Geography articles within Nature Communications

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  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Setting goals that are context-specific, relevant, and collectively shared is critical in adaptation. As necessary elements in target setting, imaginaries for adaptation and the language connected to them remain vague. Visuals produced through art-science collaborations can be great allies to (de)construct imaginaries and deglobalise discourses of adaptation.

    • Marta Olazabal
    • , Maria Loroño-Leturiondo
    •  & Josune Urrutia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study demonstrates how land-based carbon removals and the market-mediated responses are sensitive to mitigation policy strength and scope, illustrating that, despite trade-offs, both forestation and BECCS are integral to cost-effective 2 °C pathways.

    • Xin Zhao
    • , Bryan K. Mignone
    •  & Haewon C. McJeon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mewes and colleagues show substantial and systematic differences in public climate change opinions across Germany that manifest between urban vs. rural and prospering vs. declining areas. Besides these geographic features, more complex historical and cultural differences between places play an important role.

    • Lars Mewes
    • , Leonie Tuitjer
    •  & Peter Dirksmeier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monitoring antimicrobial resistance in food animals is challenging due to limited surveillance systems. Here, the authors combine data from point prevalence surveys in lower- and middle-income settings to map resistance to seven antimicrobials and predict which are likely to exceed key resistance thresholds.

    • Cheng Zhao
    • , Yu Wang
    •  & Thomas P. Van Boeckel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Domestic attempts to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a country can have synergistic and/or trade-off effects on the advancement of SDGs in other countries. Here the authors demonstrate that while high-income countries make up only 14% of the global population, they drive over 60% of worldwide SDG interactions.

    • Huijuan Xiao
    • , Sheng Bao
    •  & Jianguo Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A study of 1,028 global cities from 2000-2018 shows increased human exposure to greenspace, reducing greenspace inequality. Notably, cities in the Global South improved nearly four times faster than those in the Global North. These insights can guide city greening strategies.

    • Shengbiao Wu
    • , Bin Chen
    •  & Peng Gong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mobile phone data reveals a significant decrease in the income diversity of urban encounters during the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, even though overall mobility returned to pre-pandemic levels by late 2021. This was mainly due to persistent behavioral changes including less willingness to explore new places.

    • Takahiro Yabe
    • , Bernardo García Bulle Bueno
    •  & Esteban Moro

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The colonial practices of geoscience have created long term vulnerabilities to natural hazards. In this comment the ongoing consequence are explored of colonialism as well as the actions that are needed to be taken to reduce natural hazard risk.

    • Jazmin P. Scarlett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study finds that city growth in the U.S. is spatially heterogeneous. Inter-city flows concentrate in core areas. Intra-city flows are generally directed towards external and low density counties of cities, and is the main contributor to urban sprawl.

    • Sandro M. Reia
    • , P. Suresh C. Rao
    •  & Satish V. Ukkusuri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study presents a new global modeling framework to explore the links between ports, maritime transport and global supply-chains, and identifies critical links and dependencies between 1300 ports and the economies that depend on them.

    • J. Verschuur
    • , E. E. Koks
    •  & J. W. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Taking action to reduce risks of labor abuse and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the fishing sector is hindered by a lack of spatially explicit data and an understanding of different drivers of risks. Here the authors combine expert assessments with satellite information to map and quantify risks of labor abuse and IUU fishing at port, at sea and associated with transshipment globally.

    • Elizabeth R. Selig
    • , Shinnosuke Nakayama
    •  & Jessica L. Decker Sparks

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Artificial intelligence can enhance our ability to manage natural disasters. However, understanding and addressing its limitations is required to realize its benefits. Here, we argue that interdisciplinary, multistakeholder, and international collaboration is needed for developing standards that facilitate its implementation.

    • Monique M. Kuglitsch
    • , Ivanka Pelivan
    •  & Elena Xoplaki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Urban trees influence temperatures in cities. The authors here investigate in spatio-temporal variations in their cooling effect and find 8-12 K decreased temperatures for tree-rich urban areas in Central Europe during hot summers, and up to 4 K for Southern Europe, respectively.

    • Jonas Schwaab
    • , Ronny Meier
    •  & Edouard L. Davin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The movements of individuals within and among cities influence critical aspects of our society, such as well-being, the spreading of epidemics, and the quality of the environment. Here, the authors use deep neural networks to discover non-linear relationships between geographical variables and mobility flows.

    • Filippo Simini
    • , Gianni Barlacchi
    •  & Luca Pappalardo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements of human interaction through proxies such as social connectedness or movement patterns have proved useful for predictive modeling of COVID-19. In this study, the authors develop a spatiotemporal machine learning model to predict county level new cases in the US using a variety of predictive features.

    • Behzad Vahedi
    • , Morteza Karimzadeh
    •  & Hamidreza Zoraghein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intergenerational preconditions and historical conferment of opportunity play a role in social mobility. This study considers the geography of relative deprivation to show how different family groups across Great Britain experience different intergenerational outcomes.

    • Paul A. Longley
    • , Justin van Dijk
    •  & Tian Lan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper quantifies global urban water scarcity in 2016 and 2050 and explores potential solutions. One third to nearly half of the global urban population is projected to face water scarcity problems.

    • Chunyang He
    • , Zhifeng Liu
    •  & Brett A. Bryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantifying land use change is critical in tackling global challenges related to food, climate and biodiversity. Here the authors show that land use change has affected 32 % of the global land area in six decades (1960- 2019) by combining multiple open datasets to create the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment +.

    • Karina Winkler
    • , Richard Fuchs
    •  & Martin Herold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Advanced ecological modelling reveals how Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) was first peopled, suggesting the most probable routes and surprisingly rapid early settlement of this continent by anatomically modern humans starting 50,000 to 75,000 years ago.

