Exploring the Interface Between Planetary Boundaries and Palaeoecology.

The concepts of planetary boundaries are influential in the sustainability literature and assist in delineating the 'safe operating spaces' beyond which critical Earth system processes could collapse. Moving away from our current trajectory towards 'hothouse Earth' will require knowledge of how Earth systems have varied throughout the Holocene, and whether and how far we have deviated from past ranges of variability. Such information can inform decisions about where change could be resisted, accepted or where adaptation is inevitable.

Trees, carbon, and the psychology of landscapes.

Mitigating climate change while safeguarding biodiversity and livelihoods is a major challenge. However, rampant afforestation threatens biodiversity and livelihoods, with questionable benefits to carbon storage. The narrative of landscape degradation is often applied without considering the history of the landscape.

How changing fire management policies affect fire seasonality and livelihoods.

There is a long history of fire management in African savannas, but knowledge of historical and current use of fire is scarce in savanna-woodland biomes. This study explores past and present fire management practices and perceptions of the Khwe (former hunter-gatherers) and Mbukushu (agropastoralists) communities as well as government and non-government stakeholders in Bwabwata National Park in north-east Namibia. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were used in combination with satellite data (from 2000 to 2015), to investigate historical and current fire management dynamics.

Horizon scanning for South African biodiversity: A need for social engagement as well as science.

A horizon scan was conducted to identify emerging and intensifying issues for biodiversity conservation in South Africa over the next 5-10 years. South African biodiversity experts submitted 63 issues of which ten were identified as priorities using the Delphi method. These priority issues were then plotted along axes of social agreement and scientific certainty, to ascertain whether issues might be "simple" (amenable to solutions from science alone), "complicated" (socially agreed upon but technically complicated), "complex" (scientifically challenging and significant levels of social disagreement) or "chaotic" (high social disagreement and highly scientifically challenging).

Finding Common Ground between Adaptive Management and Evidence-Based Approaches to Biodiversity Conservation.

Adaptive management (AM) and evidence-based conservation (EBC) have emerged as major decision-making frameworks for conservation management. AM deals with complexity and the importance of local context in making conservation decisions under conditions of high variability, uncertainty, and rapid environmental and social change. EBC seeks for generality from empirical data and aims to develop and enhance best practice.

From myopia to clarity: sharpening the focus of ecosystem management through the lens of palaeoecology.

Maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in a changing environment requires a temporal perspective that informs realistic restoration and management targets. Such targets need to be dynamic, adaptive, and responsive to changing boundary conditions. However, the application of long-term data from palaeoecology is often hindered as the management and policy implications are not made explicit, and because data sets are often not accessible or amenable to stakeholders.

Accommodating climate change contingencies in conservation strategy.

Species ranges are seldom at equilibrium with climate, because several interacting factors determine distribution, including demographic processes, dispersal, land use, disturbance (e.g., fire), and biotic interactions.

The (im)balance of nature: a public perception time-lag?

The last two decades have seen a conceptual shift within environmental and social sciences from an emphasis on ecosystem stability and balance to an acknowledgement of the importance of flux and change in the natural world. This has profound implications for conservation management and policy and has driven an (incomplete) transition from managing to maintain (bio)diversity and ecological stability at some historically derived "optimum" to managing to maintain important ecosystem and evolutionary processes such as nutrient cycles and migration. Here, we investigate whether this change from a "balance of nature" metaphor to a more dynamic perspective ("flux of nature") is reflected in the representation of conservation and ecosystem management in the news media, the Internet, and the academic literature.

Biodiversity hotspots through time: an introduction.

International targets set for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss--the 2010 target--and ensuring environmental stability (Millennium Development Goals) have helped to focus the efforts of the scientific community on providing the data necessary for their implementation. The urgency of these goals, coupled with the increased rate of habitat alteration worldwide, has meant that actions have largely not taken into account the increasing body of data about the biodiversity change in the past. We know a lot about how our planet has been altered and recovered in the past, both in deep time and through prehistory.