Human actions have shaped ecosystems for thousands of years, and have profound effects on biodiversity and environmental processes. This Review explores the ways that humans have modified past ecosystems and the methods available for researchers to study these changes, as well as indicating how understanding historic change can inform conservation strategies.

Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) is changing our nocturnal landscape. Recent research reveals the negative impacts on biodiversity, including individu…

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Infectious diseases pose a substantial threat to public health, affecting billions and straining health-care systems worldwide. There is growing concern over how anthropogenic climate change might agg...

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) has emerged as an important data source for monitoring forest resources. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and Mobi…

The energy balance of a planet is set by the sunlight entering and the heat radiating back from it. Earth’s biosphere adds new complexity as energy flows through global marine and terrestrial ecosystems altering physical and chemical systems, including ...

Bats harbor diverse coronaviruses but temporal dynamics are less well studied. Here, the authors analyzed coronaviruses in Australian flying foxes over 3 years showing peak shedding and co-infections ...

River monitoring is a prevalent focus within citizen science projects. Despite numerous reports and institutional manuals detailing the monitoring techniques...

Terrestrial remote sensing approaches, such as acoustic monitoring, deliver finely resolved and reliable biodiversity data. However, the scalability of surveys is often limited by the effort, time and...

Bats fatten to cope in environments with seasonal energy shortages, gaining more weight in seasonally cold climates and in tropical climates with highly seasonal rainfall. In cold climates, females l...

Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 16 June 2025; doi:10.1038/s44358-025-00063-8The global food system accelerates biodiversity loss, which in turn undermines the resilience and sustainability of food production. Strategic, coordinated action across the food system’s diverse actors and networks is essential to drive structural change and reverse biodiversity loss.

General ecosystem models (GEMs) have been framed as the ‘climate model’ equivalents for nature, but while the latter have been continuously improved and diversified for several decades already, the f...

Climate interventions increase beliefs, policy support, and willingness to share information but not higher effort action.

In a region like Flanders – dense, busy, and full of human activities of all shapes and sizes – the problem of noise pollution is increasingly recognized. We often think of that noise a…