Biophysical Indicators of Sustainability for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Abstract

The creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offers a great opportunity to look at sustainability from a different perspective. Identifying specific indicators, metrics, and spatial and temporal boundaries help improve definitions of sustainability to work toward more sustainable systems. A hierarchical framework for evaluating sustainability puts ecological or environmental components first, since all social and economic factors depend on a life-giving Earth system. The overall research question in this dissertation is: How do changes in land use or land cover relate to climate change and biophysical sustainability in complex systems? Three individual case studies are conducted to address this question along with aspects of proposed SDGs. From drought in the US Great Plains, increased precipitation frequency in northwestern Brazil, and an increased urban heat island in a mega-city in southeastern Brazil, the case studies demonstrate some of the ways in which climate change and sustainability intersect. By exploring different biophysical and ecological indicators, explicitly accounting for spatial and temporal scale, and utilizing cross-disciplinary methodologies, the studies quantify environmental sustainability and, not surprisingly, find an overall move away from biophysical sustainability. In so doing, they also reveal pathways that can be followed to move agricultural, urban or forest systems back toward greater sustainability. These pathways can contribute not only to increased sustainability but also to climate change mitigation and adaptation at local to regional scales resulting in win-win situations. Additionally, the findings of each study contribute to four of the 17 proposed SDGs, offer inputs for policy considerations, and build on theory and conceptual frameworks for future applications of sustainability science.