Journal Articles

March 25, 2020

Journal Article: Southward re‐distribution of tropical tuna fisheries activity can be explained by technological and management change

There is broad evidence of climate change causing shifts in fish distribution worldwide, but less is known about the response of fisheries to these changes. Responses to climate‐driven shifts in a fishery may be constrained by existing management or institutional arrangements and technological settings. In order to understand how fisheries are responding to ocean warming, we investigate purse seine fleets targeting tropical tunas in the east Atlantic Ocean using effort and sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) data from 1991 to 2017.
March 20, 2020

BC3 Publication: Recuperación de las interacciones entre el haya (Fagus sylvatica) y los hongos ectomicorrícicos 140 años después del fin de la actividad minera

A pesar del rápido crecimiento del uso de la restauración, esta no siempre genera una respuesta a corto plazo en los ecosistemas que garantice la recuperación de su estructura, funciones y servicios. Hasta ahora, la mayoría de los estudios que han evaluado la recuperación de ecosistemas utilizaban métricas que ignoran la complejidad necesaria para estructurar las comunidades de organismos que conforman los ecosistemas.
March 2, 2020

NEW BC3 publication in Nature Communications journal “Towards a more effective climate policy on international trade”

The attribution of the responsibility for the emissions for CO2 between producers and consumers is a controversial issue in NEW BC3 publication in Nature Communications journal “Towards a more effective climate policy on international trade” climate change policy and research. Two main accounting methods are used in the literature to determine countries’ contribution to global emissions. The production-based accounting (PBA) measures the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere by the industries and households of a country. The consumption-based accounting (CBA) attributes emissions to the country’s consumption of final products. CBA redistributes the emissions from PBA and considers that emissions in another country are necessary for the home country’s consumption. These two accounting frameworks are used to assign responsibility for current CO2 emissions. Producer responsibility addresses the countries that directly generate the emissions. Consumer responsibility addresses the countries that ultimately drive the pressure.
November 11, 2019

Modeling trade-offs across carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and equity in the distribution of global REDD+ funds

The program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the major attempts to tackle climate change mitigation in developing countries. REDD+ seeks to provide result-based incentives to promote emission reductions and increase carbon sinks in forest land while promoting other cobenefits, such as the conservation of biodiversity.
October 22, 2019

Contribution of the land sector to a 1.5 °C world

The Paris Agreement introduced an ambitious goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Here we combine a review of modelled pathways and literature on mitigation strategies, and develop a land-sector roadmap of priority measures and regions that can help to achieve the 1.5 °C temperature goal. Transforming the land sector and deploying measures in agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy could feasibly and sustainably contribute about 30%, or 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year, of the global mitigation needed in 2050 to deliver on the 1.5 °C target, but it will require substantially more effort than the 2 °C target
September 18, 2019

Greener and Fairer: A Progressive Environmental Tax Reform for Spain

Environmental externalities call for the use of environmental taxes to get prices right and thereby reduce environmental pressures. To date, however, the Spanish government makes only limited use of environmental taxes. One major reason for the policy reluctance are concerns on the regressive impacts of environmental taxes. We argue that policy can hedge against these concerns by means of revenue recycling. More specifically, we assess the impacts of a green tax reform where additional revenues are redistributed lump-sum to Spanish households on an equal-per-capita basis. Based on quantitative evidence from coupled microsimulation and computable equilibrium analyses we find that such a green tax reform leads to a substantial reduction in harmful emissions while having a progressive impact.
August 7, 2019

Jornal Article: Dry deposition of air pollutants on trees at regional scale: A case study in the Basque Country

There is increased interest in the role of trees to reduce air pollution and thereby improve human health and well-being. This study determined the removal of air pollutants by dry deposition of trees across the Basque Country and estimated its annual economic value. A model that calculates the hourly dry deposition of NO2, O3, SO2, CO and PM10 on trees at a 1 km x 1 km resolution at a regional scale was developed.
April 5, 2019

BC3 publication: Toward a normative land systems science

Science should provide solutions for societal transformations toward sustainability in the face of global environmental change. Land system science, as a systemic science focused on complex socio-ecological interactions around land use and associated trade-offs and synergies, is well placed to contribute to this agenda.
April 3, 2019

BC3 publication: Human dependence on natural resources in rapidly urbanising South African regions

Enhancing the governance of social-ecological systems for more equitable and sustainable development is hindered by inadequate knowledge about how different social groups and communities rely on natural resources. We used openly accessible national survey data to develop a metric of overall dependence on natural resources. These data contain information about households' sources of water, energy, building materials and food.
April 2, 2019

BC3 Publication “The ecosystem carbon sink implications of mountain forest expansion into abandoned grazing land: The role of subsoil and climatic factors”

Woody encroachment is a widespread phenomenon resulting from the abandonment of mountain agricultural and pastoral practices during the last century. As a result, forests have expanded, increasing biomass and necromass carbon (C) pools. However, the impact on soil organic carbon (SOC) is less clear. The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of woody encroachment on SOC stocks and ecosystem C pools in six chronosequences located along the Italian peninsula, three in the Alps and three in the Apennines.