Garry Peterson

@resiliencesci.bsky.social

3.2K followers 1.3K following 890 posts

Director FinBio.org
Professor of Environmental Science
with focus on Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University stockholmresilience.org

projects:
regimeshifts.org
biospherefutures.net
goodanthropocenes.net .. more

Videos

Environmental science 64%

Geography 16%

Posts Replies Media Videos

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Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · Nov 4

Resilience Science Must-Knows

Nine essential insights from global resilience science to help decision-makers navigate a turbulent world.

Developed in dialogue with decision makers, and synthesised by an international team of resilience researchers

www.stockholmresilience.org/research/res...

Resilience Science Must-Knows

Nine things every decision maker should know about resilience

www.stockholmresilience.org

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 9h

Journal Open-access Article Page Charges

Huge range of
article page charges for a collection of journals
publishing
Social-ecological systems research

Clear pattern
for profit are much more expensive

(most society journals provide discounts for members usually 15-20% + waivers)

Graph of APCs of journals publishing social ecological research - from lows of Ecology and Society and Ecosystems and People -> 12X greater in Nature journals

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 13h

modelling changes in ecosystem fn based on changes in African BII data

Energy flows reveal declining ecosystem functions by animals across Africa
Loft+
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

connecting BII to energy and material flows
allows
impact of biodiversity loss
to be integrated into earth system models

Energy flows reveal declining ecosystem functions by animals across Africa - Nature

An ecosystem energetics approach, quantifying trophic energy flows across species, offers a unified framework for linking animal biodiversity loss to changes in ecosystem function and Earth system pro...

doi.org

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 13h

The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) for different functional groups of vertebrates and plants - varies a lot.

Large herbivore and carnivore species (>20 kg) have experienced the greatest declines in abundance
(BII = 20–52% and 25–51%, respectively)

followed by primates (46–65%)

There is high variability in intactness among functional groups of mammals, which range from 20 to 82% (Extended Data Fig. 2). Large herbivore and carnivore species (>20 kg) have experienced the greatest declines in abundance (BII = 20–52% and 25–51%, respectively), followed by primates (46–65%). These groups are relatively low in species richness and therefore contribute less towards total intactness compared with the more species-rich orders of bats (BII = 64–80%), insectivores (64–74%) and rodents (61–82%), which have retained on average almost double the intactness of larger mammals. There is less marked variability in intactness in the other vertebrate taxa, with birds ranging from 47 to 85%, reptiles from 56 to 77% and amphibians from 55 to 74%. Forest interior and cavity-breeding large savanna birds have been the most affected (BII = 47% and 58%, respectively), whereas grassland birds (except for ground nesters) and aerial feeders have been the least affected (82% and 85%, respectively). Among reptiles, chelonians and large specialist snakes and lizards have experienced the largest declines (BII = 56% and 57%, respectively), whereas small generalist snakes and lizards and rupicolous reptiles have experienced the smallest declines (75% and 77%, respectively). Amphibians that breed in plant or tree hollows or in seep or spray zones have been worst affected (BII = 55%), whereas those that breed in ephemeral streams have been least affected (74%). Plant functional groups have large variability in intactness, ranging from 55 to 91%. Shade-tolerant (forest) and swamp trees and shrubs, together with epiphytes, have suffered the greatest losses (BII = 55–56%), whereas forbs and graminoids that resist disturbance31 have been the most resilient to land-use changes (≥90%).

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 13h

Comparison with previous assessments of the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)

a) This study’s BII across sub-Saharan Africa (with biomes delineated), compared against
model - Newbold et al. 2016

southern Africa
expert elicitation (Scholes and Biggs 2005)

from:
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

"Compared with previous assessments of BII (Extended Data Fig. 7), our BII estimate of 80% for the southern African sub-region is a plausible decrease from the 84% estimated for the sub-region in 2005 through a simplified expert elicitation and mapping process4. However, both our and the 2005 BII estimates for southern African are higher than the 74% predicted for the sub-region by the global BII model in 2016 (ref. 13). Considering the full region, the global model estimated a higher BII for sub-Saharan Africa (84%) than our approach (76%). These differences are due to the global model estimating lower BII in lower-rainfall biomes (desert, shrubland and Acacia savanna) and higher BII in higher-rainfall biomes (forest, humid savanna and grassland) than our assessment (Extended Data Fig. 7c).

