Ecology and Sustainability: Strategies for Meeting the Challenges of the Third Millennium

Global environmental crises, including climate change, desertification, depletion of energy resources, and the pollution of air, water, and soil, along with the accelerating loss of biodiversity, represent some of the most urgent and complex challenges facing contemporary society. Addressing these interconnected issues demands more than technical solutions; it requires a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between human societies and nature.

The Research Topic will focus on the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances on ecosystems, explored through diverse methodological approaches across multiple spatial and temporal scales, and spanning the different levels of biological organization - from individual organisms to populations, communities, ecosystems, landscapes, and the biosphere.

This Research Topic aims to gather cutting-edge contributions that advance our understanding of ecological processes, ecosystem dynamics, and their responses to environmental change. We welcome manuscripts that address both fundamental and applied perspectives, with an emphasis on developing solutions to current ecological challenges.

Key themes include:
- Ecosystem change and dynamics: Studies examining ecological processes, species interactions, and community shifts across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems.
- Climate change impacts: Studies investigating ecosystems responses to climate-driven stressors such as warming, altered precipitation, extreme events, and biodiversity loss.
- Predictive modelling: Studies providing development and application of models to forecast ecosystem responses, resilience, and tipping points under different environmental and management scenarios.
- Restoration and conservation strategies: Studies addressing innovative approaches to restore degraded ecosystems, enhance resilience, and support biodiversity conservation.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: sustainability, global environmental change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem services, restoration

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.