Gleeson, T., Wang‐Erlandsson, L., Porkka, M., Zipper, S.C., Jaramillo, F., Gerten, D., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S.E., Piemontese, L., Gordon, L.J. and Rockström, J., 2020. Illuminating water cycle modifications and Earth System resilience in the Anthropocene. Water Resources Research, 56(4), p.e2019WR024957

Fresh water—the bloodstream of the biosphere—is at the center of the planetary drama of the Anthropocene. Water fluxes and stores regulate the Earth's climate and are essential for thriving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as water, food, and energy security. But the water cycle is also being modified by humans at an unprecedented scale and rate. A holistic understanding of freshwater's role for Earth system resilie...

Centler, F., Günnigmann, S., Fetzer, I. and Wendeberg, A., 2020. Keystone Species and Modularity in Microbial Hydrocarbon Degradation Uncovered by Network Analysis and Association Rule Mining. Microorganisms, 8(2), p.190.

Natural microbial communities in soils are highly diverse, allowing for rich networks of microbial interactions to unfold. Identifying key players in these networks is difficult as the distribution of microbial diversity at the local scale is typically non-uniform, and is the outcome of both abiotic environmental factors and microbial interactions. Here, using spatially resolved microbial presence-absence data along an aquife...

Piemontese, L., Castelli, G., Fetzer, I., Barron, J., Liniger, H., Harari, N., Bresci, E. and Jaramillo, F., 2020. Estimating the global potential of water harvesting from successful case studies. Global environmental change, 63, p.102121.

Water harvesting has been widely applied in different social-ecological contexts, proving to be a valuable approach to sustainable intensification of agriculture. Global estimates of the potential of water harvesting are generally based on purely biophysical assessments and mostly neglect the socioeconomic dimension of agriculture. This neglect becomes a critical factor for the feasibility and effectiveness of policy and fundi...

Singh, C., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, Rockström, J., et.al. 2020. Rootzone storage capacity reveals drought coping strategies along rainforest-savanna transitions. Environ. Res. Lett. 15 124021, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc377

Climate change and deforestation have increased the risk of drought-induced forest-to-savanna transitions across the tropics and subtropics. However, the present understanding of forest-savanna transitions is generally focused on the influence of rainfall and fire regime changes, but does not take into account the adaptability of vegetation to droughts by utilizing subsoil moisture in a quantifiable metric. Using rootzone stor...