Taken together, these diverse comparisons corroborate our BII assessment, which is in contrast to the existing global BII model, which lacks such corroboration15. The reported uncertainty around our BII scores gives an indication of uncertainty in the underlying expert scores. We also note that this does not fully account for potential systematic biases and other unknown potential sources of error in our assessment, some of which may be shared with the corroborating datasets."

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 13h

A place-based assessment of biodiversity intactness in sub-Saharan Africa
Clements+
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

based on "place-based knowledge of 200 African biodiversity experts"

approach can be used "to integrate contextual, place-based knowledge into multiscale" biodiversity assessments

A place-based assessment of biodiversity intactness in sub-Saharan Africa - Nature

Regional, place-based biodiversity information is used to comprehensively map and quantify biodiversity intactness of sub-Saharan Africa to inform national and global sustainability policies and plann...

doi.org

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 16h

US "Policy responses to date have focused on deregulation (FL) or modifying existing rate regulations (CA) to ...Both approaches fail to address underlying causes of the losses—emissions from the fossil-fuel industry and increased development in high-risk areas"
yalelawjournal.org/essay/the-un...

The Uninsurable Future: The Climate Threat to Property Insurance, and How to Stop It | Yale Law Journal

Property insurance availability is threatened by climate change. Deregulating insurance markets is not the solution. Stopping insurers’ financial...

yalelawjournal.org

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 1d

Great science happens in great teams — research assessments must try to capture that
doi.org/10.1038/d415...

Great recognition of the importance of team science,
and then terrible advice on how to foster it.

My suggestion:
talk to places that have managed to produce great team science

Great science happens in great teams — research assessments must try to capture that

Europe must reform the ways in which science is evaluated. To boost innovation, it must improve research culture.

doi.org

Reposted by Garry Peterson

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 1d

Next, in 'The Nature of Tomorrow' Michael Rawson expertly reveals how past science fictions came to grip the popular imagination & how we acted on these ideas to shape the world around us.

This book reminds us that a sustainable future hinges on our ability to create new visions of tomorrow🧵

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 2d

Fostering care and agency for wildlife stewardship on Indigenous and local lands: the power of place, practice, and virtue
Gomez+
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...

a model for care based community-based wildlife management

illustrated with case studies from
Guyana and
Democratic Republic of Congo"

Fig. 1. Conceptual model for place-based stewardship of wildlife. This model builds on the care–knowledge–agency framework (Enqvist et al. 2018), grounding it in Indigenous and place-based perspectives. Care reflects emotional attachment and responsibility toward place and wildlife; knowledge refers to the practical and ecological understanding that informs action; and agency includes both institutional empowerment and personal virtue, the capacity to act for the common good. These elements are dynamically linked through an ethic of virtue, which is nurtured through mentored, place-based practices.

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Joanna Bryson, Dorothy Bishop , and 37 more Diane Coyle, Joanna Bryson, Dorothy Bishop, Sherry Hamby, Garry Peterson, Simon Chapman, Andrew Scott, Tim Bale, Steven French, Alistair Munro, Mark D. White, Martin Paul Eve, Alex Callinicos, Richard H. King, Greg Walker, Kevin Carey, Jonathan Hopkin, Robert C. Richards, Justin Lewis, Margot C. Finn, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Stephen Ryan, Michael D. McDonald, Lieven Ameel, Maria Abreu, Fiona Moore, Graham Dutfield, Kevin O’Sullivan, Elliot Friedman, Paul Nightingale, Ann Bartow, Björn Heile, Patrick Stokes, Michael Larkin, Nicole Guenther Discenza, James A. Benn, Alex Drace‐Francis, David Darmofal, Francis Ruiz, Steven H. Seggie

Harry Wallop @harrywallop.co.uk · 2d

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 3d

Floods Have Killed at Least 1,200 in Southern Asia. Here’s What to Know. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/w...

Floods Have Killed at Least 1,200 in Southern Asia. Here’s What to Know.

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Garry Peterson

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 4d

We looked at the impact of routine spatial adjustment choices on future rainfall levels and the choice can change the required stormwater pipe sizes by a lot. We don’t really know the equations for resilience yet. Still muddling through, & often underdelivering in resilience. doi.org/10.1007/s105...

The effect of modeling choices on updating intensity-duration-frequency curves and stormwater infrastructure designs for climate change - Climatic Change

Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves, commonly used in stormwater infrastructure design to represent characteristics of extreme rainfall, are gradually being updated to reflect expected changes i...

doi.org

Reposted by Garry Peterson, Richard Waite

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 4d

We talked about this in my class. People (& lenders!) need to have credible information about climate risk to their homes. However the way it is done right now, if at all, has lots of uncertainty. A home could be categorized as low-risk when it’s high risk, & vice versa! NOAA should do this service.

