New journal to tackle Earth’s sustainability challenges

The American Geophysical Union launched a new open access journal in December 2013 called Earth’s Future. The journal aims to publish science papers geared toward finding solutions to coupled human and planetary challenges.

The challenges society will face in the 21st century are many. These include population growth, limited availability of natural resources, climate change, sea-level rise, natural disasters from earthquakes and extreme weather events, degradation in air and water quality, and declining levels of biodiversity. As these environmental problems mount, there is a growing recognition that solutions to such problems will require interdisciplinary expertise from diverse disciplines such as the Earth and environmental sciences, ecology, economics, and the health and social sciences.

Earth’s Future, the new journal from the American Geophysical Union, intends to foster the type of interdisciplinary discussion that will be necessary to tackle problems stemming from environmental change and ensure the future sustainability of our food, water, and energy supplies. According to the press release, the journal will emphasize:

Earth as an interactive, evolving system under the influence of the human enterprise.

The Editor-in-Chief, Ben van der Pluijm, is a professor with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Founding Editor-in-Chief, Guy Brasseur from the Climate Service Center in Hamburg, Germany, was instrumental in launching the new journal. Guy Brasseur and Ben van der Pluijm have penned an editorial in the inaugural issue that describes Earth’s Future in more detail. You can view it here.

Bottom line: The American Geophysical Union has launched a new open access journal called Earth’s Future. The journal aims to publish science papers geared toward finding solutions to coupled human and planetary challenges.