Journal ArticleDOI
Global Water Resources: Vulnerability from Climate Change and Population Growth
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TLDR
Numerical experiments combining climate model outputs, water budgets, and socioeconomic information along digitized river networks demonstrate that (i) a large proportion of the world's population is currently experiencing water stress and (ii) rising water demands greatly outweigh greenhouse warming in defining the state of global water systems to 2025.Abstract:
The future adequacy of freshwater resources is difficult to assess, owing to a complex and rapidly changing geography of water supply and use. Numerical experiments combining climate model outputs, water budgets, and socioeconomic information along digitized river networks demonstrate that (i) a large proportion of the world's population is currently experiencing water stress and (ii) rising water demands greatly outweigh greenhouse warming in defining the state of global water systems to 2025. Consideration of direct human impacts on global water supply remains a poorly articulated but potentially important facet of the larger global change question.read more
Citations
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Global Consequences of Land Use
Jonathan A. Foley,Ruth DeFries,Gregory P. Asner,Carol C. Barford,Gordon B. Bonan,Stephen R. Carpenter,F. Stuart Chapin,Michael T. Coe,Michael T. Coe,Gretchen C. Daily,Holly K. Gibbs,Joseph H. Helkowski,Tracey Holloway,Erica A. Howard,Christopher J. Kucharik,Chad Monfreda,Jonathan A. Patz,I. Colin Prentice,Navin Ramankutty,Peter K. Snyder +19 more
TL;DR: Global croplands, pastures, plantations, and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by large increases in energy, water, and fertilizer consumption, along with considerable losses of biodiversity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet
Will Steffen,Will Steffen,Katherine Richardson,Johan Rockström,Sarah Cornell,Ingo Fetzer,Elena M. Bennett,Reinette Biggs,Reinette Biggs,Stephen R. Carpenter,Wim de Vries,Cynthia A. de Wit,Carl Folke,Carl Folke,Dieter Gerten,Jens Heinke,Jens Heinke,Jens Heinke,Georgina M. Mace,Linn Persson,Veerabhadran Ramanathan,Veerabhadran Ramanathan,Belinda Reyers,Belinda Reyers,Sverker Sörlin +24 more
TL;DR: An updated and extended analysis of the planetary boundary (PB) framework and identifies levels of anthropogenic perturbations below which the risk of destabilization of the Earth system (ES) is likely to remain low—a “safe operating space” for global societal development.
Journal ArticleDOI
Solutions for a cultivated planet
Jonathan A. Foley,Navin Ramankutty,Kate A. Brauman,E. S. Cassidy,James S. Gerber,M. Johnston,Nathaniel D. Mueller,Christine S. O’Connell,Deepak K. Ray,Paul C. West,Christian Balzer,Elena M. Bennett,Stephen R. Carpenter,Jason Hill,Chad Monfreda,Stephen Polasky,Johan Rockström,John Sheehan,Stefan Siebert,David Tilman,David P. M. Zaks +20 more
TL;DR: It is shown that tremendous progress could be made by halting agricultural expansion, closing ‘yield gaps’ on underperforming lands, increasing cropping efficiency, shifting diets and reducing waste, which could double food production while greatly reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.
Journal ArticleDOI
Freshwater biodiversity: importance, threats, status and conservation challenges
David Dudgeon,Angela Arthington,Mark O. Gessner,Zen'ichiro Kawabata,Duncan Knowler,Christian Lévêque,Robert J. Naiman,Anne-Hélène Prieur-Richard,Doris Soto,Melanie L. J. Stiassny,Caroline A Sullivan +10 more
TL;DR: This article explores the special features of freshwater habitats and the biodiversity they support that makes them especially vulnerable to human activities and advocates continuing attempts to check species loss but urges adoption of a compromise position of management for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem functioning and resilience, and human livelihoods.
Journal ArticleDOI
Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity
Charles J. Vörösmarty,Peter B. McIntyre,Peter B. McIntyre,Mark O. Gessner,David Dudgeon,Alexander A. Prusevich,Pamela A. Green,Stanley Glidden,Stuart E. Bunn,Caroline A Sullivan,C. Reidy Liermann,Peter Davies +11 more
TL;DR: The first worldwide synthesis to jointly consider human and biodiversity perspectives on water security using a spatial framework that quantifies multiple stressors and accounts for downstream impacts is presented.
References
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Climate change 1995 - impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change : scientific-technical analyses
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Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases
TL;DR: Within the next fifty years, the planet's human population will probably pass nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple Largely as a result, scarcities of renewable resources will increase sharply The total area of high-quality agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain this paper.
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Human Appropriation of Renewable Fresh Water
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that increased use of evapotranspiration will confer minimal benefits globally because most land suitable for rain-fed agriculture is already in production. And they also show that new dam construction could increase accessible runoff by about 10 percent over the next 30 years, whereas population is projected to increase by more than 45 percent during that period.
Journal ArticleDOI
Relation between satellite observed visible-near infrared emissions, population, economic activity and electric power consumption
Christopher D. Elvidge,Kimberly E. Baugh,Eric Kihn,Herbert W. Kroehl,Ethan R. Davis,C. W. Davis +5 more
TL;DR: The area lit by anthropogenic visible-near infrared emissions (i.e., lights) has been estimated for 21 countries using night-time data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS).