Sustainability and place: How emerging mega-trends of the 21st century will affect humans and nature at the landscape level
Sustainability and place: How emerging mega-trends of the 21st century will affect humans and nature at the landscape level
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DOI：
10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.08.003
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发表时间：
2014-04-01
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Yanez-Arancibia, Alejandro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Day, John W.;Moerschbaecher, Matthew;Yanez-Arancibia, Alejandro
我们讨论了美国自然和人类系统的可持续性，涉及与能源稀缺、气候变化、生态系统服务损失、新古典主义经济学的局限性和人类住区模式相关的21世纪威胁。现有常规能源储备日益稀缺和投资回报下降，预计将大大减少满足社会需要和需求的负担得起的能源数量。这也将使应对气候变化的预期影响变得更加困难和昂贵。气候变化将威胁目前自然环境、农业和城市地区的可持续性，但这些影响将在整个景观中以不同的方式表现出来。预计气候变化的影响将使大平原南部、西南部和加利福尼亚州南半部干旱地区的生活变得越来越困难。海平面的加速上升和强飓风频率的增加将增加墨西哥湾和大西洋沿岸自然和人类系统的脆弱性，同时使它们的可持续性变得更差。自然环境提供的生态系统服务构成了世界各地人类经济的基础，也面临气候变化影响和过度使用的风险。能源供应的减少、气候变化和生态系统服务的持续退化可能会使经济持续增长变得困难(如果不是不可能的话)。新古典经济学有效应对这些日益增长的威胁的能力有限。美国受21世纪趋势影响最大的地区可能是大平原南部、西南部、加利福尼亚州南部、大西洋和墨西哥湾沿岸，以及各地人口稠密的地区，尤其是东北部、中西部和加利福尼亚州南部。(C)2013爱思唯尔B.V.保留所有权利。
We discuss the sustainability of natural and human systems in the United States in relation to 21st century threats associated with energy scarcity, climate change, the loss of ecosystem services, the limitations of neoclassical economics, and human settlement patterns. Increasing scarcity and the decreasing return on investment for existing conventional energy reserves are expected to significantly reduce the amount of affordable energy for societal needs and demands. This will also make dealing with the predicted impacts of climate change more difficult and expensive. Climate change will threaten the present sustainability of natural environments, agriculture, and urban areas but these impacts will manifest themselves differentially across the landscape. The impacts of projected climate change will make living in arid regions of the southern Great Plains, the Southwest, and the southern half of California increasingly difficult. Accelerated sea-level rise and increased frequency of strong hurricanes will increase the vulnerability of natural and human systems along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts while making them less sustainable. Ecosystem services provided by natural environments form the basis for the human economy everywhere and are also at risk from climate change impacts and overuse. Decreasing energy availability, climate change, and continued degradation of ecosystem services are likely to make continued economic growth difficult if not impossible. The capacity of neoclassical economics to effectively deal with these growing threats is limited. The areas of the country most compromised by these 21st century trends are likely to be the southern Great Plains, Southwest, southern California, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and densely populated areas everywhere, but especially in the northeast, Midwest, and southern California. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.