Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Nature and Society Relations
Asian Hornbill Bibliography: a dynamic, online, open-access reference database for use in manuscript citations and hornbill research
Published: 2024-06-18
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Library and Information Science, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Plant Sciences, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing
Bibliographic databases and citation tools are integral aids to research. The Asian Hornbill Bibliography presents a compendium of research on Asian hornbills by combining an open access bibliographic database with the free and open source reference manager, Zotero. The bibliography, also hosted and made accessible from the IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group website, includes 725 publications, [...]
Clarifying ethical stances in conservation: a trolley problem thought experiment
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Nature and Society Relations
Conservation policies often need to integrate scientific predictions with ethical considerations. However, different normative ethical systems at the root of conservation approaches often support different decisions, and the moral stances of stakeholders are influenced by diverse societal values and perceptions. This creates the potential for dilemmas and conflicts. Here we adapt the well-known [...]
Light Pollution at Sea: Implications and Potential Hazards of Human Activity for Offshore Bird and Bat Movements in the Greater North Sea
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology
Human activity in the North Sea is intensifying, as emerging uses, such as offshore wind farms (OWFs) and liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, are added to fishing, freight shipping and fossil fuel production as traditional forms of resource exploitation. The volume and scale of these additional installations are projected to increase substantially in the coming decades, which amplifies the need [...]
Measuring historical pollution: natural history collections as tools for public health and environmental justice research
Published: 2023-07-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Policy, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Health Policy, Inequality and Stratification, Nature and Society Relations, Public Policy, Urban Studies and Planning
Background: Through the industrial era, environmental pollution has been unevenly distributed in the environment, disproportionately impacting disenfranchised communities. The distribution of pollution is thus a question of environmental justice and public health that requires policy solutions. However, we lack robust quantitative data on pollutants for many locations and time periods because [...]
Landscape changes in the “valli da pesca” of the Venice lagoon and possible effects on the Ecosystem Services supply
Published: 2023-06-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Coastal lagoons have long been subject to continuous changes caused by mutual interactions with human activities. Monitoring such changes becomes critical, particularly when modifications in landscape and land cover classes can affect their capacity to ensure Ecosystem Services (ESs). In the Venice lagoon, some confined areas called “valli da pesca” supply provisioning ESs, namely aquaculture and [...]
A Perspective on Conservation and Development
Published: 2023-05-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Community-based Research, Demography, Population, and Ecology, Environmental Studies, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography
Since the industrial revolution, the predominant model of economic development has involved economies of scale and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, leading to environmental degradation and the ongoing mass extinction of species. The environmental impacts of this development-for(the sake of)-development model led to biodiversity conservation efforts that can be described as [...]
Yield declines and producer responses to shifting climate and economic conditions in Mexican coffee production
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences
Coffee’s climate sensitivity contributes to extreme production and price fluctuations. However, as coffee is a perennial crop, producers have difficulty responding to short-term market shifts. Combining historical climate, production and price data from all coffee-growing municipalities in Mexico, we examined trends of climate and coffee production and then characterized and quantified coffee [...]
The March of the Human Footprint
Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Human influence is driving planetary change, often in undesirable and unsustainable ways. Recent advances enabled us to measure changes in humanity’s footprint on Earth annually from 2000 – 2019 with a nine-fold improvement in spatial resolution over previous efforts. We found that earlier studies seriously under-estimated the magnitude, extent, and rate of change in the human footprint. [...]
Millet, Rice, and Isolation: Origins and Persistence of the Worlds Most Enduring Mega-State
Published: 2022-06-05
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Asian Studies, Comparative Politics, Economic History, Economics, Geography, Growth and Development, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, International Relations, Models and Methods, Nature and Society Relations, Other Anthropology, Other Economics, Other Political Science, Political Economy, Political Science, Regional Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous state-building projects, which determines their extent and persistence. Using a novel dataset describing [...]
Nature’s contributions in coping with a pandemic in the 21st century: A narrative review of evidence during COVID-19
Published: 2021-08-10
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Geography, Medicine and Health Sciences, Mental and Social Health, Nature and Society Relations, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While COVID-19 lockdowns have slowed coronavirus transmission, such structural measures also have unintended consequences on mental and physical health. Growing evidence shows that exposure to the natural environment (e.g., blue-green spaces) can improve human health and wellbeing. In this narrative review, we synthesized the evidence about natures contributions to health and wellbeing during the [...]
Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Geography, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity is a cornerstone of human health and well-being. However, while evidence of the contributions of nature to human health is rapidly building, research into how biodiversity relates to human health remains limited in important respects. In particular, a better mechanistic understanding of the range of pathways through which biodiversity can influence human health is needed. These [...]