Marten Scheffer

Biographic Data

ID106247
NAMEMarten Scheffer
GIVEN NAMESMarten
FAMILY NAMEScheffer
SIGNATURESCHEFFER M
AFFILIATIONSWageningen University & Research
ORCID0000-0002-2100-0312
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS50
TOTAL CITATIONS1361
AUTHOR COUNT50
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1999
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX8

  • Tipping Out of Trouble: How Societies Transformed and How We Can Do So Again

    Open AccessMarten SchefferBOOKTipping Out of Trouble2026

    What kind of trouble lies ahead? How can we successfully transition towards a sustainable future? Drawing on a remarkably broad range of insights from complex systems and the functioning of the brain to the history of civilizations and the workings of modern societies, the distinguished scientist Marten Scheffer addresses these key questions of our times. He looks to the past to show how societies have tipped out of trouble before, the mechanisms…

  • Anticipating the global redistribution of people and property

    Open AccessMarten Scheffer, W Neil Adger et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2024

  • Safe and just Earth system boundaries

    Open AccessJohan Rockström, Jagdish Gupta et al.ARTICLENature2023

    The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked 1–3 , yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently 4,5 . Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintain…

  • The potential of resilience indicators to anticipate infectious disease outbreaks, a systematic review and guide

    Open AccessClara Delecroix, Egbert H Van Nes et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2023

    To reduce the consequences of infectious disease outbreaks, the timely implementation of public health measures is crucial. Currently used early-warning systems are highly context-dependent and require a long phase of model building. A proposed solution to anticipate the onset or termination of an outbreak is the use of so -called resilience indicators. These indicators are based on the generic theory of critical slowing down and require only inc…

  • Quantifying the human cost of global warming

    Open AccessTimothy M Lenton, Chi Xu et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2023Cited by: 10References: 16

    The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, but this raises ethical issues. Here we express them in terms of numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche. By end-of-century (2080–2100), c…

  • Response diversity as a sustainability strategy

    Open AccessBrian Walker, Anne-Sophie Crépin et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2023Cited by: 6References: 6

  • Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

    Open AccessLuke Kemp, Chi Xu et al.ARTICLEProceedings of the National…2022

    Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extre…

  • A regional Pecs node built from place-based social-ecological sustainability research in Latin America and the Caribbean

    Open AccessRafael Calderon-Contreras, Patricia Balvanera et al.ARTICLEEcosystems and People2022

    Sustainability requires a combination of meaningful co-production of locally relevant solutions, synthesis of insights gained across regions, and increased cooperation between science, policy and practice. The Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) has been coordinating Place-Based Social-Ecological Sustainability Research (PBSESR) across the globe and emphasizes the need for regional scientific nodes from diverse biocultural regions t…

  • Earth stewardship: Shaping a sustainable future through interacting policy and norm shifts

    Open AccessF Stuart Chapin, Elke U Weber et al.ARTICLEAMBIO2022Cited by: 4References: 66

    Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital—equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth’s current trajectory and support for actions that would foster more sustainable pathways suggests potential social tipping points in pub…

  • Historical effects of shocks on inequality: The great leveler revisited

    Open AccessBas Van Bavel, Marten SchefferARTICLEHumanities and Social Sciences…2021

    Inequality of wealth and its associated power has varied greatly over human history. It is often thought that the main levelers of inequality were natural disasters such as epidemics or earthquakes, and social turmoil such as wars and revolutions. Here we critically review evidence of the effects of such events on inequality from medieval times till the present. We show that in spite of the marked differences in character and direct impact of the…

  • Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere

    Open AccessCarl Folke, Stephen Polasky et al.ARTICLEAMBIO2021Cited by: 92References: 18

    The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity…

  • Navigating the chaos of an unfolding global cycle

    Open AccessBrian Walker, R Carpenter et al.ARTICLEConservation Ecology2020Cited by: 5

