Environmental social sciences articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationships between people can have important consequences for the systems they depend on. Here the authors show that when coral reef fishers face commons dilemmas, the formation of cooperative communication with competitors can lead to positive gains in reef fish biomass and functional richness.

    • Michele L. Barnes
    • , Örjan Bodin
    •  & Nicholas A. J. Graham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Southeast Asia’s forests play important roles in the society, but the region is a deforestation hotspot. Here, the authors examined the future changes in the region’s forests under different scenarios and found that by 2050 under a regional rivalry/rocky road scenario, the region’s forests would shrink by 5.2 million ha.

    • Ronald C. Estoque
    • , Makoto Ooba
    •  & Yuji Murayama

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flood risk modelling neglects the location of people and assets. Here the authors applied machine learning techniques and high-resolution population data to reinvestigate the impact of population distributions on flood exposure and showed that populations are generally represented as risk-averse and largely avoiding obvious flood zones.

    • Andrew Smith
    • , Paul D. Bates
    •  & Jeff Neal

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Recent publications have raised concerns regarding the actual feasibility Negative Emission Technologies (NETs). Here the authors commented on the financial viability of large-scale late century NETs and suggested that expenditure peak will occur in the end of the century, which would require massive global subsidy program.

    • Johannes Bednar
    • , Michael Obersteiner
    •  & Fabian Wagner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conservation decisions to protect land used by migratory birds rely on understanding species’ dynamic habitat associations. Here the authors identify conservation scenarios needed to maintain >30% of the abundances of 117 migratory birds across the Americas, considering spatial and temporal patterns of species abundance.

    • Richard Schuster
    • , Scott Wilson
    •  & Joseph. R. Bennett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multinational enterprises (MNE) play a key role in climate mitigation as the significance of the environmental impacts of MNE. Here the authors measured the carbon footprint of U.S. MNE affiliates throughout their global value chains and show their carbon footprint beyond borders at 0.5082 GtCO2 in 2009.

    • Luis-Antonio López
    • , María-Ángeles Cadarso
    •  & Guadalupe Arce

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Building an economically healthy fishing industry that supports participating communities is challenging and requires consistent performance measures. Here the authors compare the performance of world’s major tuna fisheries and find large differences, primarily in post-harvest sector benefits.

    • Jessica K. McCluney
    • , Christopher M. Anderson
    •  & James L. Anderson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mercury (Hg) is a global neurotoxic pollutant and has a long chain from economic activities to human health risks. Here the authors presented a map of Hg-related health risks in China and found significant impacts of interprovincial trade on health risks, such as the prevention of deaths from fatal heart attacks by the trade induced by final consumption.

    • Long Chen
    • , Sai Liang
    •  & Zhifeng Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tackling wildlife crimes requires determining their occurrence and distribution, but they are often difficult to detect. Here, the authors use hen harrier tracking data to show patterns of unexpected tag failure that suggest widespread illegal killing on moors managed for recreational shooting of red grouse.

    • Megan Murgatroyd
    • , Stephen M. Redpath
    •  & Arjun Amar

  • 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

    Social intelligence and general intelligence are two distinct cognitive abilities. Here, the authors show that groups of people with high competency in both social and general intelligence perform better in a resource-management task involving cooperation, and adjustment to unexpected ecological change.

    • Jacopo A. Baggio
    • , Jacob Freeman
    •  & David Pillow

  • 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

    It is challenging to communicate abstract future climate estimates. Here the authors utilized climate-analog mapping and they identified that North American urban areas’ climate by the 2080’s will become similar to the contemporary climate of locations hundreds of kilometers away and mainly to the south, while many urban areas will have no modern equivalent analogs under the RCP8.5 scenario.

    • Matthew C. Fitzpatrick
    •  & Robert R. Dunn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydropower generation in the Nile River Basin is vulnerable to climatic changes. Here, the authors assess infrastructure resilience of the Eastern African power pool (EAPP) to the effects of a changing climate and suggest that failing to climate-proof infrastructure investments can result in significant electricity price fluctuations.