    • Corey J. A. Bradshaw
    • , Kasih Norman
    •  & Frédérik Saltré

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The COVID-19 response has led to unparalleled changes in the functioning of human society, from travel restrictions to changes in consumption. Here the authors use high resolution satellite data to track the global reduction in marine traffic during the pandemic, and more recent hints of recovery to pre-lockdown levels.

    • David March
    • , Kristian Metcalfe
    •  & Brendan J. Godley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Not much is known about the joint relationships between social network structure, urban geography, and inequality. Here, the authors analyze an online social network and find that the fragmentation of social networks is significantly higher in towns in which residential neighborhoods are divided by physical barriers such as rivers and railroads.

    • Gergő Tóth
    • , Johannes Wachs
    •  & Balázs Lengyel

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Arctic research faces unprecedented disruptions due to COVID-19. This ‘pause’ gives an opportunity to reflect on the current state and the future of Arctic science and move towards a more resilient, thus equitable, coordinated, safe and locally-embedded Arctic research enterprise. Arctic science has been greatly affected by COVID-19. This comment looks forward to how Arctic science could be conducted in the future.

    • Andrey N. Petrov
    • , Larry D. Hinzman
    •  & Alona Yefimenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Official data on the distribution of human population often ignores the changing spatio-temporal densities resulting from mobility. Here, authors apply an approach combining official statistics and geospatial data to assess intraday and monthly population variations at continental scale at 1 km2 resolution.

    • Filipe Batista e Silva
    • , Sérgio Freire
    •  & Carlo Lavalle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phosphorus is an essential nutrient critical for agriculture, but because it is non-renewable its future availability is threatened. Here the authors show that across the globe most nations have net losses of phosphorus, with soil erosion as the major route of loss in Europe, Africa and South America.

    • Christine Alewell
    • , Bruno Ringeval
    •  & Pasquale Borrelli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    According to Zipf’s law, the population size of a city is inversely proportional to its size rank in any urban system. The authors show how demography explains this law as a time average of balanced migration between cities and how deviations express information about people’s net preferences.

    • Luís M. A. Bettencourt
    •  & Daniel Zünd

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predicting and controlling traffic congestion propagation is an ongoing challenge in most urban settings. Here, Seberi et al. apply a contagion model describing epidemic spread in population to model traffic jams, and verify its validity using large-scale data from six different cities around the world.

    • Meead Saberi
    • , Homayoun Hamedmoghadam
    •  & Marta C. González

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evaluating the heat risk among city dwellers is important. Here, the authors assessed the heat risk in Philippine cities using remote sensing data and social-ecological indicators and found that the cities at high or very high risk are found in Metro Manila, where levels of heat hazard and exposure are high.

    • Ronald C. Estoque
    • , Makoto Ooba
    •  & Shogo Nakamura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) is a crucial scenario describing the potential of future socio-economic development. The authors here investigate long-term effects of various government policies suggested by different SSPs on urban land and reveal the impact of future urban expansion on other land and food production.

    • Guangzhao Chen
    • , Xia Li
    •  & Kangning Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The growing availability of human mobility data can help assess the structure and dynamics of urban environments and their relation to the performance of cities. Here the authors introduce a metric of hierarchy in urban travel and find correlations between levels of hierarchy and other urban indicators.

    • Aleix Bassolas
    • , Hugo Barbosa-Filho
    •  & José J. Ramasco

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is important to understand how physical changes in Polar regions influence social systems and populations. Here the authors develop an Arctic Climate Change Vulnerability Index focusing on aviation and marine infrastructure in future climate scenarios and show that transportation system vulnerability varies across the region depending on modeled hazards and transportation infrastructure types.

    • Nathan S. Debortoli
    • , Dylan G. Clark
    •  & Emilia P. Diaconescu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Concept of learning from history assumes that information is handed between generations to avoid negative effect of hazards. Here the authors analysed human behaviour and decision making on post-flood settlements and showed flood memory faded away in two generations, which is insufficient to protect human settlements from rare catastrophic floods.

    • Václav Fanta
    • , Miroslav Šálek
    •  & Petr Sklenicka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is not clear how the public views the acceptability of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Here the authors explored public perceptions of BECCS by situating the technology in three policy scenarios and found that the policy instrument used to incentivise BECCS significantly affects the degree of public support for the technology.

    • Rob Bellamy
    • , Javier Lezaun
    •  & James Palmer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There are dynamic and complex interactions between population and water resources. Here the authors studied the spatio-temporal relationship between human and water resources in conterminous US and found that dynamic human distance to water reflects the changing societal reliance on adjacency to major rivers.

    • Yu Fang
    •  & James W. Jawitz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Permafrost thaw poses a serious threat to the sustainable development of Arctic communities. Here the authors show that most fundamental Arctic infrastructure and population will be at high hazard risk, even if the Paris Agreement target is achieved.

    • Jan Hjort
    • , Olli Karjalainen
    •  & Miska Luoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the source of malaria outbreaks in low-transmission areas is important for controlling the disease. Here, the authors use mobile phone data to map malaria transmission in Madagascar, and are able to show that primary sources of infection in the capital city are found along populated coastal areas.

    • Felana Angella Ihantamalala
    • , Vincent Herbreteau
    •  & Amy Wesolowski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex networks are a useful tool to investigate the structure of cities and their street networks. Here the authors investigate the shape of travel routes in 92 cities and define a metric called inness which reveals connections between common urban features in cities with similar inness profiles.

    • Minjin Lee
    • , Hugo Barbosa
    •  & Gourab Ghoshal

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