    Walker, B., S. R. Carpenter, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, G. D. Peterson, M. Scheffer, M. Schoon, and F. R. Westley. 2020. Navigating the chaos of an unfolding global cycle. Ecology and Society 25(4):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12072-250423

  • Institutions and inequality interplay shapes the impact of economic growth on biodiversity loss

    Open AccessM Usman Mirza, Andries Richter et al.ARTICLEConservation Ecology2020

    Mirza, M. U., A. Richter, E. H. van Nes, and M. Scheffer. 2020. Institutions and inequality interplay shapes the impact of economic growth on biodiversity loss. Ecology and Society 25(4):39. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12078-250439

  • Transnational corporations and the challenge of biosphere stewardship

    Open AccessCarl Folke, Henrik Österblom et al.ARTICLENature Ecology & Evolution2019

  • Technology driven inequality leads to poverty and resource depletion

    Open AccessM Usman Mirza, Andries Richter et al.ARTICLEEcological Economics2019Cited by: 8References: 6

  • How to build a cross-disciplinary institute: The curious case of the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies

    Open AccessMarten Scheffer, Nestor MazzeoARTICLEConservation Ecology2019

    Scheffer, M., and N. Mazzeo. 2019. How to build a cross-disciplinary institute: the curious case of the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies. Ecology and Society 24(2):34. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10983-240234

  • Dancing on the volcano: Social Exploration in Times of Discontent

    Open AccessR Carpenter, Stephen R Carpenter et al.ARTICLEConservation Ecology2019Cited by: 3

    Carpenter, S. R., C. Folke, M. Scheffer, and F. R. Westley. 2019. Dancing on the volcano: social exploration in times of discontent. Ecology and Society 24(1):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10839-240123

  • Rethinking resource allocation in science

    Open AccessJohan Bollen, R Carpenter et al.ARTICLEConservation Ecology2019

    US funding agencies alone distribute a yearly total of roughly $65B dollars largely through the process of proposal peer review: scientists compete for project funding by submitting grant proposals which are evaluated by selected panels of peer reviewers. Similar funding systems are in place in most advanced democracies. However, in spite of its venerable history, proposal peer review is increasingly struggling to deal with the increasing mismatc…

  • Climate models predict increasing temperature variability in poor countries

    Open AccessSebastian Bathiany, Vasilis Dakos et al.ARTICLEScience Advances2018

    Temperature variability will increase in poor countries and decrease in rich countries, creating a new climate injustice.

  • Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

    Open AccessWill Steffen, Johan Rockström et al.ARTICLEProceedings of the National…2018

    We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels sig…

  • The minute-scale dynamics of online emotions reveal the effects of affect labeling

    Open AccessRui Fan, Onur Varol et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2018Cited by: 4References: 46

  • Coral reefs in the Anthropocene

    Open AccessThomas P Hughes, Terry P Hughes et al.ARTICLENature2017

  • Teaching originality? Common habits behind creative production in science and arts

    Open AccessMarten Scheffer, Matthijs Baas et al.ARTICLEConservation Ecology2017Cited by: 1

    Scheffer, M., M. Baas, and T. K. Bjordam. 2017. Teaching originality? Common habits behind creative production in science and arts. Ecology and Society 22(2):29. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09258-220229

  • Major Depression as a Complex Dynamic System

    Open AccessAngélique O J Cramer, Claudia D van Borkulo et al.ARTICLEPLoS ONE2016

    In this paper, we characterize major depression (MD) as a complex dynamic system in which symptoms (e.g., insomnia and fatigue) are directly connected to one another in a network structure. We hypothesize that individuals can be characterized by their own network with unique architecture and resulting dynamics. With respect to architecture, we show that individuals vulnerable to developing MD are those with strong connections between symptoms: e.…

  • What if solar energy becomes really cheap? A thought experiment on environmental problem shifting

    Open AccessJ C J M Van Den Bergh, Carl Folke et al.ARTICLECurrent Opinion in Environmental…2015Cited by: 9References: 4