    • Vignesh Sridharan
    • , Oliver Broad
    •  & Raffaello Cervigni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional studies of subjective well-being explain national differences using social and economic proxy variables. Here the authors build on this approach to estimate how global human well-being might evolve over the next three decades, and find that changes in social factors could play a much larger role than changes in economic outcomes.

    • Christopher Barrington-Leigh
    •  & Eric Galbraith

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate extremes, exposure and vulnerability all contribute to global difference in heatwave risk. Here the authors investigated the inequality in global heatwave risk under both 1.5 and 2 °C scenarios and found that heatwave risk for the poor under 1.5 °C scenario exceeds that risk for the rich under 2 °C scenario.

    • Simone Russo
    • , Jana Sillmann
    •  & Brian O’Neill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deforestation for palm oil production is often attributed to large-scale, agro-industrial expansion. Here, Ordway et al. show that much recent expansion in Southwest Cameroon can be attributed to an informal sector of non-industrial producers establishing near informal, non-industrial palm oil mills.

    • Elsa M. Ordway
    • , Rosamond L. Naylor
    •  & Eric F. Lambin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change will affect both the demand for electrical power and the generating capabilities of hydropower plants. Here the authors investigated the combined impact of these effects in the US Pacific Northwest by considering the dynamics of the regional  power grid, where they reveal a profound impact of climate change on power shortfall risk by the year 2035.

    • S. W. D. Turner
    • , N. Voisin
    •  & M. Jourabchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Better understanding of the determinants of residential water demand is important for Tropical Asian countries. Here the author studied how Singapore household electricity use from appliances modify weather-induced water demand and found that residential water and electricity demand respond differently to heat across different income groups.

    • Alberto Salvo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Credibility of long-term projection in quantitative models is continuously under debate and they rely on validation to prove projection accuracy. Here the authors investigated the views on the validation approaches and they show that empirical data plays an important role in the validation practice in all main areas of sustainability science.

    • Sibel Eker
    • , Elena Rovenskaya
    •  & Simon Langan

  • 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

    Local air quality co-benefits can provide convincing support for climate action. Here the authors revisited air quality co-benefits of climate action in the context of NDCs and found that 71–99 thousand premature deaths can be avoided each year by 2030, offsetting the climate mitigation costs on a global level.

    • Toon Vandyck
    • , Kimon Keramidas
    •  & Bert Saveyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There have been growing concerns about the exploitation of workers in the fisheries sectors. Here, Tickler et al. use a country-level metric of slavery to determine the risk of fisheries-level slavery across 20 countries, and find it rises as unreported catch increases and mean value of catch decreases.

    • David Tickler
    • , Jessica J. Meeuwig
    •  & Dirk Zeller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon budget is diminishing to comply with the target under 2 °C scenario. Facing the limited capacity to improve energy efficiency, the authors show that steelmaking with inherent decarbonisation process can potentially help achieve 2050 emission reduction targets under 2 °C scenario before 2030.

    • Sicong Tian
    • , Jianguo Jiang
    •  & Vasilije Manovic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Investment in watershed services programs is growing, however the factors that contribute to sustainability of such programs are unclear. Here the authors use a large database of cities around the world to show that payment schemes are more likely to be present in watersheds with more agricultural land and less protected areas.

    • Chelsie L. Romulo
    • , Stephen Posner
    •  & Robert I. McDonald

  • Article
    | Open Access

    UNESCO World Heritage located in low-lying coastal areas is increasingly at risk from flooding and erosion due to sea-level rise. This study shows that up to 82% of cultural World Heritage sites located in the Mediterranean will be at risk from coastal flooding and over 93% from coastal erosion by 2100 under high-end sea-level rise.

    • Lena Reimann
    • , Athanasios T. Vafeidis
    •  & Richard S. J. Tol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rising demand for ruminant meat and dairy products in developing nations drives increasing GHG and ammonia emissions from livestock. Authors show here that only long-term adoption of global best-practice in sustainable intensification buffered by a short-term coping strategy of green-source trading can offer a way forward.

    • Yuanyuan Du
    • , Ying Ge
    •  & Raphael K. Didham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate deterioration towards desertification in North Africa following the African Humid Period has previously been associated with the emergence of pastoralism. Here, using a climate-vegetation model, the authors show that pastoralism in fact likely slowed the deterioration of orbitally-driven climate change.

