June 2026 science summary

Eyyyy! I spent half of May on vacation visiting friends in Scotland and Germany so read less science than usual. But the three articles I have seem broadly interesting. To deepen my review, AFTER I finished my write up I asked Elicit (an AI tool) to look at each paper for 1-3 key points or findings or limitations not mentioned in the abstract that might be both important but non-obvious. It actually caught 1-2 things I decided to include in each summary: some I'd missed, most I'd noted and didn't see as important but on reflection decided they were worth including. If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me). CLIMATE CHANGE: Can’t wait for the next IPCC climate report? Van Vuuren et al. 2026 lists the scenarios they plan to model in that report (results likely in a year or so). These will replace the RCPs. See section 2.3 for the full list, and note the shift to plain language and emphasis on plausibility: “medium emission scenario” means current policies and trends continue (~3C increase by 2100), “high emissions” means as much rollbacks as is plausible (~3.5C increase by 2100 but rising past that). They also have scenarios where we start high or medium but later step up action to low. We’ll have to wait to see the final model runs, expected impacts (physical and socioeconomic including equity), and associated storylines of each scenario. They also note that they use a simple approach for estimation past 2100 (2150 and 2500) but reflect that over time we need to extend the horizon of more complex modeling. They also note that not all potential carbon dioxide removal approaches are included in most scenarios (see section 5). FOREST RESILIENCE: Wang et al. 2026 has a nice list of 10 ways to improve the climate resilience of forests. Nothing brand new or surprising - except maybe the phrase "cohesive polycentric governance frameworks" for a coordinated mix of autonomous and shared decision-making across Indigenous people, governments, carbon market managers, etc. The abstract and Fig 2 have the full list; in addition to governance they have: diversity, disturbance, protection, restoration, adaptive mgmt, sustainable forestry / logging, monitoring, learning, and collaboration. Table 1 lists some examples of climate stresses and related forest vulnerabilities and resilience strategies. Figure 1 is an interesting map attempting to split 'natural' and 'social-ecological' forests (based on Forest Landscape Integrity Index as per Grantham et al. 2020 which docks points for forest cover loss and other observed human pressures plus loss of connectivity). Of the 10 - they assert that diversity and decentralization of authority are the most essential, but recognize limitations in seed sources, trade-offs (e.g., prescribed fire affecting human health, or lower timber yields w/ higher diversity and longer rotations), and cost. OCEAN CONSERVATION: Worm et al. 2026 provides the status of 2030 global goals to both 1) protect 30% of the ocean and 2) sustainably manage 100% of it. They look at 445 fish stocks in the 19 FAO "major fishing areas" that cover the entire ocean and collectively produce 72% of global marine fish harvest (the other 28% is from minor untracked species - which are often less well managed). They find 10% of the ocean is protected (from 2-20% by fishing area) of which 3% is either highly or fully protected (from 0.1-19%) meaning the marine protected area (MPA) is implemented w/ a management plan and a ban on damaging forms of extraction. For other non-marine people like me, "highly protected" specifically means: only small scale infrequent anchoring, only low-impact small scale unfed aquaculture, and that fishing is infrequent using a few kinds of selective low-impact gear. Sadly the paper points out big MPAs are typically in remote places w/ little fishing, avoiding conflict but also reducing the likelihood of impact and potential for coordination. The fishery management bit is more confusing: they report that 62% of the stocks (~45% of global marine fish harvest) were 'sustainably managed' using the criteria of fishing at or below a single-species maximum sustained yield, but the paper ALSO argues that's the wrong target and we need to be keeping harvest at or below a "multi-species maximum sustained yield" (see Fig 3) which is very rare. They also note that different agencies typically manage MPAs (often w/ a biodiversity focus) and fisheries (often w/ an economic and production focus), sometimes leading to poor coordination and even conflict. REFERENCES: Grantham, H. S., Duncan, A., Evans, T. D., Jones, K. R., Beyer, H. L., Schuster, R., Walston, J., Ray, J. C., Robinson, J. G., Callow, M., Clements, T., Costa, H. M., DeGemmis, A., Elsen, P. R., Ervin, J., Franco, P., Goldman, E., Goetz, S., Hansen, A., … Watson, J. E. M. (2020). Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40% of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity. Nature Communications, 11(1), 5978. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19493-3 Van Vuuren, D. P., O’Neill, B. C., Tebaldi, C., Sanderson, B. M., Chini, L. P., Friedlingstein, P., Hasegawa, T., Riahi, K., Govindasamy, B., Bauer, N., Eyring, V., Fall, C. M. N., Frieler, K., Gidden, M. J., Gohar, L. K., Högner, A., Jones, A. D., Kikstra, J., King, A., … Ziehn, T. (2026). The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 (ScenarioMIP-CMIP7). Geoscientific Model Development, 19(7), 2627–2656. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-2627-2026 Wang, L., Tagesson, T., Wei, F., Dong, W., Tian, F., Duan, Z., Luan, H., & Svenning, J. (2026). Ten Strategies to Promote Climate Resilience and Sustainability of Global Forests. WIREs Climate Change, 17(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.70064 Worm, B., Clausius, E., Grorud-Colvert, K., Palardy, J. E., Pauly, D., Pike, E. P., Pikitch, E. K., Roberts, C. M., Roberts, G. E., Richmond, R. H., Schiller, L., Stuart-Smith, R. D., & Sumaila, U. R. (2026). Integrating global targets for protected areas and sustainable fisheries. Marine Policy, 191(October 2025), 107152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2026.107152 Sincerely, Jon P.s. The pic is of me bike sailing (aka "land yachting" for some reason) on a beach in St. Andrews, Scotland. It is a lot of fun!

