a subjective, potentially sub-optimal combination of attributes for their applications. The objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of subjectively selecting terrain attributes for ecological applications by comparing the performance of different combinations of terrain attributes in the production of habitat maps and species distribution models. Seven different selections of terrain attributes, alone or in combination with other environmental variables, were used to map benthic habitats of German Bank (off Nova Scotia, Canada). 29 maps of potential habitats based on unsupervised classifications of biophysical characteristics of German Bank were produced, and 29 species distribution models of sea scallops were generated using MaxEnt. The performances of the 58 maps were quantified and compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the various combinations of environmental variables. One of the combinations of terrain attributes–recommended in a related study and that includes a measure of relative position, slope, two measures of orientation, topographic mean and a measure of rugosity–yielded better results than the other selections for both methodologies, confirming that they together best describe terrain properties. Important differences in performance (up to 47% in accuracy measurement) and spatial outputs (up to 58% in spatial distribution of habitats) highlighted the importance of carefully selecting variables for ecological applications. This paper demonstrates that making a subjective choice of variables may reduce map accuracy and produce maps that do not adequately represent habitats and species distributions, thus having important implications when these maps are used for decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial presents the papers published in the 2019 edition of this series of special issues in the context of the contribution of geological studies to the development of knowledge on the built environment (namely materials) and in the opposite sense, that is the potential contribution of studies of the Built Environment to geoscientific knowledge. This is discussed considering the major framework of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings advances in weather data collection and modeling, and developments in socioeconomic climate microsimulations to bear on the analysis of the implications of climate change (CC) in the design of public policies to combat food insecurity. It uses new downscaled predictions of future climate in 2050, derived from three Earth System Models calibrated with a new historical weather station dataset for Peru. This climate data is used in a three-stage socioeconomic microsimulation model that includes climate risk, and deals with the endogeneity of incomes and simultaneity of expected food consumption and its variability. We estimate the impact of CC on agricultural yields, and find results consistent and fully bounded within what the global simulations literature has found, with yields falling up to 13% in some regions. However, we show that these drops (and increases) in yields translate to much smaller changes in food consumption, and also surprisingly, to very minor impacts on vulnerability to food insecurity. The document explores what explains this surprising result, showing that in addition to characteristics that are specific to Peru, there are household and market mediating mechanisms that are available in all countries, which explain how changes in yields, and corresponding farm incomes have a reduced impact in vulnerability to food insecurity. Finally, in light of these findings, we explore which policies might have greater impact in reducing food insecurity in contexts of hunger prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulating ecosystem services provided by urban forests are of great importance for the quality of life among city dwellers. To reach a maximum contribution to well-being in cities, the urban regulating ecosystem services (URES) must match with the demands in terms of space and time. If we understand the matches or mismatches between the current urban dwellers’ desired quality conditions (demand) and the supply of URES by urban forests (UF) in the cities, this will facilitate integrating the concepts of ecosystem services in urban planning and management, but such an assessment has suffered from major knowledge limitations. Since it is complex and problematic to identify the direct demands for URES and the spatiotemporal patterns therein, improving the demand indicators can help to determine the actual requirements. In this paper, a methodological approach based on indicators is presented and demonstrated for two important URES: air quality improvement and global climate change mitigation provided by urban trees and shrubs. Four air quality standards and greenhouse gas reduction targets were used and compared to supplies of the URES in Tabriz, Iran. Our results show that the mean contribution of the URES supply to air quality standards and greenhouse gas reduction targets is modest. Hence, in Tabriz, there is a strong mismatch between demand and supply. Mismatches at the city scale will have to be reduced by both a reduction in pollutant emissions and an increased provisioning of URES supply through urban greenery. The presented assessment approach and the results for Tabriz make it explicit how different the demands and supplies of the two studied URES are, and we expect similar mismatches in many other cities. Therefore, our approach, relatively simple but still realistic and easy-to-apply, can raise awareness about, and the utility of, the ecosystem services concepts for urban planning and policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In agrometeorology and management of meteorology related natural resources, many traditional methods and indigenous technologies are still in use or being revived for managing low external inputs sustainable agriculture (LEISA) under conditions of climate variability. This paper starts with the introduction of an end-to-end climate information build up and transfer system in agrometeorology, in which the use of such methods and technologies must be seen to operate. It then reviews the options that LEISA farmers have in risk management of agrometeorological and agroclimatological calamities. This is based on the role that the pertinent meteorological/climatological parameters and phenomena play as limiting factors in agricultural production and the expectations on their variability. Subsequently, local case studies are given as examples of preparedness strategies to cope with i). variable water/moisture flows, including mechanical impacts of rain and/or hail, ii). variable temperature and heat flows, including fires, and iii). fitting cropping periods to the varying