Cumulative effects
View article: Emerging threats and persistent conservation challenges for freshwater biodiversity
Emerging threats and persistent conservation challenges for freshwater biodiversity Open
In the 12 years since Dudgeon et al . (2006) reviewed major pressures on freshwater ecosystems, the biodiversity crisis in the world's lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams and wetlands has deepened. While lakes, reservoirs and rivers cover o…
View article
Recent pace of change in human impact on the world’s ocean Open
Humans interact with the oceans in diverse and profound ways. The scope, magnitude, footprint and ultimate cumulative impacts of human activities can threaten ocean ecosystems and have changed over time, resulting in new challenges and thr…
View article
RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO <sub>2</sub> emissions Open
Climate simulation-based scenarios are routinely used to characterize a range of plausible climate futures. Despite some recent progress on bending the emissions curve, RCP8.5, the most aggressive scenario in assumed fossil fuel use for gl…
View article
Future effects of climate and land-use change on terrestrial vertebrate community diversity under different scenarios Open
Land-use and climate change are among the greatest threats facing biodiversity, but understanding their combined effects has been hampered by modelling and data limitations, resulting in part from the very different scales at which land-us…
View article
A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation Open
While cumulative carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions dominate anthropogenic warming over centuries, temperatures over the coming decades are also strongly affected by short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), complicating the estimation of cumu…
View article
A review of the combined effects of climate change and other local human stressors on the marine environment Open
Climate change (CC) is a key, global driver of change of marine ecosystems. At local and regional scales, other local human stressors (LS) can interact with CC and modify its effects on marine ecosystems. Understanding the response of the …
View article
Synergistic Effects of Climate Change and Marine Pollution: An Overlooked Interaction in Coastal and Estuarine Areas Open
Coastal areas have been increasingly affected by human activities, marine pollution and climate change are among the most important pressures affecting these environments. Human-induced pressures occur in a cumulative way and generate addi…
View article
A risk-based approach to cumulative effect assessments for marine management Open
Marine ecosystems are increasingly threatened by the cumulative effects of multiple human pressures. Cumulative effect assessments (CEAs) are needed to inform environmental policy and guide ecosystem-based management. Yet, CEAs are inheren…
View article
On the proportionality between global temperature change and cumulative CO <sub>2</sub> emissions during periods of net negative CO <sub>2</sub> emissions Open
Recent research has demonstrated that global mean surface air warming is approximately proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions. This proportional relationship has received considerable attention, as it allows one to calculate the cumulati…
View article
Freshwater eels: A symbol of the effects of global change Open
Temperate eels Anguilla anguilla (European eel), A. rostrata (American eel) and A. japonica (Japanese eel) are three catadromous species which have been declining since the 1970s/1980s despite their remarkable adaptive capacity. Because of…
View article
The Ecology of Disturbance Interactions Open
Global change has been accompanied by recent increases in the frequency and intensity of various ecological disturbances (e.g., fires, floods, cyclones), both natural and anthropogenic in origin. Because these disturbances often interact, …
View article
Global assessment of lagged and cumulative effects of drought on grassland gross primary production Open
Drought has large impacts on the vegetation growth of global terrestrial ecosystems, particularly grasslands. Extensive in-situ studies have shown that the impact of drought on vegetation growth has lagged and cumulative effects, but it is…
View article
A Global Review of Cumulative Pressure and Impact Assessments in Marine Environments Open
Ever more extensive use of marine space by human activities and greater demands for marine natural resources has led to increases in both duration and spatial extent of pressures on the marine environment. In parallel, the global crisis of…
View article
Focus on cumulative emissions, global carbon budgets and the implications for climate mitigation targets Open
The Environmental Research Letters focus issue on 'Cumulative Emissions, Global Carbon Budgets and the Implications for Climate Mitigation Targets' was launched in 2015 to highlight the emerging science of the climate response to cumulativ…
View article
Cumulative Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: Experimental Evidence from Indonesia Open
Conditional cash transfers provide income and promote human capital investments. Yet evaluating their longitudinal impacts is hard, as most experimental evaluations treat control locations after a few years. We examine such impacts in Indo…
