Telecoupling

Publications

• SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT - Global hidden spillover effects among concurrent green initiatives

  Published on March 20, 2024
  We collected empirical data and information about green initiatives from 15 sites or countries worldwide, and explored how specific policy, intended behaviors, and gains of given green initiative may interact with those of other green initiatives.

• NATURE SUSTAINABILITY - Telecoupled impacts of the Russia–Ukraine war on global cropland expansion and biodiversity

  Published on March 1, 2024
  We simulated the global cropland expansion provoked by the reshaping of international virtual cropland flows under different war scenarios and conducted a biodiversity impact assessment.

• JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT - Pathways for achieving conservation targets under metacoupled anthropogenic disturbances

  Published on February 27, 2024
  We endeavored to model the connectivity between protected areas in rapidly urbanizing regions in China, drawing on insights from the framework of metacoupling based on connected corridors at short and long distances.

• NATURE COMMUNICATIONS - Global transboundary synergies and trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals from an integrated sustainability perspective

  Published on January 13, 2024
  This study quantified the transboundary interactions between 768 pairs of SDG indicators. The results showed that high income countries comprised 14.18% of the global population, but contributed to total SDG interactions worldwide (60.60%).

• JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION - Building smallholder-adapted climate-resilient systems: Evidence from China's apple farms

  Published on January 5, 2024
  We developed a smallholder-adapted climate-resilient system (SA-CRS) conceptual framework and applied this in an empirical assessment of the adaptation of smallholder apple farmers (SAFs) to the risk of low temperature during flowering (LTF) in China

• NATURE SUSTAINABILITY - Translating Earth system boundaries for cities and businesses

  Published on January 4, 2024
  We identify commonly used sharing approaches, illustrate ten principles of translation and present a protocol involving key building blocks and control steps in translation.

• SCIENTIFIC REPORTS - Complex relationships between soybean trade destination and tropical deforestation

  Published on July 12, 2023
  Using data for soybean-producing municipalities in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, between 2004 and 2017, we evaluated the relationships between forest cover change and the annual soybean trade destination.

• FRONTIERS IN FORESTS AND GLOBAL CHANGE - Toward a forest transition across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome

  Published on June 29, 2023
  Using land-use/cover (LULC) data, we assessed the loss and successive gain in forest cover during the 1987–2001 and 2001–2015 periods.

• NATIONAL SCIENCE REVIEW - Leveraging the metacoupling framework for sustainability science and global sustainable development

  Published on June 8, 2023
  The metacoupling framework offers a conceptual foundation and a holistic approach to integrating human–nature interactions within a place, as well as between adjacent places and between distant places worldwide.

• NATURE COMMUNICATIONS - Physical and virtual nutrient flows in global telecoupled agricultural trade networks

  Published on April 26, 2023
  We quantified the physical and virtual nitrogen and phosphorus flows embedded in the global agricultural trade networks from 1997 to 2016 and elaborated components of the telecoupling framework.

• GEOGRAPHY AND SUSTAINABILITY - Broader applicability of the metacoupling framework than Tobler’s first law of geography for global sustainability: A systematic review

  Published on April 17, 2023
  We reviewed and synthesized sustainability literature that used Tobler’s first law of geography and framework of metacoupling across seven major topics: land change, species migration, tourism, trade, agricultural development, conservation, and governance.

• AMBIO - Global gateways as telecoupled human and natural systems: The emerging case of the Bering Strait

  Published on March 28, 2023
  We examine how three telecoupling processes (tourism, vessel traffic, and natural resource development) impact and are impacted by the coupled human and natural system of the Bering Strait Region.

• SUSTAINABILITY - International Tourism in the Arctic under COVID-19: A Telecoupling Analysis of Iceland

  Published on November 17, 2022
  Analyzed the materials, energy, tourist, and information flows, as well as the causes, effects, and agents of tourism in Iceland using the framework of telecoupling (human-nature interactions over distances).

• AMBIO: Effects of global shocks on the evolution of an interconnected world

  Published on August 23, 2022
  Global shocks, such as pandemics, are increasing in speed and reach, and new ways are required to reduce negative impacts

• NATURE FOOD - International food trade benefits biodiversity and food security in low-income countries

  Published on May 12, 2022
  This study calculates food trade flows among high-hotspot, low-hotspot and non-hotspot countries, including high- and low-income ones, over 2000–2018.

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  Nature News & Views - We can have biodiversity and eat too

  Published on May 12, 2022
  Stuart Pimm of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment comments on Jack Liu and Min Gon Chung's Nature Food paper on the global food trade and biodiversity

• AMBIO: The metacoupled Arctic: Human–nature interactions across local to global scales as drivers of sustainability

  Published on March 30, 2022
  A synthesis of external influences analyzed in Arctic-coupled human and natural systems literature show the Arctic is affected by external influences, including global markets, climate change, governance, military security, and tourism.

• NATURE SUSTAINABILITY - Decoupling of SDGs followed by re-coupling as sustainable development progresses

  Published on March 24, 2022
  A correlational network approach and a global SDG database of 166 countries to analyze the evolution of SDG interactions along a progression of sustainable development measured by the SDG Index.

• EARTH INTERACTIONS - Complex effects of telecouplings on forest dynamics: an agent-based modeling approach

  Published on January 1, 2022
  Developed an agent-based model and simulated the impacts of two globally common telecouplings, nature-based tourism and labor migration, on forest dynamics of a rural CHANS, China’s Wolong Nature Reserve (Wolong).

• NATURE SUSTAINABILITY - Natural infrastructure in sustaining global urban freshwater ecosystem services

  Published on October 21, 2021
  Improved understand natural infrastructure's in urban water networks must underpin strategic decision-making to sustainably provide freshwater ecosystem services to global cities.