Sustainability articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Editorial |

    Air pollution is a leading cause of death globally. Efforts to clean the air will not only save lives but contribute to addressing broader environmental and socioeconomic challenges.

  • Editorial |

    Meeting climate targets will require considerable carbon dioxide removal in addition to emission cuts. To achieve this sustainably, a range of methods are needed to avoid adverse effects and match co-benefits with local needs.

  • Comment |

    It is commonly thought that old groundwater cannot be pumped sustainably, and that recently recharged groundwater is inherently sustainable. We argue that both old and young groundwaters can be used in physically sustainable or unsustainable ways.

    • Grant Ferguson
    • , Mark O. Cuthbert
    •  & Jennifer C. McIntosh

  • Article |

    Tropical deforestation rates are linked to large-scale land investments, according to georeferenced land deal records and remote sensing of forest loss over the past two decades.

    • Kyle Frankel Davis
    • , Heejin Irene Koo
    •  & Mokganedi Tatlhego

  • Editorial |

    Mineral extraction will play an important role in climate change mitigation and green technologies. But ensuring that the net effect of mining is beneficial requires careful monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts.

  • Perspective |

    Recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica has not been straightforward, as a result of human activities and climate change. The recovery process might be delayed by up to decades if further mitigation actions are not taken.

    • Xuekun Fang
    • , John A. Pyle
    •  & Ronald G. Prinn

  • News & Views |

    Nitrogen deposition in China has stabilized over the past decade, thanks to efficient regulation of fertilizer use, suggests an analysis of wet and dry deposition.

    • Maria Kanakidou

  • News & Views |

    If emissions continue at the present-day rate, about 22 years are left until global mean warming reaches the 1.5 °C Paris Agreement target, suggests a new metric based on the observed level and rate of anthropogenic warming.

    • Katarzyna B. Tokarska

  • Review Article |

    Indicators of environmental and social footprints of international trade must inform assessments of progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, suggests a synthesis of studies on the geospatial separation of consumption and production.

    • Thomas Wiedmann
    •  & Manfred Lenzen

  • News & Views |

    West African farmers adjust tree cover to realize the co-benefits of agroforestry, according to analyses of remote sensing data.

    • Niall P. Hanan

  • Article |

    The current distribution of crops around the world neither attains maximum production nor minimum water use, according to a crop water model and yield data. An optimized crop distribution could feed an additional 825 million people and substantially reduce water use.

    • Kyle Frankel Davis
    • , Maria Cristina Rulli
    •  & Paolo D’Odorico

  • Commentary |

    Quality requirements for water differ by intended use. Sustainable management of water resources for different uses will not only need to account for demand in water quantity, but also for water temperature and salinity, nutrient levels and other pollutants.

    • Michelle T.H. van Vliet
    • , Martina Flörke
    •  & Yoshihide Wada

  • Perspective |

    Enhanced protection is needed for freshwater bodies in the United States — in particular impermanent streams and wetlands outside floodplains — according to an assessment of their value and vulnerability.

    • Irena F. Creed
    • , Charles R. Lane
    •  & Lora Smith

  • Editorial |

    The emerging field of geohealth links human well-being and ecosystem health. A deeper understanding of these linkages can help society mitigate the health costs of economic growth before they become crises.

  • Editorial |

    Air pollution in large cities remains a persistent public health problem. Adapting air quality forecasts for use by decision makers could help mitigate severe pollution events.

  • News & Views |

    Groundwater resources are directly affected by climate variability via precipitation, evapotranspiration and recharge. Analyses of US and India trends reveal that climate-induced pumping indirectly influences groundwater depletion as well.

    • Jason J. Gurdak

  • 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 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

  • 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 |

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

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