Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

• ACTA GEOGRAPHICA SINICA - Sustainability in the Anthropocene

  Published on November 25, 2020
  Manuscript is in both Chinese (first) and English

• NATURE COMMUNICATIONS - Impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO2 nexus across 2 metacoupled systems

  Published on November 17, 2020
  Understanding irrigated agriculture's impact on the food-energy-water-CO2 nexus

• INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GEOGRAPHY -- Telecoupling

  Published on October 29, 2020
  The telecoupling entry gives background on the concept, illustrates the framework that helps understand telecoupling, and provides example applications of the concept and framework

• SCIENTIFIC REPORTS - The spatial and temporal dynamics of global meat trade networks

  Published on October 7, 2020
  Researchers combined network modeling and cluster analysis to simultaneously identify the structural changes in meat trade networks and the factors that influence the networks themselves

• SUSTAINABILITY - Metacoupled Tourism and Wildlife Translocations Affect Synergies and Trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals across Spillover Systems

  Published on September 17, 2020
  We used a new integrated framework to guide SDG synergy and trade-off analysis within and across systems, as influenced by cross-boundary tourism and wildlife translocations.

• SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT - Synergies and tradeoffs among Sustainable Development Goals across boundaries in a metacoupled world

  Published on September 3, 2020
  Understanding SDG synergies and tradeoffs across spatial/administrative boundaries using the metacoupling framework using tourism and panda loans as an example.

• JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY - Working with Indigenous and local knowledge In large‐scale ecological assessments

  Published on July 27, 2020
  We review and reflect on how the GA worked with Indigenous and local knowledge and lessons learned.

• ECOLOGICAL MODELLING - Improving species distribution model predictive accuracy using species abundance: Application with boosted regression trees

  Published on July 24, 2020
  Insights into the applicability of using weighted approaches with other commonly used species distribution modeling methods.

• NATURE SUSTAINABILITY -- Impacts of International Trade on Achieving Global Sustainable Development Goals

  Published on July 13, 2020
  International trade positively affected global progress towards seven environment-related SDGs. International trade improved SDG scores of most evaluated developed countries but reduced the SDG scores of over 60% of the evaluated developing countries

• PEOPLE AND NATURE - Levers and leverage points to sustainability

  Published on July 1, 2020
  Applying a social–ecological systems lens, we identified eight priority points for intervention (leverage points) and five overarching strategic actions and priority interventions (levers), which appear to be key to societal transformation

• SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT - Alleviating water scarcity and poverty in drylands through telecouplings: Vegetable trade and tourism in northwest China

  Published on June 26, 2020
  Water scarcity evaluated using a composite index that considered both water resources and poverty and assessed the effects of the vegetable trade and tourism on water scarcity and income.

• PNAS -- Using gross ecosystem product (GEP) to value nature in decision making

  Published on June 8, 2020
  We develop a measure of gross ecosystem product (GEP) that summarizes the value of ecosystem services in a single monetary metric.

• BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION -- Microhabitat selection by giant pandas

  Published on May 25, 2020
  Findings shed new light on the importance of microhabitat characteristics that are generally overlooked in coarse-scale models in influencing giant panda habitat selection within the home range.

• PLOS ONE - Governing the Commons Beyond Harvesting: An Empirical Illustration from Fishing

  Published on April 23, 2020
  Our study highlights the importance of historically and contextually situating analyses linking the effects of pre-harvesting processes on harvesting outcomes, broadening the scope of inquiry beyond a narrow policy attention on harvesting.

• RESOURCES, CONSERVATION AND RECYCLING - Ecological civilization and government administrative system reform in China

  Published on April 13, 2020
  Understanding how China's recent adaptation of ecological civilization differs from previous national sustainability strategies is critical to evaluate how China’s eco-civilization can contribute to global sustainability.

• GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE - Quantifying interregional flows of multiple ecosystem services – A case study for Germany

  Published on March 20, 2020
  A first multi-ES quantification of a nation's use of ecosystem services from abroad.

• SUSTAINABILITY - Understanding How Smallholders Integrated into Pericoupled and Telecoupled Systems

  Published on February 20, 2020
  A potential approach to ending poverty and increasing well‐being for smallholders is creating and increasing pericoupling flows to empower smallholders for desired livelihood and social‐ecological outcomes.

• JASSS - Land-Use Changes in Distant Places: Implementation of a Telecoupled Agent-Based Model

  Published on January 31, 2020
  We construct a new type of agent-based model (ABM) that can simulate land-use changes at multiple distant places (namely TeleABM, telecoupled agent-based model).

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  JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY - Emerging risks of non‐native species escapes from aquaculture

  Published on January 6, 2020
  Non‐native aquatic species escapes from aquaculture facilities can result in serious aquatic bio‐invasions. We discuss aquaculture expansion and NAS escapes, illustrate emerging risks and propose recommendations for improved aquaculture management.

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  NATURE -- Assessing progress towards sustainable development over space and time

  Published on January 3, 2020
  In Nature, scientists show that indeed all sustainability, like politics, is local. China has improved its aggregated SDG score. At the provincial level, however, there is disparity between the country’s developed and developing regions.