The geological record shows that abrupt changes in the Earth system can occur on timescales
short enough to challenge the capacity of human societies to adapt to environmental …

The identification of properties that contribute to the persistence and resilience of ecosystems
despite climate change constitutes a research priority of global relevance 1 . Here we …

Recent bark beetle outbreaks in North America and Europe have impacted forested
landscapes and the provisioning of critical ecosystem services. The scale and intensity of many …

Global vegetation over the past 18,000 years has been transformed first by the climate
changes that accompanied the last deglaciation and again by increasing human pressures; …

The idea that there is an identifiable set of boundaries, beyond which anthropogenic change
will put the Earth system outside a safe operating space for humanity, is attracting interest in …

Priority question exercises are becoming an increasingly common tool to frame future agendas
in conservation and ecological science. They are an effective way to identify research …

Global climate change is projected to lead to an increase in both the areal extent and degree
of aridity in the world’s drylands. At the same time, the majority of drylands are located in …

Due to recent outbreaks of native bark beetles, forest ecosystems have experienced
substantial changes in landscape structure and function, which also affect nearby human …

Historical legacies influence present-day ecosystem composition and dynamics. It is
therefore important to understand the long-term dynamics of ecosystems and their properties. …

Dynamics in the rate of compositional change (rate-of-change; RoC), preserved in
paleoecological sequences, are thought to reflect changes due to exogenous (climate and human …