Jeff Goodell @jeffgoodell.bsky.social · 4d

Realtors know that, in many parts of the country, if you educate people about climate risk, the housing market will collapse.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/c...

Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings

www.nytimes.com

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 4d

"Flooding across much of south-east Asia fuelled by a rare cluster of three tropical storms has claimed the lives of more than 900 people in five countries, with Indonesia the worst hit so far"
on.ft.com/3KhnS2q

Tropical cyclones in 2025
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropica...

Flood death toll rises rapidly across south-east Asia to more than 900

Large parts of Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Sri Lanka reeling after rare cluster of storms

on.ft.com

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 4d

"Zillow, [USA's] largest real estate listings site, has quietly removed a feature that showed the risks from extreme weather for more than one million home sale listings on its site.
...users can click through to view climate risk scores for a specific property."
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/c...

Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Garry Peterson

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 5d

Science of the total environment (elsevier) gets deindexed.

This is your regular reminder to please stop chasing impact factors and shitty metrics so we can stop feeding this awful system...

An alternative is to publish in more society journals (when possible).

The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing

One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 bill...

english.elpais.com

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 6d

Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis
Fischer+
doi.org/10.1007/s132...

building on resilience thinking
"regeneration can help through its explicit focus on human agency and mutualistic social-ecological relationships...
‘Poly-opportunities’ thus become a conceptual possibility"

Seven key principles for the regenerative governance of social-ecological systems. The seven principles depicted here draw on the seven central insights of resilience and regenerative systems literature as summarized in Fig. 1 for resilience (i, iii, iv) and Fig. 2 for regeneration (ii, v, vi, vii). While each item is derived from either body of literature on resilience or regeneration, the list of items offered here is fully complementary. See main text for details and references and Table 1 for some of the most pertinent similarities and differences between the two bodies of literature

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 6d

S&P Global Ratings on Tether (USDT)
"the longest-standing stablecoin with the largest volume in circulation"

"asset assessment of 5 (weak) reflects
the rise in exposure to high-risk assets in USDT's reserves over the past year
and
persistent gaps in disclosure"
www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/r...

"Exposure to high-risk assets in Tether’s reserve portfolio has increased over the past year. These holdings include corporate bonds, precious metals, bitcoin, secured loans, and other investments that are subject to credit, market, interest-rate, and foreign-exchange risks and for which disclosures remain limited. Such assets accounted for 24% of total reserves as of Sept. 30, 2025, compared with 17% on Sept. 30, 2024. More importantly, Tether’s exposure to bitcoin has also increased. On Sept. 30, 2024, bitcoin represented about 4% of USDT in circulation, below the 5.1% overcollateralization margin implied by a collateralization ratio of 105.1%. As of the latest attestation, bitcoin represents 5.6% of USDT in circulation, exceeding the 3.9% overcollateralization margin associated with a collateralization ratio of 103.9%. A decline in the price of bitcoin or the value of other higher-risk assets, could therefore reduce collateral coverage and result in USDT becoming undercollateralized. We believe the increasing share of risky assets exposes USDT's reserves to greater market fluctuations"

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 6d

MORNING SUN
(2003)
2 hr documentary about China's Cultural Revolution
focussed on first-hand perspectives from former Red Guards and victims of the era
www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3Ai...

reviews:
www.rottentomatoes.com/m/morning_sun

www.youtube.com

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 6d

“Let’s learn from the warriors who blew themselves up”
is apparently a new North Korean army slogan
www.dailynk.com/english/from...

while

North Korean trade officials operating in China are selling stolen cryptocurrency
www.elliptic.co/blog/north-k...

www.dailynk.com/english/pyon...

From Kim dynasty to battlefield martyrs: North Korea’s expanding ‘eternal life’ propaganda

North Korea’s military is using stories of soldiers who detonated themselves in the Russia-Ukraine war as indoctrination material.

www.dailynk.com

Reposted by Garry Peterson, Massimiliano Simons

Brigitte Nerlich @bnerlich.bsky.social · 6d

This is my last post in the 'metaphors for AI' trilogy. I never thought there was so much to say about it all. But this is it for now! Comments welcome. #AI #metaphor makingsciencepublic.com/2025/11/28/o...