seasons, everywhere including related phenomena as appropriate. The paper ends with a series of important additional considerations without which the indicated strategies cannot be successful on a larger scale and in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional public good experiments participants receive an endowment from the experimenter that can be invested in a public good or kept in a private account. In this paper we present an experimental environment where participants can invest time during five days to contribute to a public good. Participants can make contributions to a linear public good by logging into a web application and performing virtual actions. We compared four treatments, with different group sizes and information of (relative) performance of other groups. We find that information feedback about performance of other groups has a small positive effect if we control for various attributes of the groups. Moreover, we find a significant effect of the contributions of others in the group in the previous day on the number of points earned in the current day. Our results confirm that people participate more when participants in their group participate more, and are influenced by information about the relative performance of other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at conducting the first science mapping analysis of the Mediterranean forest research in order to elucidate its research structure and evolution. We applied a science mapping approach based on co-term and citation analyses to a set of scientific publications retrieved from the Elsevier’s Scopus database over the period 1980–2014. The Scopus search retrieved 2,698 research papers and reviews published by 159 peer-reviewed journals. The total number of publications was around 1% (N = 17) during the period 1980–1989 and they reached 3% (N = 69) in the time slice 1990–1994. Since 1995, the number of publications increased exponentially, thus reaching 55% (N = 1,476) during the period 2010–2014. Within the thirty-four years considered, the retrieved publications were published by 88 countries. Among them, Spain was the most productive country, publishing 44% (N = 1,178) of total publications followed by Italy (18%, N = 482) and France (12%, N = 336). These countries also host the ten most productive scientific institutions in terms of number of publications in Mediterranean forest subjects. Forest Ecology and Management and Annals of Forest Science were the most active journals in publishing research in Mediterranean forest. During the period 1980–1994, the research topics were poorly characterized, but they become better defined during the time slice 1995–1999. Since 2000s, the clusters become well defined by research topics. Current status of Mediterranean forest research (20092014) was represented by four clusters, in which different research topics such as biodiversity and conservation, land-use and degradation, climate change effects on ecophysiological responses and soil were identified. Basic research in Mediterranean forest ecosystems is mainly conducted by ecophysiological research. Applied research was mainly represented by land-use and degradation, biodiversity and conservation and fire research topics. The citation analyses revealed highly cited terms in the Mediterranean forest research as they were represented by fire, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, climate change and global warming. Finally, our analysis also revealed the multidisciplinary role of climate change research. This study provides a first holistic view of the Mediterranean forest research that could be useful for researchers and policy makers as they may evaluate and analyze its historical evolution, as well as its structure and scientific production. We concluded that Mediterranean forest research represents an active scientific field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies in the marketing literature developed a new method for eliciting willingness to pay (WTP) with an open-ended elicitation format: the Range-WTP method. In contrast to the traditional approach of eliciting WTP as a single value (Point-WTP), Range-WTP explicitly allows for preference uncertainty in responses. The aim of this paper is to apply Range-WTP to the domain of contingent valuation and to test for its theoretical validity and robustness in comparison to the Point-WTP. Using data from two novel large-scale surveys on the perception of solar radiation management (SRM), a little-known technique for counteracting climate change, we compare the performance of both methods in the field. In addition to the theoretical validity (i.e. the degree to which WTP values are consistent with theoretical expectations), we analyse the test-retest reliability and stability of our results over time. Our evidence suggests that the Range-WTP method clearly outperforms the Point-WTP method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the degree to which exposure to natural disasters and poor governance (quality of governance) is associated with absolute child poverty in sixty-seven middle- and low-income countries. The data is representative for about 2.8 billion of the world´s population. Institutionalist tend to argue that many of society’s ills, including poverty, derive from fragile or inefficient institutions. However, our findings show that although increasing quality of government tends to be associated with less poverty, the negative effects of natural disasters on child poverty are independent of a country´s institutional efficiency. Increasing disaster victims (killed and affected) is associated with higher rates of child poverty. A child´s estimated odds ratio to be in a state of absolute poverty increases by about a factor of 5.7 [95% CI: 1.7 to 18.7] when the average yearly toll of disasters in the child´s country increases by one on a log-10 scale. Better governance correlates with less child poverty, but it does not modify the correlation between child poverty and natural disasters. The results are based on hierarchical regression models that partition the variance into three parts: child, household, and country. The models were cross-sectional and based on observational data from the Demographic Health Survey and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which were collected at the beginning of the twenty-first millennium. The Sustainable Development Goals are a principle declaration to halt climate change, but they lack a clear plan on how the burden of this change should be shared by the global community. Based on our results, we suggest that the development agencies should take this into account and to articulate more equitable global policies to protect the most vulnerable, specifically children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]