June 2022 science summary

Greetings,

This month I only have three science articles but they're all good'uns.

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).

PROTECTED AREAS:
Sullivan-Stack et al. 2022 is a great summary of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the U.S., and flags that achieving 30% U.S. ocean protection by 2030 is not on track to provide sufficient benefit to marine ecosystems. The key finding that stood out to me was the need for improving both geographic representation and efficacy / strength of protection (as well as climate resilience and equity). U.S. oceans are 26% protected overall (25% fully or highly protected), but 96% of that is in the central Pacific ocean. Excluding that region, only 2% has any protection (and only 22% of that 2% is fully or highly protected). See Table 3 for a summary of how much of each region is protected and at what level (Figure 1 has a map but it's not split by protection strength). Alaska has the lowest % protection of any kind (0.7%) while OR & WA have the weakest protection (4.2% of ocean is protected, but that's all minimal protection). Skip to section 4 for their recommendations: create more effective MPAs (via new ones and strengthening existing ones), improve representation of different marine regions & species & habitats in well-connected MPAs, improve equity & access, go beyond tracking % coverage and include impact assessments, make MPAs durable and climate resilient, coordinate state MPAs, reinstate and empower the MPA Federal Advisory Committee, strengthen & fund the NOAA MPA Center, and update the U.S. National Ocean Policy for holistic ocean planning and management.


ECOSYSTEM INDICATORS:
Nicholson et al. 2021 is chock full of useful diagrams and lists. They have a number of recommendations for setting ecosystem goals (which have milestones, targets, and indicators) for a global biodiversity framework, but which can be relevant to other efforts (like 30x30). At a high level they flag the need to track not only total ecosystem/habitat area (or extent), but also changes in ecosystem integrity (including the risk of ecosystem collapse - see Box 2 for definitions). Fig 2 is a nice visual summary of how different types of targets can collectively capture different threats and ecosystem attributes that need to be addressed for long term ecosystem health. Fig 3 is a super helpful review of many different environmental indices / metrics, and what aspects of ecosystems they include and omit. Spend some time with that one - even learning about all of the indices was very helpful for me. They close with 6 recommendations for picking indicators: we need a set of them (no single one suffices), they need to reflect goals (not actions), relevance to the goal is at least as important as data availability, we need more testing and validation of indicators, we need stronger connections between global indicators and national or local policies, and we need new indicators to provide early warning of ecosystem collapse.


ECOSYSTEM CONDITION:
There are good remote sensing data for land cover change, worse but decent data for land use change, but generally not much on degradation (which means we can underestimate ecological decline). Swaty et al. 2021 describe a "Vegetation Departure" (VDEP) spatial data set for the US which gets at this. This includes whether early or late successional stages are over-represented or under-represented (think of a logged forest w/ no old growth left but plenty of young forest, or a grassland being taken over by denser shrubs which were historically less common). They highlight several limitations of the existing LANDFIRE VDEP data (which focuses on canopy cover and height), and recommend that users consider other attributes that are important to their ecosystems of interest (e.g., biodiversity, wildlife populations, wildfire risk, etc.).


REFERENCES:

Nicholson, E., Watermeyer, K. E., Rowland, J. A., Sato, C. F., Stevenson, S. L., Andrade, A., Brooks, T. M., Burgess, N. D., Cheng, S.-T., Grantham, H. S., Hill, S. L., Keith, D. A., Maron, M., Metzke, D., Murray, N. J., Nelson, C. R., Obura, D., Plumptre, A., Skowno, A. L., & Watson, J. E. M. (2021). Scientific foundations for an ecosystem goal, milestones and indicators for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(10), 1338–1349. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01538-5

Sullivan-Stack, J., Aburto-Oropeza, O., Brooks, C. M., Cabral, R. B., Caselle, J. E., Chan, F., Duffy, J. E., Dunn, D. C., Friedlander, A. M., Fulton-Bennett, H. K., Gaines, S. D., Gerber, L. R., Hines, E., Leslie, H. M., Lester, S. E., MacCarthy, J. M. C., Maxwell, S. M., Mayorga, J., McCauley, D. J., … Grorud-Colvert, K. (2022). A Scientific Synthesis of Marine Protected Areas in the United States: Status and Recommendations. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9(May), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.849927

