This aerial photo taken on Oct 18, 2022 shows scenery at the Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve in east China's Shandong Province. The Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve, a wetland nature reserve mainly aiming at protecting the ecosystem and rare and endangered birds at the river's estuary, was listed in 2013 on the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. Photo:Xinhua

The new framework and study findings propose a new perspective for the understanding of how to decouple sustainability shifts from ecological catastrophes under a changing climate and human behavior, said Ge Yingchun, a NIEER researcher.

Coactions of subtle climatic variations and mounting anthropogenic interference on the water-food-ecosystem-economy nexus create a new challenge in ensuring the security of water, food, and ecosystems in most endorheic regions.

Ge joined hands with researchers from Chinese and overseas institutions and proposed the integrated framework as a synthetic assessment of the impacts of multiple driving and telecoupling factors on the water-food-ecosystem-economy nexus under a changing climate.

The framework includes external factors such as temperature and precipitation, and internal factors such as technological level, population growth rate, urbanization rate, and ecological water flow.

The researchers' quantitative analysis shows that the coaction of these factors on a complex human-environment system dominates sustainability in endorheic regions.

The study results have been published in the journal Science Bulletin.

Xinhua