Sustainability needs the geosciences

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95566/1/eost18856.pd

The Framing of Urban Sustainability Transformations

Transformational change is not always intentional. However, deliberate transformations are imperative to achieve the sustainable visions that future generations deserve. Small, unintentional tweaks will not be enough to overcome persistent and emergent urban challenges. Recent scholarship on sustainability transformations has evolved considerably, but there is no consensus on what qualifies transformational change. We describe variations in current discussions of intentional sustainability transformations in the literature and synthesize strategies from funding institutions’ recent requests for proposals for urban sustainability transformations. Research funding initiatives calling for transformational change are increasingly common and are an important driver of how transformational change is articulated in research-practice in cities. From this synthesis, we present seven criteria for transformational change that provide direction for framing and implementing transformational change initiatives

Integrating existing climate adaptation planning into future visions: A strategic scenario for the central Arizona–Phoenix region

Cities face a number of challenges to ensure that people’s well-being and ecosystem integrity are not only maintained but improved for current and future generations. Urban planning must account for the diverse and changing interactions among the social, ecological, and technological systems (SETS) of a city. Cities struggle with long-range approaches to explore, anticipate, and plan for sustainability and resilience—and scenario development is one way to address this need. In this paper, we present the framework for developing what we call ‘strategic’ scenarios, which are scenarios or future visions created from governance documents expressing unrealized municipal priorities and goals. While scenario approaches vary based on diverse planning and decision-making objectives, only some offer tangible, systemic representations of existing plans and goals for the future that can be explored as an assessment and planning tool for sustainability and resilience. Indeed, the strategic scenarios approach presented here (1) emphasizes multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary interventions; (2) identifies systemic conflicts, tradeoffs, and synergies among existing planning goals; and (3) incorporates as yet unrealized goals and strategies representative of urban short-term planning initiatives. We present an example strategic scenario for the Central Arizona–Phoenix metropolitan region, and discuss the utility of the strategic scenario in long-term thinking for future sustainability and resilience in urban research and practice. This approach brings together diverse—sometimes competing—strategies and offers the opportunity to explore outcomes by comparing and contrasting their implications and tradeoffs, and evaluating the resulting strategic scenario against scenarios developed through alternative, participatory approaches

Temporal variation in enrichment effects during periphyton succession in a nitrogen-limited desert stream ecosystem

Abstract. Periphyton succession was studied over 89 d in longitudinally adjacent reaches (a riffle and run) in Sycamore Creek, a spatially intermittent desert stream. Effects of nitrogen limitation were assessed by comparing algal development on clay saucers containing either nitrate-enriched or unenriched agar. We evaluated effects of grazing on periphyton accrual by amending agar in half the substrata from each enrichment condition with an insecticide (Malathion). Early successional (25-d) communities on unenriched substrata were dominated by Epithemta sorex, a diatom capable of N, fixation; non-fixing diatoms dominated enriched communities. NO,-N enrichment increased algal diversity (H') and delayed late-successional dominance by Calothrix, a heterocystous cyanobacterium. Replacement of diatoms by cyanobacteria was likely facilitated by autogenic changes in nutrient and light conditions within the periphyton and temporal increases in water temperature. Three measures of algal biomass exhibited nearly linear increases in all treatments over the 3-mo study. Enrichment enhanced standing crops of chlorophyll a and ash-free dry mass (AFDM) in both reaches, an effect most pronounced within the first 3-4 wk. Algal populations unable to fix N, were stimulated by enrichment but remained in low abundance on unenriched substrata whereas biovolume of N,-fixing populations was lower on enriched substrata relative to controls. Malathion reduced the density of only one common grazer, the moth larva Petrophila jaliscalis, which was abundant only in the riffle. Addition of Malathion to enriched substrata in this habitat had no significant effect on net primary productivity or total algal biovolume but resulted in increased chlorophyll a and AFDM, suggesting that Petrophila did influence algal communities, but by a mechanism that remains unclear. Spatial heterogeneity of nutrient supply in this system contributes to maintenance of algal diversity; but over long successional seres diversity declines regardless of enrichment owing to autogenic changes that occur during succession. Our results confirm earlier observations that low nitrogen availability limits accrual of algal biomass following spates and constrains algal community structure in Sycamore Creek. However, highly significant early successional differences in algal standing crop and community structure among enrichment treatments were eliminated or much reduced in mid to late stages of succession. We propose that this temporal change in enrichment response was caused by development of a thick periphyton mat that reduced availability of both water-column or substratum-derived nutrients to algae, and increased reliance on internal nutrient recycling

Social, Ecological, and Technological Strategies for Climate Adaptation

Resilient cities are able to persist, grow, and even transform while keeping their essential identities in the face of external forces like climate change, which threatens lives, livelihoods, and the structures and processes of the urban environment (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, How to make cities more resilient: a handbook for local government leaders. Switzerland, Geneva, 2017). Scenario development is a novel approach to visioning resilient futures for cities. As an instrument for synthesizing data and envisioning urban futures, scenarios combine diverse datasets such as biophysical models, stakeholder perspectives, and demographic information (Carpenter et al. Ecol Soc 20:10, 2015). As a tool to envision alternative futures, participatory scenario development explores, identifies, and evaluates potential outcomes and tradeoffs associated with the management of social–ecological change, incorporating multiple stakeholder’s collaborative subjectivity (Galafassi et al. Ecol Soc 22:2, 2017). Understanding the current landscape of city planning and governance approaches is important in developing city-specific scenarios. In particular, assessing municipal planning strategies through the lens of interactive social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) provides useful insight into the dynamics and interrelationships of these coupled systems (da Silva et al. Sustain Dev 4(2):125–145, 2012). An assessment of existing municipal strategies can also be used to inform future adaptation scenarios and strategic plans addressing extreme weather events. With the scenario development process guiding stakeholders in generating goals and visions through participatory workshops, the content analysis of governance planning documents from the SETS perspective provides key insight on specific strategies that have been considered (or overlooked) in cities. In this chapter, we (a) demonstrate an approach to examine how cities define and prioritize climate adaptation strategies in their governance planning documents, (b) examine how governance strategies address current and future climate vulnerabilities as exemplified by nine cities in North and Latin America where we conducted a content analysis of municipal planning documents, and (c) suggest a codebook to explore the diverse SETS strategies proposed to address climate challenges—specifically related to extreme weather events such as heat, drought, and flooding

Thank you Earth's Future reviewers in 2019

AGU's open‐access transdisciplinary science journal Earth's Future continued to grow in size and stature in 2019, with ~40% acceptance rate for ~280 new submissions that were evaluated by a similar number of external reviewers; their names are listed here

Setting the Stage for Co-Production

Participatory scenario visioning aims to expose, integrate, and reconcile perspectives and expectations about a sustainable, resilient future from a variety of actors and stakeholders. This chapter considers the settings in which transdisciplinary participatory visioning takes place, highlighting lessons learned from the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). It reflects on the benefits of engaging in the co-production process and the challenges that must be considered amid this process