Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

• AMBIO - Coupled human and natural systems: The evolution and applications of an integrated framework

  Published on March 16, 2021
  An intived “Behind the Paper” reflection on the paper by Liu et al. 2007 Ambio, one of the “most influential papers in the past 50 years” since the first issue of Ambio, a Journal of Environment and Society, by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

• SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT - A global assessment of the impact of individual protected areas on preventing forest loss

  Published on March 12, 2021
  Impacts of 54,792 PAs worldwide quantified to explore preventing forest loss from 2000to 2015, and assessed important landscape and management factors affecting the impacts of PAs.

• SUSTAINABILITY -- Through the Lens of Telecoupling and Metacoupling: New Perspectives for Global Sustainability

  Published on March 9, 2021
  An editorial reviewing the contributions and impacts of telecoupling and metacoupling.

• FRONTIERS OF ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT - The evolution of macrosystems biology

  Published on February 1, 2021
  Analyses indicates that macrosystems biology emphasizes large scales, has deep roots in ecological disciplines, and may emerge as a new research frontier, but this last point has yet to be proven.

• SUSTAINABILITY - Sustainability Evaluation on the Grain to Green Program in the Hexi Corridor of China: A Metacoupled System Perspective

  Published on February 1, 2021
  Establishing a metacoupled model to quantitatively evaluate aspects of ecosystem sustainability in China, providing insight to the theory and application of sustainability science.

• FRONTIERS OF ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT - Macrosystems as metacoupled human and natural systems

  Published on February 1, 2021
  In other words, all that’s local is a lot more global, and the scientists say solutions can only be found through broader views and collaborations nearby and far away.

• SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT - Spatial variation and influencing factors of the effectiveness of afforestation in China's Loess Plateau

  Published on January 29, 2021
  Results suggest ways to improve af- forestation design and implementation.

• AMBIO - Recognize fish as food in policy discourse and development funding

  Published on January 18, 2021
  The paper argues for viewing fish from a food systems perspective to broaden the conversation on food and nutrition security and equity

• FRONTIERS IN MARINE SCIENCE - Spatial Management Measures Alter Vessel Behavior in the Aleutian Archipelago

  Published on January 7, 2021
  Scientists find out if ships honored areas to be avoided (ATBAs)

• BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION - The hidden risk of using umbrella species as conservation surrogates

  Published on December 3, 2020
  Doubt is cast on the long-held hope that the conservation protections granted pandas and other adored threatened species extended to their wildlife neighbors, calling for broader conservation efforts.

• ACTA GEOGRAPHICA SINICA - 人类世可持续发展背景下的远程耦合框架及其应用

  Published on November 25, 2020
  地理学报 第75卷 第11期

• 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.

• SCIENCE - China and India: Toward a sustainable world

  Published on July 31, 2020
  In Letters, an international group of scientists advocate the two countries opt for diplomacy to place sustainability before political tensions

• 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