|
African Environmental Change from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-060653 2017-10-17 This review explores what past environmental change in Africa—and African people's response to it—can teach us about how to cope with life in the Anthropocene. Organized around four drivers of change—climate; agriculture and pastoralism; megafauna; and imperi... |
|
|
The Concept of the Anthropocene
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-060854 2017-10-17 The Anthropocene, the concept that the Earth has moved into a novel geological epoch characterized by human domination of the planetary system, is an increasingly prevalent framework for debate both in academia and as a wider cultural and policy zeitgeist. Th... |
|
|
Debating Unconventional Energy: Social, Political, and Economic Implications
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-061102 2017-10-17 The extraction of unconventional oil and gas—from shale rocks, tight sand, and coalbed formations—is shifting the geographies of fossil fuel production, with complex consequences. Following Jackson et al.’s (1) natural science survey of the environmental cons... |
|
|
Plastic as a Persistent Marine Pollutant
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-060700 2017-10-17 Synthetic organic polymers—or plastics—did not enter widespread use until the 1950s. By 2015, global production had increased to 322 million metric tons (Mt) year−1, which approaches the total weight of the human population produced in plastic every year. App... |
|
|
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-061053 2017-10-17 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conducts policy-relevant but not policy-prescriptive assessments of climate science. In this review, we engage with some of the key design features, achievements, and challenges that situate and characteriz... |
|
|
Marked for Life: Epigenetic Effects of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-061111 2017-10-17 The presence of human-made chemical contaminants in the environment has increased rapidly during the past 70 years. Harmful effects of such contaminants were first reported in the late 1950s in wildlife and later in humans. These effects are predominantly ind... |
|
|
Degradation and Recovery in Changing Forest Landscapes: A Multiscale Conceptual Framework
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-060736 2017-10-17 Conceptual confusion revolves around how to define, assess, and overcome land, ecosystem, and landscape degradation. Common elements link degradation and recovery processes, offering ways to advance local, regional, and global initiatives to reduce degradatio... |
|
|
Drivers of Human Stress on the Environment in the Twenty-First Century
10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085440 2017-10-17 Human actions are transforming ecosystems across the globe. Six frameworks aid in understanding the forces that drive human stress on the environment and human responses to this stress. Two of them, the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluenc... |
|
|
Linking Urbanization and the Environment: Conceptual and Empirical Advances
10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-061128 2017-10-17 Urbanization is one of the biggest social transformations of modern time, driving and driven by multiple social, economic, and environmental processes. The impacts of urbanization on the environment are profound, multifaceted and are manifested at the local, ... |
|
|
Emerging Technologies for Higher Fuel Economy Automobile Standards
10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085844 2017-10-17 Transportation systems contribute significantly to air pollution and ∼15% globally and ∼25% in the United States to emissions climate-changing gases. In the United States, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for motor vehicles were significant... |