Environmental social sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Editorial |

    The clock is ticking for climate change mitigation. Geoengineering is gaining ground as an option, but it needs to be examined at a large scale to determine its effectiveness and associated risks.

  • Commentary |

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a report on keeping global warming below 1.5 °C. How the panel chooses to deal with the option of solar geoengineering will test the integrity of scientific climate policy advice.

    • Andy Parker
    •  & Oliver Geden

  • Commentary |

    To keep global warming below 2 °C, countries need long-term strategies for low-emission development. Without these, immediate emissions reductions may lock-in high-emitting infrastructure, hamper collaboration and make climate goals unachievable.

    • Jeffrey D. Sachs
    • , Guido Schmidt-Traub
    •  & Jim Williams

  • Editorial |

    Economic development in a sustainable fashion is metals-intensive. If we cannot afford to ban mining, regulation must be more effective.

  • Letter |

    Biomass turnover time is a key parameter in the global carbon cycle. An analysis of global land-use data reveals that biomass turnover is almost twice as fast when the land is used to enhance terrestrial ecosystem services.

    • Karl-Heinz Erb
    • , Tamara Fetzel
    •  & Helmut Haberl

  • Commentary |

    Slowing GDP growth, a structural shift away from heavy industry, and more proactive policies on air pollution and clean energy have caused China's coal use to peak. It seems that economic growth has decoupled from growth in coal consumption.

    • Ye Qi
    • , Nicholas Stern
    •  & Fergus Green

  • Commentary |

    The Paris Agreement introduced three mitigation targets. In the future, the main focus should not be on temperature targets such as 2 or 1.5 °C, but on the target with the greatest potential to effectively guide policy: net zero emissions.

    • Oliver Geden

  • Commentary |

    The need to mitigate climate change opens up a key role for cities. Bristol's year as a Green Capital led to great strides forward, but it also revealed that a creative and determined partnership across cultural divides will be necessary.

    • Richard D. Pancost

  • Editorial |

    The Paris Agreement on climate change has shifted international focus to more stringent mitigation, and asked the scientific community to work out what that means on a tight timeline. The challenge is steep, but well worth a go.

  • Commentary |

    The adoption of the Paris Agreement is a historic milestone for the global response to the threat of climate change. Scientists are now being challenged to investigate a 1.5 °C world — which will require an accelerated effort from the geoscience community.

    • Joeri Rogelj
    •  & Reto Knutti

  • News & Views |

    Economic-grade deposits of copper are hard to find. The aluminium content of magmatic rocks at the surface may provide an indicator of ore deposits buried deep below.

    • Jeremy Richards

  • News & Views |

    Humanity's nitrogen pollution footprint has increased by a factor of six since the 1930s. A global analysis reveals that a quarter of this nitrogen pollution is associated with the production of internationally traded products.

    • James N. Galloway
    •  & Allison M. Leach

  • Letter |

    Anthropogenic emissions of reactive nitrogen have had severe environmental impacts. An analysis of reactive nitrogen emissions from the production, consumption and transport of commodities attributes roughly a quarter to international trade.

    • Azusa Oita
    • , Arunima Malik
    •  & Manfred Lenzen

  • Editorial |

    As the world's leaders are negotiating climate change mitigation in Paris, a strong El Niño brings the warmest year on record. After a decade and a half of slow warming and slow policy progress, 2015 may bring an acceleration of both.

  • Commentary |

    Some climate change impacts rise fast with little warming, and then taper off. To avoid diminishing incentives to reduce emissions and inadvertently slipping into a lower-welfare world, mitigation policy needs to be ambitious early on.

    • Katharine L. Ricke
    • , Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
    •  & Ken Caldeira

  • Commentary |

    In the absence of an enforceable set of commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, concerned citizens may want to supplement international agreements on climate change. We suggest that litigation could have an important role to play.

    • James Thornton
    •  & Howard Covington

  • Perspective |

    Many governments agreed to limit global mean temperature change to below 2 °C, yet this level has not been assessed scientifically. A synthesis of the literature suggests that temperature is the best available target quantity, but a safe level is uncertain.

    • Reto Knutti
    • , Joeri Rogelj
    •  & Erich M. Fischer

  • Letter |

    The sediment load of China’s Yellow River has been declining. Analysis of 60 years of runoff and sediment load data attributes this decline to river engineering, with an increasing role of post-1990s land use changes on the Loess Plateau.

    • Shuai Wang
    • , Bojie Fu
    •  & Yafeng Wang

  • Editorial |

    The International Year of Soils draws attention to our vital dependence on the fertile crumb beneath our feet. Soil is renewable, but it takes careful stewardship to keep it healthy and plentiful.

