SESYNC has launched a new open-access collection of sustainability-related resources available to the public. Ranging from videos, to articles, to lesson plans, to audio interviews, the resources aim to engage more people from all backgrounds in the conversation about sustainability and to consider the environmental impact of humans’ beliefs, interactions, and behaviors.
The majority of the world's population lives in an urban ecosystem, which is one of the few ecosystem types currently expanding world-wide. Despite their prevalence and importance, relatively little theory exists regarding plant community processes in cultivated urban environments. To address this
Diverse natural resources along coasts produce interactions among a range of users. The resulting set of interactions presents a fundamental and enduring challenge to effectively governing coastal-marine systems. However, untangling the numerous social-ecological interdependencies—critical for
Resource-conserving technologies provide the same level of services as status-quo technologies, but with fewer inputs. Examples include energy-efficient appliances, fuel-efficient vehicles and cook-stoves, water-efficient appliances and fixtures, and input-efficient (precision) agriculture and
In 2015, over 122 million live wild and exotic animals were imported into the United States from 123 countries with minimal disease surveillance. Imported animals, either wild-sourced or captive-bred, can harbor infectious pathogens harmful to native U.S. wildlife if accidentally or deliberately
With slow and uncertain progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, geoengineering using solar radiation management has been increasingly promoted as a way to rapidly reduce the worst effects of climate change on humans. However, while geoengineering effects on temperature and precipitation
SESYNC is hosting a 3-day Environmental Policy Immersion Program for post-doctoral researchers in fields pertinent to socio-environmental research. The program includes a basic grounding in public policy issues, institutions, and approaches to collaboration
Identifying the mechanisms that shape natural communities is a major challenge in community ecology. Climatic conditions and local neighborhoods that have been described as important filters selecting a subset of species with traits fit for a site, thereby driving community assembly and dynamics
Legacies of past environmental injustices can leave an imprint on the present and constrain pathways for the future. Using nearly 20 years of social and environmental justice research from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a long-term social ecological research project, we examine the relationships
Adaptation is forward looking. But we need to look back at the causes of fragility to move toward security. Causal analysis of vulnerability aims to identify the roots of crises so that transformative solutions might be found. Yet, root-cause analysis is absent from most climate-response assessments
The history of the term “biodiversity” (since 1985) hardly does justice to the earlier discussions of “biotic diversity” that refer to living variation and its values. The pre-history of biodiversity (the history of the term before it was invented) documents strong links to option value: valuing the
Agent-based models (ABMs) are powerful tools for the study of complex systems, particularly when outcomes of interest at the system level (e.g., forest cover, traffic jams, or presidents) emerge from the decisions of individuals interacting with each other and their environment (e.g., farmers
The first European explorers and settlers in North America came woefully unprepared for the novel environments and climates they encountered in the New World. Popular understanding equated climates with latitudes and vastly underestimated the stronger continental seasons that Spanish, English, and