Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.