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The role of interacting social and institutional norms in stressed groundwater systems

Groundwater resources play an important role for irrigation, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions, where groundwater depletion poses a critical threat to agricultural production and associated local livelihoods. However, the relationship …

The Problem of Institutional Fit: Uncovering Patterns with Boosted Decision Trees

Complex social-ecological contexts play an important role in shaping the types of institutions that groups use to manage resources, and the effectiveness of those institutions in achieving social and environmental objectives. However, despite …

Scale up urban agriculture to leverage transformative food systems change, advance social–ecological resilience and improve sustainability

Scaling up urban agriculture could leverage transformative change, to build and maintain resilient and sustainable urban systems. Current understanding of drivers, processes and pathways for scaling up urban agriculture, however, remains fragmentary …

Linking seed networks and crop diversity contributions to people: A case study in small-scale farming systems in Sahelian Senegal

CONTEXT Small farms rely on a range of nature's contributions to people (NCPs) provided by crop diversity, covering both material and immaterial dimensions that are crucial for livelihoods and well-being. The maintenance of these NCPs over time, …

Goldilocks forbs: survival is highest outside—but not too far outside—of Wyoming big sagebrush canopies

In arid and semiarid systems, positive effects of nurse shrubs generally occur immediately underneath and around shrub canopies, creating microsites that can be targeted to promote plant establishment in restoration settings. Alternatively, the best …

Infrastructure and the Energy Use of Human Polities

This paper integrates scaling theory with variation in systems of governance to help explain cross-cultural differences in the energy use of human polities. In both industrial and pre-industrial polities, systems of governance moderate the scaling of …

Evolutionary Model Discovery of Human Behavioral Factors Driving Decision-Making in Irrigation Experiments

Small farms are thought to produce around a third of the global crop supply. But, in the wake of the climate crisis, their existence is increasingly vulnerable to changes in the spatial and temporal availability of water. The small-scale irrigation …

Addressing barriers to proactive restoration of at‐risk sagebrush communities: a causal layered analysis

Restoration success in degraded rangelands often depends on a site's resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plants. Because it is more difficult to restore plant communities after they are dominated by invasive species, a potential …

Triple exposure: Reducing negative impacts of climate change, blue growth, and conservation on coastal communities

Coastal communities are on the frontlines of three accelerating global change drivers, climate change, blue growth, and the expansion of area-based conservation, leading to a ‘‘triple exposure’’ scenario. Despite ef- forts to maximize social benefits …

Transnational agricultural land acquisitions threaten biodiversity in the Global South

Agricultural large-scale land acquisitions have been linked with enhanced deforestation and land use change. Yet the extent to which transnational agricultural large-scale land acquisitions (TALSLAs) contribute to—or merely correlate …