Observing shifts in metaphors for AI: What changed and why it matters

In my previous two posts I have made the case for an AI metaphor observatory and surveyed the recent academic landscape of studies dealing with metaphors for AI in the sense of GenAI and LLMs. In t…

makingsciencepublic.com

Reposted by Garry Peterson, Paolo Crosetto

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 6d

Scientific Reports has a ⬆️ Impact Inflation: a very high IF given their citation network (self-citing, citation cartels, etc).

They'll even typeset & publish AI slop for a fee!

Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS
Strain explorer β: pagoba.shinyapps.io/strain_explo...

#SciPub #ResearchIntegrity #AcademicSky

A chart showing the Impact Inflation of Scientific Reports is much higher than the average journal. Biology Open, the "anything technically sound" megajournal of the non-profit Company of Biologists is shown for comparison given these two journals started in 2012 and 2013 respectively. The two have different management strategies: one focuses on profit via immense publication output (SciRep), the other focuses on publishing sound science (BiolOpen).

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 7d

South Australia’s 8-month
~20,000 km² toxic algal bloom
from
previously obscure
single-celled algae, Karenia cristata
has harmed nature & economy
doi.org/10.1126/science.z41uwyq

“It makes me wonder where else we’ll start seeing this problem appear,” -D. Anderson, an expert in harmful algal blooms

Australia’s unprecedented toxic algal bloom has a surprise culprit

A relatively unknown species is producing a notorious neurotoxin, devastating sea life

doi.org

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 8d

Public Health Guidelines for Social Connection: An International Delphi Study
Card+
doi.org/10.1016/j.he...

Popular summary
theconversation.com/we-created-h...

Redirecting

doi.org

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 8d

The Disaster to Come: New York’s Next Superstorm www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

See Which New York City Neighborhoods Could Get Hit By the Next Hurricane (Gift Article)

Heavy rain would make a hurricane catastrophic. See the neighborhoods that could face the worst flooding.

www.nytimes.com

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 8d

Perception of own centrality in social networks
Kovářík+
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

people systematically misperceive their position in social networks and these misperceptions are correlated with academic outcomes, suggesting better understanding social structure could improve academic outcomes

We collected data on social networks from 11 independent classes in Loyola University Andalucia (Fig. 1A; Materials and Methods).

In our sample, 484 (474) subjects reported their estimate of their own popularity (centrality). Fig. 1 B and C depict the distributions of the true and perceived in-degree and the deciles of centrality to which participants believe they belong, respectively.

At the aggregate level, Fig. 1 B and C show that the true distributions of popularity and centrality exhibit “fatter tails” than their perceived counterparts. There is considerably higher frequency of unconnected/peripheral as well as highly connected/very central individuals in the true distribution, as compared to the distribution of perceived centralities.

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 8d

Cultural innovation can increase and maintain biodiversity: A case study from medieval Europe
Spitzig+
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

"profound changes in the floristic landscape ...that occurred between approximately 500 and 1000 CE can be described in terms of a critical transition" in regions SES

A gradual, profound change in the floristic landscape of the Lake Constance region occurred between approximately 500 and 1000 CE.

Pollen-estimated plant diversity in the western Lake Constance region between 2000 BCE and 2000 CE, as measured by Shannon’s Diversity Index. Each point and bar indicate the mean and distribution (± one SD), respectively, of Shannon’s Diversity Index for all pollen samples, across all cores, within a 50-y time window.

Reposted by Brian J. Enquist, Graeme S. Cumming, Garry Peterson , and 3 more Brian J. Enquist, Graeme S. Cumming, Garry Peterson, Sébastien Villéger, Nicolas Loiseau, Benjamin Wildermuth

Nicolas Mouquet @nmouquet.bsky.social · 8d

Spatial Insurance of Distinct Ecological Functions

Communities can act as functional sources and sustain rare ecological roles across space. We reveal patterns of functional vulnerability for plants and birds

Check out our Perspective in Ecol Lett

👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🌐🌍🦤🪴🍁🧪

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 9d

IonE at U Minnesota, USA
environment.umn.edu

is hiring up to 2 research professors
impact-focused sustainability research capacity.

To apply
➡️Assistant: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...
➡️Associate: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...
➡️Full: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...

Institute on the Environment | Discovering Solutions to Earth's Greatest Enviromental Challenges

IonE is leading the way toward a future in which people and the environment prosper together.

environment.umn.edu

Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social · 9d

OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates
on.ft.com/4ojxyY7

"What might not be clear from the above is that the HSBC software team is very, very bullish on AI as a concept"

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