Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

Publications

• How can virtual water trade reshape water stress pattern? A global evaluation based on the metacoupling perspective

  Published on March 5, 2023
  With water scarcity increasingly becoming a growing global risk, it is prevalent to explore water supply-demand interaction within and beyond national borders driven by global virtual water trade and its effects on water sustainability. However, ther...

• 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.

• Metacoupling of Water Transfer: The Interaction of Ecological Environment in the Middle Route of China's South-North Project

  Published on September 14, 2022
  At present, nearly half of the population of China live in water-deficient areas where water needs to be transferred from surrounding or remote water sources to meet local water demands. Although the water transfer project has alleviated the demands ...

• 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

• NATURE -- Fuel, food and fertilizer shortage will hit biodiversity and climate

  Published on April 21, 2022
  The Russia-Ukraine war will affect biodiversity and the environment far beyond the war zones, with implications for sustainability and well-being worldwide.

• AMBIO: The metacoupled Arctic: Human–nature interactions across local to global scales as drivers of sustainability

  Published on March 30, 2022
  A synthesis of external influences analyzed in Arctic-coupled human and natural systems literature show the Arctic is affected by external influences, including global markets, climate change, governance, military security, and tourism.

• BECHE-DE-MER INFORMATION JOURNAL - Characterising changes in a decade of Mexican sea cucumber crime (2011–2021) using media reports

  Published on March 29, 2022
  The recent collapse of Mexican sea cucumber populations underscores the urgency of damage that can come to wildlife and people when crime engulfs international trade

• NATURE SUSTAINABILITY - Decoupling of SDGs followed by re-coupling as sustainable development progresses

  Published on March 24, 2022
  A correlational network approach and a global SDG database of 166 countries to analyze the evolution of SDG interactions along a progression of sustainable development measured by the SDG Index.

• ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS - Bundling regions for promoting Sustainable Development Goals

  Published on March 18, 2022
  The study sheds light on identifying regions' strengths and weaknesses in achieving all SDGs, which can inform targeted sustainability actions for regions within certain SDG bundles and promote collaborations among regions with different bundles.

• SUSTAINABLE HORIZONS - How much is global business sectors contributing to sustainable development goals?

  Published on January 31, 2022
  Benchmarked the engagement of the Fortune Global Top 500 corporations with the SDGs based on publicly available information screened, and revealed that 304 of the 500 corporations had presented relevant content on their websites.

• NATIONAL SCIENCE REVIEW - Polluted lake restoration to promote sustainability in the Yangtze River Basin, China

  Published on January 15, 2022
  Synthesized water pollution governance and evaluate the effectiveness of pollution mitigation actions for rivers and lakes in China. We focus on the main stem of the Yangtze River and 25 associated lakes from the mid to lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

• EARTH INTERACTIONS - Complex effects of telecouplings on forest dynamics: an agent-based modeling approach

  Published on January 1, 2022
  Developed an agent-based model and simulated the impacts of two globally common telecouplings, nature-based tourism and labor migration, on forest dynamics of a rural CHANS, China’s Wolong Nature Reserve (Wolong).

• AMBIO - Increasing collaboration between China and India in the environmental sciences to foster global sustainability

  Published on December 28, 2021
  We ranked the two countries on a variety of environmental challenges and solutions, illustrating quantitatively their environmental footprint and the parallels between them regarding the threats to their human populations and biodiversity.

• BIODIVERSITY - Six novel interdisciplinary resilience principles emerging from interdisciplinary exchange around post-COVID-19 centres and peripheries

  Published on December 7, 2021
  Reported on lessons draw at an interdisciplinary, international, and virtual symposium, ‘Centres and Peripheries: Reconfiguring Post-COVID-19 Landscapes’ funded by the UK Embassy to France in the context of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference 2021.