View article
A blueprint for securing Brazil's marine biodiversity and supporting the achievement of global conservation goals Open
Aim As a step towards providing support for an ecological approach to strengthening marine protected areas (MPAs) and meeting international commitments, this study combines cumulative impact assessment and conservation planning approach to…
View article
Trade-Offs and Synergies of Multiple Ecosystem Services for Different Land Use Scenarios in the Yili River Valley, China Open
Environmental managers and policymakers increasingly discuss trade-offs between ecosystem services (ESs). However, few studies have used nonlinear models to provide scenario-specific land-use planning. This study determined the effects of …
View article
Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems Open
Cumulative effects assessment (CEA) is a sub-discipline of environmental impact assessment that is concerned with appraising the collective effects of human activities and natural processes on the environment. Aspirations for CEA have been…
View article
Air Pollution and Deaths among Elderly Residents of São Paulo, Brazil: An Analysis of Mortality Displacement Open
We found evidence of mortality displacement within 30 days for nonaccidental and circulatory deaths in elderly residents of São Paulo. We did not find evidence of mortality displacement within 30 days for respiratory or cancer deaths. Cita…
View article
Assessing the cumulative environmental effects of marine renewable energy developments: Establishing common ground Open
Assessing and managing the cumulative impacts of human activities on the environment remains a major challenge to sustainable development. This challenge is highlighted by the worldwide expansion of marine renewable energy developments (MR…
View article
How loud is the underwater noise from operating offshore wind turbines? Open
Offshore wind turbines are increasingly abundant sources of underwater low frequency noise. This increase raises concern for the cumulative contribution of wind farms to the underwater soundscape and possible impact on marine ecosystems. H…
View article
Cumulative impact assessment for ecosystem-based marine spatial planning Open
Claims for ocean space are growing while marine ecosystems suffer from centuries of insufficient care. Human pressures from runoff, atmospheric emissions, marine pollution, fishing, shipping, military operations and other activities wear o…
View article
Dealing with Cumulative Biodiversity Impacts in Strategic Environmental Assessment: A New Frontier for Conservation Planning Open
Biodiversity impact assessments under threatened species legislation often focus on individual development proposals at a single location, usually for a single species, leading to inadequate assessments of multiple impacts that accumulate …
View article
Trajectory of University Dropout: Investigating the Cumulative Effect of Academic Vulnerability and Proximity to Family Support Open
University dropout is a major policy concern around the world because of its consequences for the individual, institutions and society. In this study, we offer new evidence by examining the cumulative effect of academic vulnerability and f…
View article
Increasing synergistic effects of habitat destruction and hunting on mammals over three decades in the Gran Chaco Open
Habitat destruction and overexploitation are the main threats to biodiversity and where they co‐occur, their combined impact is often larger than their individual one. Yet, detailed knowledge of the spatial footprints of these threats is l…
View article
Threats to biodiversity from cumulative human impacts in one of North America's last wildlife frontiers Open
Land‐use change is the largest proximate threat to biodiversity yet remains one of the most complex to manage. In British Columbia (BC), where large mammals roam extensive tracts of intact habitat, continued land‐use development is of glob…
View article
What do we know about the production and release of persistent organic pollutants in the global environment? Open
As of 2020, a cumulative total of 31 306 kilotonnes of manmade persistent organic pollutants had been synthesized and commercialized worldwide, resulting in cumulative releases of 20 348 kilotonnes into the global environment.
View article
Relative impacts of multiple human stressors in estuaries and coastal waters in the North Sea–Baltic Sea transition zone Open
The objectives of this study are 1) to map the potential cumulative impacts of multiple human activities and stressors on the ecosystems in the transition zone between the North Sea and Baltic Sea, for Danish waters 2) to analyse differenc…
View article
Resolving the accessibility dilemma: Comparing cumulative and gravity-based measures of accessibility in eight Canadian cities Open
There is a lack of agreement regarding the theoretical framework that practitioners should use for accessibility assessment – a measure of transport and land-use systems performance. Cumulative measures are simple and easy to interpret, wh…
View article
Cumulative stressors reduce the self‐regulating capacity of coastal ecosystems Open
Marine ecosystems are prone to tipping points, particularly in coastal zones where dramatic changes are associated with interactions between cumulative stressors (e.g., shellfish harvesting, eutrophication and sediment inputs) and ecosyste…