A special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B examines long-term food supply trends given the relentless pressures of population growth, climate change, and increasing demand for water. IIASA demographers and forestry experts contributed to the issue, looking at the complexities of long-term population growth and using IIASA’s GLOBIOM model to illustrate land use projection uncertainties.

Forests play a critical role in maintaining the Earth’s ecosystems, and their type, structure and distribution must be carefully managed to protect against the threats from human activities. IIASA forestry scientists will discuss the crucial role of forests and the tools for advanced integrated forest management in a side meeting on August 25 at the XXIII World Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations in Seoul, Korea.

Driving alone in a car increases global temperatures in the long run more than making the same journey by air according to a new study by IIASA’s Jens Borken-Kleefeld and research partners in Norway. However, in the short run travelling by air has a larger adverse climate impact because airplanes strongly affect short-lived warming processes at high altitudes argues the study published in Environmental Science and Technology. More

IIASA's Zbigniew Klimont is among an international team of researchers which argues in a Nature Geoscience commentary that cutting emissions of short-lived pollutants such as methane and black carbon would not only reduce warming in the next few decades, but also help to determine how sensitive the planet's climate is and thereby improve projections of future climate change. More