    • Chris Brierley
    • , Katie Manning
    •  & Mark Maslin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human-tiger conflict occurs where there is a higher risk of encountering tigers. Here, Struebig et al. use geographic profiling to predict risk of encounters in Sumatra, and show that combining risk measures with social data on tolerance could help prioritise regions for conflict mitigation efforts.

    • Matthew J. Struebig
    • , Matthew Linkie
    •  & Freya A. V. St. John

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reducing the adverse effects of climate change triggered by human activity requires cooperation on a global scale. Modelling this challenge as an evolutionary game shows that the emerging contributions of selfish players depend strongly on the risk scenario at stake.

    • Maria Abou Chakra
    • , Silke Bumann
    •  & Arne Traulsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flooding may cause loss of life and economic damage, therefore temporal changes need assessment. Here, the authors show that since 1870 there has been an increase in area inundated by floods in Europe, but a reduction in fatalities and economic losses, although caution that smaller floods remain underreported.

    • Dominik Paprotny
    • , Antonia Sebastian
    •  & Sebastiaan N. Jonkman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The rapid growth of South–South trade reflects a new phase of globalization. Here the authors show that some energy-intensive production activities, particularly raw materials and intermediate goods, and related CO2 emissions are relocating from China and India to other developing countries.

    • Jing Meng
    • , Zhifu Mi
    •  & Steven J. Davis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Speaking at a scientific conference helps spread scientific results and is also fundamental for career advancement. Here the authors show that at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, the largest Earth and space science conference, women are offered speaking opportunities less often than men overall.

    • Heather L. Ford
    • , Cameron Brick
    •  & Petra S. Dekens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous studies of Pre-Columbian earthworks in the Amazon basin have left a gap in the Upper Tapajós Basin (UTB). Here, the authors detect 104 Pre-Columbian earthworks in the UTB, suggesting continuous occupation across southern Amazonia and higher population densities than previously estimated.

    • Jonas Gregorio de Souza
    • , Denise Pahl Schaan
    •  & José Iriarte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To achieve the climate target of the Paris Agreement substantial emission reductions will be required across economic sectors. Here the authors show that agriculture can make a significant contribution to non-CO2 mitigation efforts through structural change in the livestock sector and the deployment of technical options.

    • Stefan Frank
    • , Robert Beach
    •  & Michael Obersteiner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine spatial planning is used to co-ordinate multiple ocean uses, and is frequently informed by tradeoffs and composite metrics. Here, Lester et al. introduce an approach that plans for multiple uses simultaneously whilst balancing individual objectives, using a case study of aquaculture development in California.

    • S. E. Lester
    • , J. M. Stevens
    •  & C. White

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Expansion of rubber plantations threatens tropical forest carbon stocks and biodiversity, but may be dis-incentivised using carbon finance. Here, Warren-Thomas et al. use forest and agricultural data for Cambodia to show that carbon prices of $30–$51 per tCO2 are needed to match forest protection costs.

    • Eleanor M. Warren-Thomas
    • , David P. Edwards
    •  & Paul M. Dolman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of sustainable food systems requires an understanding of potential trade-off between various objectives. Here, Chaudhary et al. examine how different nations score on food system performance across several domains, including environment, nutrition, and sociocultural wellbeing.

    • Abhishek Chaudhary
    • , David Gustafson
    •  & Alexander Mathys

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inundation and erosion could make many atoll islands uninhabitable over the next century. Here the authors present an analysis of change in the atoll nation of Tuvalu that shows a 2.9% increase in land area over the past four decades, with 74% of islands increasing in size, despite rising sea levels.

    • Paul S. Kench
    • , Murray R. Ford
    •  & Susan D. Owen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aerosol pollution from shipping contributes to cooling but also leads to premature mortality and morbidity. Here the authors combine emission inventories, atmospheric models and health risk functions to show how cleaner marine fuels will reduce premature deaths and childhood asthma but results in larger warming.

    • Mikhail Sofiev
    • , James J. Winebrake
    •  & James J. Corbett

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Environmental social sciences across other nature.com journals