  • Commentary |

    Multi-actor integrated assessment models based on well-being concepts beyond GDP could support policymakers by highlighting the interrelation of climate change mitigation and other important societal problems.

    • Klaus Hasselmann
    • , Roger Cremades
    •  & Nick Winder

  • News & Views |

    In the United States, hurricanes have been causing more and more economic damage. A reanalysis of the disaster database using a statistical method that accounts for improvements in resilience opens the possibility that climate change has played a role.

    • Stéphane Hallegatte

  • Editorial |

    The world has agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to be adopted this week. This is great progress towards acknowledging that the planet's finite resources need to be managed carefully in the face of humanity's unlimited aspirations.

  • News & Views |

    Leases of land concessions in Cambodia have accelerated in the last ten years. An analysis using high-resolution maps and official documents shows that deforestation rates in the land concessions are higher than in other areas.

    • Tom Rudel

  • Commentary |

    The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals emphasize the importance of evidence-based decision-making. This is a clarion call for Earth scientists to contribute directly to the health, prosperity and well-being of all people.

    • Jane Lubchenco
    • , Allison K. Barner
    •  & Jessica N. Reimer

  • Commentary |

    A truly global science community for the next generation of researchers will be essential if we are to tackle Earth system sustainability. Top-down support from funders should meet bottom-up initiatives — at a pace fast enough to meet that of early-career progress.

    • Florian Rauser
    • , Vera Schemann
    •  & Sebastian Sonntag

  • News & Views |

    Fires related to Amazonian deforestation are a large source of particulate matter emissions. Satellite measurements and models reveal that reductions in deforestation and fire emissions since 2001 have prevented hundreds of premature deaths each year.

    • Christine Wiedinmyer

  • Commentary |

    Since 1999, China's Grain for Green project has greatly increased the vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau. Now that erosion levels have returned to historic values, vegetation should be maintained but not expanded further as planned.

    • Yiping Chen
    • , Kaibo Wang
    •  & Xinhua He

  • Commentary |

    Natural landscapes are shaped by frequent moderate-sized events, except for the rare catastrophe. Human modifications to the Earth's surface are, compared with natural processes, increasingly catastrophic.

    • Richard Guthrie

  • Perspective |

    Our understanding of the interactions between clouds, circulation and climate is limited. Four central research questions — now tractable through advances in models, concepts and observations — are proposed to accelerate future progress.

    • Sandrine Bony
    • , Bjorn Stevens
    •  & Mark J. Webb

  • Editorial |

    Modern societies require more and more metals, not least for renewable energy generation. Scientists from a range of disciplines are needed to prospect for ore deposits and provide a basis for sustainable exploration.

  • Commentary |

    Ore bodies buried deep in Earth's crust could meet increasing global demands for metals, but mining them would be costly and could damage the environment. Reinventing an ancient technology for bioleaching metals could provide a solution.

    • D. Barrie Johnson

  • Commentary |

    The status of sea floors is an important part of healthy marine ecosystems and intact coastlines. We need laws and a sea-floor management regime to make the exploitation of marine resources sustainable.

    • Till Markus
    • , Katrin Huhn
    •  & Kai Bischof

  • Editorial |

    Humans have altered their environment ever since they first appeared. Updates on three frameworks of thinking about the scale of twenty-first-century human influence on the Earth are invigorating the global change debate.

  • News & Views |

    Elevated levels of CO2 can stimulate photosynthesis in plants and increase their uptake of atmospheric carbon. A five-year study in Minnesota grasslands shows that increased plant uptake of CO2 is restricted by the availability of vital nutrients and water.

    • Whendee L. Silver

  • Editorial |

    Wealth in a country typically protects against earthquake damage. The same cannot always be said for wealth of individuals.

  • Editorial |

    Guidance for mitigation action should come from the insights that global mean temperatures respond to cumulative carbon emissions and that there are risks beyond warming alone. Momentum for the negotiations requires a sense of opportunity.

  • Commentary |

    Water availability and use are inherently regional concerns. However, a global-scale approach to evaluating strategies to reduce water stress can help maximize mitigation.

    • Yoshihide Wada
    • , Tom Gleeson
    •  & Laurent Esnault

  • Editorial |

    Solar energy is undoubtedly renewable. We must make sure it is also as sustainable as possible.

  • News & Views |

    • Helene Schulze
    •  & Heike Langenberg

  • Commentary |

    Expansion of geothermal energy use across the globe is restricted by out-of-date prejudices. It is time for geothermal exploration to be extended to a broader range of environments and rejuvenated with the latest insights from relevant geoscience disciplines.

    • Paul L. Younger

  • Commentary |

    Livestock production accounts for a significant fraction of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Progress in mitigating the adverse environmental impacts of this industry can be improved by shifting research emphases and fostering communication between researchers and ranchers.

    • Joseph M. Craine

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