Publications

Nielja Knecht, Romi Lotcheris, Ingo Fetzer, Juan Rocha. 2025. Limitations of early warning signals: evaluating the performance of resilience loss detection methods to predict forest die-back events from remote sensing data. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18547

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are under increasing stress due to changing climate and weather regimes, as well as direct anthropogenic influences such as land use changes. The combination of stressors can erode an ecosystem’s ability to resist and recover from external shocks and pressures. Vegetation resilience loss is often assessed by applying temporal early warning signals (EWS) based on dynamical systems theory to rem...

Fabio Benedetti, Jonas Wydler, Corentin Clerc, Nielja Knecht, Meike Vogt. 2025. Emergent Relationships Between the Functional Diversity of Marine Planktonic Copepods and Ecosystem Functioning in the Global Ocean. Global Change Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70094

Copepods are a major group of the mesozooplankton and thus a key part of marine ecosystems worldwide. Their fitness and life strategies are determined by their functional traits which allow different species to exploit various ecological niches. The range of functional traits expressed in a community defines its functional diversity (FD), which can be used to investigate how communities utilize resources and shape ecosystem pr...

Rachel Mazac, Kajsa Resare Sahlin, Iisa Hyypiä, Fanny Keränen, Mari Niva, Nora Berglund, Iryna Herzon. 2025. Does “better” mean “less”? Sustainable meat consumption in the context of natural pasture-raised beef. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-025-10707-2

Livestock production has significant environmental impacts, requiring sustainable dietary shifts with reduced meat consumption. The concept of "less but better" has gained attention as a pragmatic approach to dietary and production changes, advocating for reduced meat consumption while focusing on sustainably produced, high-quality products. We focus on the interplay between "less" and "better" and critically evaluate the appr...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Paul Dunshirn, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Robert Blasiak. 2025. From genes to innovation: exploring the use of marine genetic resources in biotechnology. One Ocean Science Congress. https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-498

Marine genetic resources (MGRs) are crucial for understanding marine biodiversity and tracking changes in ecosystems, while also providing a valuable foundation for biotechnological innovation. The recent adoption of the UN Treaty on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Treaty) and the inclusion of digital sequence information in this legally binding agreement open new opportunities for protecting biodiversity in th...

Ana Paula D Aguiar, David Collste, Sofia Cortés-Calderón, Taís Sonetti-González, Minella Alves-Martins, Antonio J. Castro, Amadou Diallo, Karl Martin Eriksson, Deborah Goffner, Zuzana V. Harmáčková, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, María D. López-Rodríguez, María Mancilla-García, Veronica Olofsson, Aldrin Perez-Marin, Francisco Gilney Silva-Bezerra, Hanna Sinare, Claire Stragier. 2025. Unravelling deep roots in drylands: A systems thinking participatory approach to the SDGs. Global Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.6

Achieving sustainability on the ground poses a challenge in decoding globallydefined goals, such as sustainable development goals, and aligning them withlocal perspectives and realities. This decoding necessitates theunderstanding of the multifaceted dimensions of the sustainabilitychallenges in a given context, including their underlying causes. In casestudies from Brazilian drylands, we illustrate how an enhanced multiscalep...

Gerald Singh, Nancy Karigitu, Leopoldo Gerhardinger, Frank Mirobo, Laura Pereira, Samiya Selim, Anna Zivian, Heloise Jean. 2025. Fostering inclusion and equity in ocean sustainability through knowledge co-construction. One Ocean Science Congress. https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-432

Ocean science plays a critical role in decision-making processes with distributional effects, which inherently carry equity implications. At the same time, concerns about equity shape how ocean science is conducted, influencing which scientific questions are prioritized. Expanding participation in setting research agendas through inclusive processes can significantly alter the trajectory of ocean science. Recent initiatives pr...

Victoria Reyes-García, Sebastian Villasante, Karina Benessaiah, Ram Pandit, Arun Agrawal, Joachim Claudet, Lucas A. Garibaldi, Mulako Kabisa, Laura Pereira, Yves Zinngrebe. 2025. The costs of subsidies and externalities of economic activities driving nature decline. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02147-3

Economic sectors that drive nature decline are heavily subsidized and produce large environmental externalities. Calls are increasing to reform or eliminate subsidies and internalize the environmental costs of these sectors. We compile data on subsidies and externalities across six sectors driving biodiversity loss—agriculture, fossil fuels, forestry, infrastructure, fisheries and aquaculture, and mining. The most updated esti...

Shun Kageyama, Madlen Sobkowiak, Henrik Österblom, Robert Blasiak. 2025. Exploring evidence of cascading change towards stewardship in the Japanese seafood industry. Marine Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2025.106626

There is a growing global demand for a more sustainable seafood industry, and pre-competitive initiatives have emerged on multiple continents to meet this demand. Such initiatives could have “cascading effects,” suggesting that their impacts may extend beyond their direct participants to effect broader, industry-wide change. To date, little research has been conducted to determine whether pre-competitive initiatives are trigge...

Emmy Wassénius, Giulia Rubin. 2025. Shock Tracker: A living database of shocks. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-6470

There is mounting evidence that we are living in a time of turbulence, with many disruptive events becoming increasingly common and intense. In these times, understanding the dynamics of past shocks can help us better prepare and potentially prevent severe impacts in the future. The Shock Tracker is a living database of cases, encompassing everything from wildfires, to floods, disease outbreaks and conflict. The case studies a...

Tilman Hertz, Anja Klein, Maria Mancilla García, Maja Schlüter. 2025. Transforming a world that never stands still. Ecosystems and People. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2025.2469859

Process-relational perspectives (PRP) have been put forward as a crucial contribution for conceptualizing radical transformations towards sustainability. This is because PRP conceptualize transformations as open processes. This openness is attributed, first, to processes and relations having performative power, which means that processes and relations are constitutive of elements. Second, PRP take processes and relations as co...