Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

Publications

• URSUS - Social network analysis uncovers hidden social complexity in giant pandas

  Published on December 7, 2023
  We employed noninvasive fecal genetic sampling to identify individuals of giant pandas, then used spatiotemporal proximity thresholds to infer scent mark–based association networks and conduct social network analyses of the population.

• ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIODIVERSITY - Evaluation of ecosystem service policies from biophysical and social perspectives: The case of China

  Published on December 1, 2023
  The article highlights China's major large-scale ecosystem service policies: Nature Reserve System, Natural Forest Conservation Program, and Grain-to-Green Program. Overall, these programs have produced positive biophysical and socioeconomic effects.

• PNAS - Environmental impacts beyond land use and conservation risk hotspots: Coffee and tea

  Published on November 20, 2023
  Compared the production and consumption of coffee and tea, the most common beverages after water.

• ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY - Transboundary flows in the metacoupled Anthropocene: typology, methods, and governance for global sustainability

  Published on September 20, 2023
  We make the first attempt to develop a typology of transboundary flows using six flow attributes (i.e., type, magnitude, direction, distance, time, and mode) to advance metacoupling flow research and governance.

• SCIENTIFIC REPORTS - Complex relationships between soybean trade destination and tropical deforestation

  Published on July 12, 2023
  Using data for soybean-producing municipalities in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, between 2004 and 2017, we evaluated the relationships between forest cover change and the annual soybean trade destination.

• FRONTIERS IN FORESTS AND GLOBAL CHANGE - Toward a forest transition across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome

  Published on June 29, 2023
  Using land-use/cover (LULC) data, we assessed the loss and successive gain in forest cover during the 1987–2001 and 2001–2015 periods.

• NATIONAL SCIENCE REVIEW - Leveraging the metacoupling framework for sustainability science and global sustainable development

  Published on June 8, 2023
  The metacoupling framework offers a conceptual foundation and a holistic approach to integrating human–nature interactions within a place, as well as between adjacent places and between distant places worldwide.

• NATURE COMMUNICATIONS - Physical and virtual nutrient flows in global telecoupled agricultural trade networks

  Published on April 26, 2023
  We quantified the physical and virtual nitrogen and phosphorus flows embedded in the global agricultural trade networks from 1997 to 2016 and elaborated components of the telecoupling framework.

• GEOGRAPHY AND SUSTAINABILITY - Broader applicability of the metacoupling framework than Tobler’s first law of geography for global sustainability: A systematic review

  Published on April 17, 2023
  We reviewed and synthesized sustainability literature that used Tobler’s first law of geography and framework of metacoupling across seven major topics: land change, species migration, tourism, trade, agricultural development, conservation, and governance.

• AMBIO - Global gateways as telecoupled human and natural systems: The emerging case of the Bering Strait

  Published on March 28, 2023
  We examine how three telecoupling processes (tourism, vessel traffic, and natural resource development) impact and are impacted by the coupled human and natural system of the Bering Strait Region.

• iSCIENCE - Global Decadal Assessment of Life below Water and on Land

  Published on March 16, 2023
  t\The overall SDG 14 scores had a small growth between 2010 and 2020, while the substantial increase in SDG 15 scores use of trirestrial spotlighted for the conservation ecosystem services,Especially in countries with biodiversity hotspots.

• Communications Earth & Environment - A big data approach to assess progress towards Sustainable Development Goals for cities of varying sizes

  Published on March 9, 2023
  We devise and test a systematic method for assessing SDG progress using open-source big data for 254 Chinese cities and compare the results with those obtained using statistical data.

• NATURE FOOD -- Spatial analysis of aquatic food access can inform nutrition-sensitive policy

  Published on December 15, 2022
  Devising a way to track and measure how one of the world’s most-traded commodities moves from the water to the plate within a country.

• SUSTAINABILITY - International Tourism in the Arctic under COVID-19: A Telecoupling Analysis of Iceland

  Published on November 17, 2022
  Analyzed the materials, energy, tourist, and information flows, as well as the causes, effects, and agents of tourism in Iceland using the framework of telecoupling (human-nature interactions over distances).

• REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT - Satellite prediction of coastal hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico

  Published on November 16, 2022
  We demonstrated the great potential of applying satellite remote sensing for spatially explicit hypoxia mapping, which could promote more cost-effective coastal hypoxia monitoring and assessment practices.

• NATURE FOOD - Landscape products for sustainable agricultural landscapes

  Published on October 18, 2022
  Explored seven landscape products worldwide to identify these multiple functions in the context of food commodification and landscape sustainability.

• AMBIO: Effects of global shocks on the evolution of an interconnected world

  Published on August 23, 2022
  Global shocks, such as pandemics, are increasing in speed and reach, and new ways are required to reduce negative impacts

• THE INNOVATION - Navigating Chinese cities to achieve sustainable development goals by 2030

  Published on July 16, 2022
  The study aimed to quantify the SDG index of 285 Chinese cities and developed a forecasting model to simulate the performance of each SDG in each city until 2030 using varied scenarios.

• NATURE FOOD - International food trade benefits biodiversity and food security in low-income countries

  Published on May 12, 2022
  This study calculates food trade flows among high-hotspot, low-hotspot and non-hotspot countries, including high- and low-income ones, over 2000–2018.

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  Nature News & Views - We can have biodiversity and eat too

  Published on May 12, 2022
  Stuart Pimm of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment comments on Jack Liu and Min Gon Chung's Nature Food paper on the global food trade and biodiversity