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Annual Review of Environment and Resources - Early Publication
Reviews in Advance appear online ahead of the full published volume. View expected publication dates for upcoming volumes.
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Ecosystem Sentinels as Early-Warning Indicators in the Anthropocene
First published online: 07 June 2024More LessWe are already experiencing the rapid pace of environmental change in the Anthropocene, necessitating the development of new tools and techniques for measuring changes in ecosystem dynamics. Sentinel species, from birds to invertebrates, have been used to provide insights into ecosystem function, as leading indicators of risk to human health and as harbingers of future change, with implications for ecosystem structure and function. Here, we offer an update to previous research identifying marine top predators as indicators of ecosystem change and examine terrestrial sentinels and the latest research on sentinels of pollution and human health. Using ecosystem sentinels enables rapid response and adaptation to ecosystem variability and environmental change in part because they may be easier to observe and in part because they may serve as leading indicators of ecosystem change. While there may not be a given taxon that is best suited as sentinels, we highlight how to select the most effective sentinels, including examples of when sentinel species have been incorporated into management. Choosing a suite of appropriate sentinels will both give insight into ecosystem processes and can help manage changing ecosystems into the future.
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The Crisis in Oases: Research on Ecological Security and Sustainable Development in Arid Regions
Yaning Chen, Gonghuan Fang, Zhi Li, Xueqi Zhang, Lei Gao, Ahmed Elbeltagi, Hassan El Shaer, Weili Duan, Omnia Mohamed Abdou Wassif, Yupeng Li, Pingping Luo, Aida Selmi, Ruide Yu, Jinhua Yang, Yanan Hu, Chuanxiu Liu, Yunxia Long, Ireneusz Malik, Aihong Fu, Małgorzata Wistuba, Yuhai Yang, Chenggang Zhu, and Yuting GaoFirst published online: 07 June 2024More LessArid areas cover approximately 41% of Earth's land surface and support more than 38% of the global population. As an important part of drylands, oases are the main carriers of human production, socioeconomic activity, and the ecological environment. Oases typically sustain nearly all of an arid region's human population and produce nearly 95% of its gross domestic product. The ongoing intensification of global warming and human activities has resulted in water stress and water-related environmental problems in arid areas, along with land degradation and desertification. The risk of water shortage and natural disasters in these regions has also increased. The solution to mitigate these environmental issues and achieve ecological security and sustainable socioeconomic development is to accelerate the modernization of oasis ecological agriculture. This can be accomplished by coordinating the contradictions between agricultural, industrial, and domestic water use and ecological water use in arid areas, thereby improving the level of management in oases and strengthening their ability to cope with climate change.
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Communication and Deliberation for Environmental Governance
First published online: 09 May 2024More LessEnvironmental governance occurs through and is shaped by communication. We propose a typology of public communication, classifying it by directionality (one-way or two-way) and objective (informational or operational). We then review how communication types influence individuals’ cognitive frames, values, and environmental behaviors. Though one-way communication is common, its impact is often limited to influencing cognitive frames. Research on two-way informational communication demonstrates a greater ability to align cognitive frames and values among individuals, and research on two-way operational communication demonstrates the greatest impact on conceptual frames, values, and environmental behaviors. Factors that affect the impact of communication include the medium through which it occurs, trust, timing, and social-material context. Among these, our review considers new directions in public communication research that focus on the role of digital platforms, misinformation, and disinformation. We conclude by synthesizing research on deliberative communication, a case of communication among citizens guided by democratic ideals.
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Nexus Framing of Sustainability Issues: Feasibility, Synergies, and Trade-Offs in Terms of Water-Energy-Food
First published online: 12 April 2024More LessMultisectoral integration has been at the core of sustainability debates and is continuously rearticulated though different concepts. Following the 2007–2008 financial, food, and energy crises, a new concept, the water–energy–food nexus, gained prominence to identify trade-offs and synergies between water, energy, and food systems and guide the development of cross-sectoral policies. The nexus is essentially a systems-based perspective that explicitly recognizes these three systems as both interconnected and interdependent, and thus integrated approaches are required that move beyond sectoral, policy, and disciplinary silos. The nexus is also a political process, one in which the interplay of different types of power, as well as the actors wielding them, is not just a procedurally technical one. This tension between the nexus as a complex system and the nexus as a political process constitutes the core debating idea, in terms of feasibility, methods, and theory, in this article.
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