Swaty, R., Blankenship, K., Hall, K. R., Smith, J., Dettenmaier, M., & Hagen, S. (2021). Assessing Ecosystem Condition: Use and Customization of the Vegetation Departure Metric. Land, 11(1), 28. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11010028


Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. The photo above is of a red-winged blackbird bathing in the Potomac River at Dyke Marsh

October 2021 science summary

 

Greetings,

Before diving into journal articles, I want to highlight a blog, short video, and web map update. First, over the last several years of working in conservation, I hear more and more calls for conservation to rapidly scale effective solutions. Sometimes that's coupled with a sense of urgency that makes us think we don't have time for missteps or to do things that don't work. But this article makes a compelling case that if we want to scale fast, that means we will need a higher tolerance for the risk of failure. It's a good read! https://ssir.org/articles/entry/getting_honest_about_what_were_willing_to_risk_for_the_planet#

Want to know how (and why) to talk to "uncle Ernie" and other people who are not convinced we need to urgently act on climate change? Check out Dr. Katherine Hayhoe's interview on Jimmy Kimmel: https://youtu.be/LVjmGVufADk

The last quick update is for those of you working in South America. The latest update to Mapbiomas includes fire scars and water surface area: https://plataforma.brasil.mapbiomas.org/agua 
They have cool graphs showing changes (drops) in water area over time. The (user's) accuracy is mostly 75% or above, but it's really low in the Pantanal (see https://mapbiomas.org/metodo-agua). They saw a huge drop there (74% less water over 30 years) but it's hard to know how much of that is real. Unfortunately the high variation throughout the year makes validating annual estimates of water surface inherently tricky.

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CLIMATE CHANGE:
Welsby et al. 2021 ask an interesting question: what fraction of economically viable fossil fuels need to left in the ground to give us a 50% shot at limiting warming to 1.5C? The answer is pretty stark: by 2050 we need to leave 58% of oil, 59% of methane gas, and 89% of coal underground (a 3% annual reduction in oil and gas). See table 1 for their estimates by region. They note that we may need to leave even more fuels unextracted given questions about how fast we can develop "negative emissions" technology (carbon capture and storage).

Zhang et al. 2020 finds that 3.7% of total natural gas (mostly methane) extracted in the Permian basin (west Texas and SE New Mexico) is lost via leaks (w/ 4.1% lost in the Delaware sub-basin). It's a cool study using a recent satellite to estimate methane emissions, and EDF is launching a more precise satellite for this in 2022. This is a big deal because given methane has ~84 times the impact of CO2 on global warming over the next 20 years (dropping after that). So this leakage rate means that right now natural gas from the Permian has more short-term climate impact than coal (see http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2013/11/05/methane-a-key-to-dealing-with-carbon-pollution/)! The authors think the leaks in this region are mostly from venting and flaring during active production (as opposed to leaks after well abandonment)


MARINE PROTECTED AREAS:
Sala et al. 2021 identify global priorities to designate as marine protected areas (MPAs), with the goal of protecting biodiversity and carbon while improving the yield of fisheries. The yield improvements come from targeting areas that are currently both overexploited and unprotected; they find protecting 9% of the ocean could boost maximum sustainable yield (MSY) from seafood by about 10% (protecting 5% increases yield by ~9%, Fig 1d,). The authors recommend protecting 28% of the ocean (not 9%) but their data seem to indicate the food benefit is the same at both levels. Fig 3 has some other interesting scenarios, including giving equal weight to food and biodiversity (3c, leading to a recommendation to protect 45% of the ocean which provides 92% of maximum fisheries benefit, 71% of max. biodiversity benefit, and 29% of max carbon benefits) or maximizing biodiversity without harming production (3d, recommending to protect 71% of the ocean which provides neither fisheries benefit nor harm, 91% of max. biodiversity benefit, and 48% of max carbon benefits). The unequal distribution of priority areas (Fig 1 & 2) raise potential equity concerns that are not addressed. Also apparently the carbon estimates do not account for additional boat travel time and thus may be optimistic. Finally: I know very little about marine ecosystems so let me know if you think my summary is wrong.

UPDATE: Concerns have been raised about the model this paper is based on, and the earlier paper this builds on has been retracted primarily due to an undisclosed conflict of interest: https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/flawed-mpa-science-retracted/



REFERENCES:

Sala, E., Mayorga, J., Bradley, D., Cabral, R. B., Atwood, T. B., Auber, A., Cheung, W., Costello, C., Ferretti, F., Friedlander, A. M., Gaines, S. D., Garilao, C., Goodell, W., Halpern, B. S., Hinson, A., Kaschner, K., Kesner-Reyes, K., Leprieur, F., McGowan, J., … Lubchenco, J. (2021). Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate. Nature, 592(7856), E25–E25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03496-1

Welsby, D., Price, J., Pye, S., & Ekins, P. (2021). Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world. Nature, 597(7875), 230–234. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03821-8


Sincerely,
 
Jon

p.s. the photo above is of me driving an excavator at Diggerland, which was quite fun albeit not the greenest activity