Integrating Geography for Global Sustainability and the Earth’s Future
Xutong Wu, Yiming An, Shan Sang, Yan Li, Wenwu ZhaoRecent decades have witnessed dramatically accelerated interactions between human and earth systems. Future Earth provides a global research platform to support transformations towards sustainability through a better understanding of the changing human and earth systems, and human-environment interactions and their dynamics of change. As the key to integrating geography, the coupled human and natural systems research is at the frontier of understanding the complex and dynamic human-natural interactions, which can provide new diverse contexts and sustainable development paths for the earth’s future. Various studies have been conducted at multiple scales to identify the relationships between human activities and earth surface processes, model the effects of humans on earth systems, and try to find the possible pathways for regional, national, and global sustainable developments. To better serve the Earth’s future, five research areas are proposed as priorities for integrating geographical research: 1) multiple processes of water, soil, air, and ecosystem; 2) ecosystem services and human well-being; 3) feedback mechanisms of natural and social systems; 4) mechanism, approach, and policy of sustainable development; and 5) geo-data and modelling for sustainability. The International Geographical Union Commission on Geography of Future Earth: Coupled Human Earth Systems for Sustainability (IGU-GFE) was established to promote scientific development in the proposed areas, providing a platform for furthering global sustainability and promoting innovation of geographical sciences.
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