Peer-reviewed publications

Ocean sustainability initiatives – in research, policy, management and development – will be more effective in delivering comprehensive benefits when they proactively engage with, invest in and use social knowledge. We synthesize five intervention areas for social engagement and collaboration with marine social scientists, and in doing so we appeal to all ocean science disciplines and non-academics working in ocean initiatives in industry, government, funding agencies and civil society. The five social intervention areas are: (1) Using ethics to guide decision-making, (2) Improving governance, (3) Aligning human behavior with goals and values, (4) Addressing impacts on people, and (5) Building transdisciplinary partnerships and co-producing sustainability transformation pathways. These focal areas can guide the four phases of most ocean sustainability initiatives (Intention, Design, Implementation, Evaluation) to improve social benefits and avoid harm. Early integration of social knowledge from the five areas during intention setting and design phases offers the deepest potential for delivering benefits. Later stage collaborations can leverage opportunities in existing projects to reflect and learn while improving impact assessments, transparency and reporting for future activities.

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are elusive large carnivores inhabiting snow-covered and remote areas. Their effective conservation and management are challenged by inadequate population information, necessitating development of novel data collection methods. Environmental DNA (eDNA) from snow tracks (footprints in snow) has identified species based on mitochondrial DNA, yet its utility for individual-based analyses remains unsolved due to challenges accessing the nuclear genome. We present a protocol for capturing nuclear eDNA from polar bear, Eurasian lynx and snow leopard snow tracks and verify it through genotyping at a selection of microsatellite markers. We successfully retrieved nuclear eDNA from 87.5% (21/24) of wild polar bear snow tracks, 59.1% (26/44) of wild Eurasian lynx snow tracks, and the single snow leopard sampled. We genotyped over half of all wild polar bear samples (54.2%, 13/24) at five loci, and 11% (9/44) of wild lynx samples and the snow leopard at three loci. Genotyping success from Eurasian lynx snow tracks increased to 24% when tracks were collected by trained rather than untrained personnel. Thirteen wild polar bear samples comprised 11 unique genotypes and two identical genotypes; likely representing 12 individual bears, one of which was sampled twice. Snow tracks show promise for use alongside other non-invasive and conventional methods as a reliable source of nuclear DNA for genetic mark-recapture of elusive and threatened mammals. The detailed protocol we present has utility for broadening end user groups and engaging Indigenous and local communities in species monitoring.

Satellite-derived Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs) are increasingly used in ecology and conservation to characterize ecosystem heterogeneity. The diversity of EFTs, also known as Ecosystem Functional Diversity (EFD), has been suggested both as a potential metric of ecosystem-level biodiversity and as a predictor for ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services, and resilience. However, the impact of key methodological choices on patterns of EFTs and EFD have not been formally assessed. Using Costa Rica as a study system, we compared EFTs and EFD, derived from MODIS and Landsat data using different methodological assumptions, at both national and local extents. Our results showed that the regional spatial patterns of EFTs and EFD derived from 250 m MODIS and 30 m Landsat are notably different. The selection of sensors for deriving EFTs and EFD is dependent on the study area, data quality, and the research objective. Given its finer spatial resolution, Landsat has greater capacity to differentiate more EFTs than MODIS, though MODIS could be a better choice in frequently cloudy areas due to its shorter revisiting time. We also found that the selection of spatial extent used to derive EFD is critical, as smaller extents (e.g., at a local rather than a national scale) can show much higher diversity. However, diversity levels derived at smaller extents appear to be nested within the diversity levels derived at larger extents. As EFTs and EFD continue to develop as a tool for ecosystem ecology, we highlight the important methodological choices to ensure that these metrics best fit research objectives.

Spatial distribution and movement patterns of wild ungulates are strongly dependent on the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of biotic and abiotic resources (Bailey et al., 1996; Fryxell et al., 2004). In most African ecosystems, feeding, drinking and resting places are subject to high seasonal variability and can be spatially segregated at certain times of the year. In this context, animals adopt space-use, movement and activity strategies that allow them to minimize detrimental effects of the main limiting factors to reach, at different scales, suitable trade-offs between several constraints and needs that must be addressed simultaneously (Godvik et al., 2009; Massé and Côté, 2009). Ungulates, like the vast majority of higher vertebrates, do not move erratically through the environment, but restrict their movements to sites much smaller in size than their locomotion capabilities allow, and which they mostly exploit over a long period. Based on this, Burt (1943) conceptualized the concept of home range as ‘the area traversed by the individual in its normal activities of food gathering, mating, and caring for young’. The home range is thus the spatial result of the movements and behaviours that an individual (or a social group) expresses at different spatiotemporal scales to survive and reproduce, in other words to maximize its (their) selective value. The home range is a central concept

The Rio Grande–Rio Bravo’s flow regime has been highly altered for more than 130 years, yet the river ecosystem still supports important biodiversity including numerous endangered species. More than 80% of water consumed in the basin goes to irrigating farms, but in recent decades, farmers have repeatedly experienced severe water shortages. Given this water-scarce condition, any plans for enhancing environmental flows must be carefully designed to minimize impacts or provide benefits to agriculture. This study describes the development of the Rio Grande–Rio Bravo’s first whole-basin hydrologic model—representing both the United States and Mexico portions of the basin—to enable exploration of environmental flow restoration needs and options for meeting these needs. We then demonstrate an analytical process in which environmental flow needs are compared to existing flow conditions to quantify gaps, and then evaluate how those gaps can be filled by reducing farm irrigation needs by shifting to less water-intensive crops and fallowing a portion of existing farmland while maintaining or improving net revenues. In our pilot assessment we find that an improvement of 2.2 m3/s would fill the environmental flow gap for late-summer low-flow conditions at Albuquerque, New Mexico. This flow enhancement is attainable by fallowing 18%–26% of cropland and shifting to more profitable and less water-intensive crops to sustain overall farm revenues.

