Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Biodiversity isn’t measured in tons: Making sense of nature in the context of sustainable agriculture
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
In this review, we articulate several important, but often overlooked concepts, trends, and perspectives in the biodiversity monitoring space, specifically in the context of transforming agriculture and the wider food system. We describe the common approaches to biodiversity monitoring — those focused on species, communities, functions, habitats, etc — and the methods and tools commonly used to [...]
Comment on “China’s solar expansion policy reduces bird diversity”
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Environmental Studies
FROM CLIMATE AWARENESS TO CLIMATE-INFORMED PLANNING IN EXISTING MARINE PROTECTED AREAS
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sustainability
Marine protected areas underpin global biodiversity commitments, but climate change challenges management systems built around historical conditions. Existing guidance defines climate adaptive practice, yet many plans contain resilience-supporting provisions without linking them explicitly to climate decisions. We present CliMPA, a human-centred framework that connects management needs, actor [...]
Biodiversity Externality Costs Through Supply Chain: A pass-Through Input-Output Framework for Biodiversity Financial Impact Assessment
Published: 2026-07-30
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Other Economics
Transition biodiversity risk is increasingly recognised as a source of financial risk, yet no framework exists to translate firm-level biodiversity impacts into credit risk metrics comparable to those developed for climate transition risk or even biodiversity dependency risk. This paper fills that gap by adapting the cost pass-through input-output methodology, established in the climate [...]
From Scalable Biodiversity Measurement to Credible Biodiversity Metrics
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Business, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistical Models, Sustainability, Technology and Innovation
Governments struggle to develop effective policies to counter the decline of species and ecosystems. An obstacle to command-and-control and incentive-based mechanisms is that biodiversity is costly to measure, creating an information asymmetry in which firms and governments are incentivised to withhold information on adverse impacts. Using a principal-agent model, we show that credible reporting [...]
Technology should support, not sideline, locally driven conservation and restoration monitoring
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
The choice of how to monitor conservation and restoration is not solely technical - it shapes which outcomes are valued, whose priorities define success, where resources flow, and who benefits. The shift toward tech-based monitoring, driven by demand for scalable metrics, risks incomplete ecological understanding, sidelining Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) from data ownership and [...]
Advancing public pro-environmental action for global seagrass conservation
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Psychology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences
Seagrass meadows support biodiversity, climate mitigation, and human well-being, yet remain threatened by interacting anthropogenic pressures. Public engagement is increasingly promoted in seagrass conservation, but the behaviours most relevant to reducing seagrass decline remain poorly defined. We surveyed 172 seagrass knowledge holders from 39 countries and territories, representing 1942 [...]
An action-oriented research agenda for equitable and meaningful nature-based solutions in urban areas
Published: 2026-06-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Public Health, Urban Studies and Planning
Nature-based solutions provide opportunities to address the urgent, interconnected global challenges of environmental conservation, public health, and social justice in urban areas. Despite growing interest among policy-makers, the outcomes of nature-based solutions at the nexus of biodiversity, human health, and social justice are not well understood. We gathered a group of experts from [...]
A Critical Year for Nature: Now is the time to accelerate action on the Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies
In October 2026, Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will convene to review progress against the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) adopted in 2022. A global report will provide a summary of collective progress, primarily drawing from government self-reporting at the halfway mark to 2030, the target year for halting and reversing nature loss. [...]
Nature finance: we need (some) offsets
Published: 2026-05-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies
Nature offsets – mechanisms that allow for negative environmental impacts (e.g. biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions) to be fully compensated for and neutralized – are extremely widespread, but have become increasingly controversial, to the extent they are now starting to be precluded from new environmental policy developments. In turn, leaders are becoming more reticent about their [...]
Catalyzing transformative change for climate and biodiversity finance within COP policy discourses
Published: 2026-05-11
Subjects: Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Other Political Science
Recent outcomes of the Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC and the UN CBD have emphasized the need for transformative change to meet global climate and biodiversity targets. Yet discourses on climate and biodiversity finance remain dominated by efforts to close “funding gaps,” with comparatively little attention paid to the systemic drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss, and [...]
Re-imagining Urban Infrastructure for Biodiversity: Can Railway and Utility Easements Enhance Ecological Connectivity in Cities?
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Urban Studies and Planning
Urban biodiversity is increasingly recognised as essential for ecological and social outcomes in cities. At the same time, urban densification is reducing the land available for biodiversity interventions, creating a need to make better use of existing spaces. This study examines the existing and potential value of railway and utility easements in contributing to habitat connectivity for a range [...]
The promise and challenge of environmental epigenomics in a rapidly changing world
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Environmental Studies, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
There has been a fast-paced research effort on the role of epigenetic mechanisms in facilitating organisms’ capacity to cope with rapid environmental change, highlighted by several recent reviews and special issues on this topic. What is important, along with this momentum, is to pause and reflect on both the promises and challenges of linking detailed molecular mechanisms to broad patterns of [...]
Nature-based Solutions for Climate and Disaster Risk Mitigation in SIPLAS: A Framework for Policy Integration and Innovative Financing
Published: 2026-04-16
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Small island protected areas face compounding pressures from rapid urbanization, constrained land use, biodiversity loss, and intensifying climate and disaster risk, yet scholarship on how to finance and mainstream Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in governance-complex, nationally protected island systems remains limited. This study addresses that gap by examining the integration of NbS into climate [...]
Synergies and trade-offs between tree cover expansion efforts within and outside forests to achieve climate, biodiversity and human well-being outcomes
Published: 2026-03-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Increasing tree cover is hailed as a leading climate mitigation strategy, yet there is increasing evidence that there may be trade-offs between trees in different parts of the landscape. Existing science, policy, and practice on natural climate solutions (NCS) assumes that trees outside of forests, for example on farms, homesteads, or in urban areas, are synergistic with forest conservation: if [...]