Resilience insights related to COVID-19

Spotswood, E., Benjamin, M., Stoneburner, L., Wheeler, M., Beller, E., Balk, D., McPhearson, T., Kuo, M., McDonald, R.. 2021. Nature inequity and higher COVID-19 case rates in less-green neighbourhoods in the United States. Nature Sustainability. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00781-9

Urban nature—such as greenness and parks—can alleviate distress and provide space for safe recreation during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, nature is often less available in low-income populations and communities of colour—the same communities hardest hit by COVID-19. In analyses of two datasets, we quantified inequity in greenness and park proximity across all urbanized areas in the United States and linked greenness and par...

Pelling, M., Chow, W., Chu, E., Dawson, R., Dodman, D., Fraser, A., Hayward, B., Khirfan, L., McPhearson, T., Prakash, A., Ziervogel, G.. 2021. A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience. Climate and Development. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2021.1956411

Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic opens an opportunity for enhanced research and action on inclusive urban resilience to climate change. Lessons and their implications are used to describe a climate resilience research renewal agenda. Three key lessons are identified. The first lesson is generic, that climate change risk coexists and interacts with other risks through overlapping social processes, conditions and dec...

Pihl, E., Alfredsson, E., Bengtsson, M., Bowen, K., Cástan Broto, V., Chou, K., et.al. 2021. Ten new insights in climate science 2020 – a horizon scan. Global Sustainability, 4, E5. doi:10.1017/sus.2021.2

We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding of Earth's sensitivity to carbon dioxide, finds that permafrost thaw could release more carbon emissions than expected and that the uptake of carbon in tropical ecosystems is weakening. Adverse impacts on human society include increasing water shortages and impacts on mental health. ...

Hentati-Sundberg, J., Berglund, P.A., Hejdström, A. and Olsson, O. 2021. COVID-19 lockdown reveals tourists as seabird guardians. Biological Conservation, p.108950. Vancouver. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.108950

The widespread lockdowns put in place to limit the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) offers a rare opportunity in understanding how human presence influence ecosystems. Using data from long-term seabird monitoring, we reveal a previously concealed guarding effect by tourist groups on an iconic seabird colony in the Baltic Sea. The absence of tourists in 2020 lead to a sevenfold increase in presence of white-tai...