Coastal ecosystems have the potential to contribute to disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change. While previous studies have estimated the value of current coastal ecosystems for reducing coastal risk, there have been relatively few studies that look at changes in ecosystem service provision, in the past and under climate change. We employ the probabilistic, event-based CLIMADA platform to quantify the protection from tropical cyclones provided by coastal ecosystems, modeling the number of beneficiaries in the past and under future climate change. We also investigate the potential of Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as mangrove restoration. We find that currently, one in five (21%) of all people impacted annually by tropical cyclones in the global low-elevation coastal zone is within the protection distance of coastal ecosystems. Over the last 30 years, the share of protected people has decreased by approximately 2%, due to ecosystem loss. With climate change, the average annual number of people impacted will increase by 40%. Simultaneously, the proportion of people protected by coastal ecosystems with climate change decreases due to changes in tropical cyclone distribution (-1%). The importance of current coastal protection, and the potential for increasing protection by NbS, varies widely between countries. While the number of people protected globally only increases slightly with mangrove restoration, protection in individual countries can increase by up to 39%. Our findings provide a basis for NbS planning and adaptation policy, by highlighting areas which will be crucial for coastal protection services in a world altered by climate change.

Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, Third Edition, Seven Volume Set provides a coherent, synthetic and comprehensive overview of the field, bringing together contributions from over 400 expert academics and practitioners. The book brings together the dimensions of biodiversity and examines the services it provides and measures to protect it. Major themes include the evolution of biodiversity, systems for classifying and defining biodiversity, ecological patterns and theories of biodiversity, and an assessment of contemporary patterns and trends in biodiversity. The entire work is reviewed and updated, including new chapters on topics which have come to the forefront since the publication of the previous edition. The science of biodiversity has become the science of our future. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning areas of both physical and life sciences. Our awareness of the loss of biodiversity has brought a long overdue appreciation of the magnitude of this loss and a determination to develop the tools to protect our future. One important feature of the new edition will be updated information on the growing biodiversity crisis.

In August 2022 we launched the inaugural issue of a new Nature journal focused on our blue planet: npj Ocean Sustainability. The opening issue highlighted the journal’s intended role in sharing research, critically debating key challenges to achieving ocean sustainability, with its environmental and human dimensions, and advancing pathways to address them.

In just 1 year, the journal’s interdisciplinarity and solution-oriented nature have shone through and made it stand out among prestigious journals. Covered topics were diverse (Fig. 1), ranging from the challenges of seabed mining to the new agreement on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, to fisheries management, climate change impacts, global science-policy interfaces, human connections with ocean spaces, and digital twins. Many papers address different ocean sectors simultaneously, integrating different disciplines and different dimensions of ocean sustainability challenges (e.g., biodiversity loss, pollution, over-exploitation of species).

Monitoring the governance and management effectiveness of area-based conservation has long been recognized as an important foundation for achieving national and global biodiversity goals and enabling adaptive management. However, there are still many barriers that prevent conservation actors, including those affected by governance and management systems from implementing conservation activities and programs and from gathering and using data on governance and management to inform decision-making across spatial scales and through time. We explored current and past efforts to assess governance and management effectiveness and barriers actors face in using the resulting data and insights to inform conservation decision-making. To help overcome these barriers, we developed Elinor, a free and open-source monitoring tool that builds on the work of Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom to facilitate the gathering, storing, sharing, analyzing, and use of data on environmental governance and management across spatial scales and for areas under different governance and management types. We consider the process of codesigning and piloting Elinor with conservation scientists and practitioners and the main components of the assessment and online data system. We also consider how Elinor complements existing approaches by addressing governance and management in a single assessment at a high level for different types of area-based conservation, providing flexible options for data collection, and integrating a data system with an assessment that can support data use and sharing across different spatial scales, including global monitoring of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Although challenges will continue, the process of developing Elinor and the tool itself offer tangible solutions to barriers that prevent the systematic collection and use of governance and management data. With broader uptake, Elinor can play a valuable role in enabling more effective, inclusive, and durable area-based conservation.

Nature-based interventions (NbIs) for climate change mitigation include a diverse set of interventions aimed at conserving, restoring, and/or managing natural and modified ecosystems to improve their ability to store and sequester carbon and avoid greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recent projections estimate that terrestrial NbIs can lead to more than one-third of the climate change mitigation necessary to meet the Paris Climate Agreement by 2030. Further, these interventions can provide co-benefits in the form of social and ecological outcomes. Despite growing recognition of the potential benefits, a clear characterization of the distribution and occurrence of evidence which supports linkages between different types of NbIs and outcomes for climate change mitigation, ecosystems, and people remains poorly understood.