Georgia Destouni
Biographic Data
| ID | 2446812 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Georgia Destouni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Georgia |
| FAMILY NAME | Destouni |
| SIGNATURE | DESTOUNI G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stockholm University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9408-4425 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Forecasting heat-related impacts with multivariate multi-step time series models using advanced deep learning
Advanced DL models are used to forecast heat-related morbidity across counties in Sweden. • N-BEATS for heat impact forecasting outperforms classic statistical and other DL models. • Individually trained N-BEATS highlights the localized nature of heatwave impacts. • Incorporating exogenous variables in N-BEATS improves prediction performance. Record-breaking temperatures and frequent heatwaves have been experienced worldwide in recent years. Heat…
Research efforts and gaps in the assessment of forest system resilience
This study investigates how the seven core resilience principles are integrated into assessments of forest system resilience to natural or human-induced disturbances across engineering, ecological, and social-ecological resilience concepts. Following PRISMA guidelines, a literature search in the Web of Science database using the keywords “resilience”, “forest” and “ecosystem services” yielded 1828 studies, of which 330 met the selection criteria.…
How Michaelis–Menten kinetics can represent ecosystem-scale respiration
How Michaelis–Menten kinetics can represent ecosystem-scale respiration: scale and applicability, Zhang, Qin, Yi, Chuixiang, Destouni, Georgia, Wohlfahrt, Georg, Kuzyakov, Yakov, Li, Runze, Kutter, Eric, Chen, Deliang, Rietkerk, Max, Tian, Zhenkun, Hendrey, George, Fang, Wei, Krakauer, Nir, Jarsjo, Jerker, Han, Jianxu, Xu, Shiguo
Water conflicts under climate change
Climate change is known to worsen conflicts, but its combination with other factors affecting water-related conflicts remains less explored. Using a scoping review, this study examined research in the climate–water–conflict nexus. Using semi-automatic text mining approaches, key research gaps and differences in conflict factors and themes across different regions and conflict types were analyzed. Studies focused on Asia and Africa, with few explo…
Nature-based solutions for urban challenges
Global patterns in water flux partitioning
The partitioning of precipitation water input on land between green (evapotranspiration) and blue (runoff) water fluxes distributes the annually renewable freshwater resource among sectors and ecosystems. The patterns and main drivers of this partitioning are not fully understood around the global land area. We decipher the worldwide patterns and key determinants of this water flux partitioning and investigate its predictability based on a global…
Decarbonizing through nature
Is wetter better? Exploring agriculturally-relevant rainfall characteristics over four decades in the Sahel
The semi-arid Sahel is a global hotspot for poverty and malnutrition. Rainfed agriculture is the main source of food and income, making the well-being of rural population highly sensitive to rainfall variability. Studies have reported an upward trend in annual precipitation in the Sahel since the drought of the 1970s and early ‘80s, yet farmers have questioned improvements in conditions for agriculture, suggesting that intraseasonal dynamics play…
Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis
Healthy ecosystems for human and animal health
Climate warming is occurring most rapidly in the Arctic, which is both a sentinel and a driver of further global change. Ecosystems and human societies are already affected by warming. Permafrost thaws and species are on the move, bringing pathogens and vectors to virgin areas. During a five-year project, the CLINF – a Nordic Center of Excellence, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, has worked with the One Health concept, integrating envir…
A more complete accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration in urban landscapes
Understanding interactions between complex human and natural systems involved in urban carbon cycling is important when balancing the dual goals of urban development to accommodate a growing population, while also achieving urban carbon neutrality. This study develops a systems breakdown accounting method to assess the urban carbon cycle. The method facilitates greater understanding of the complex interactions within and between systems involved …
Open-source planning support system for sustainable regional planning
Population increases and environmental degradation are challenges for urban sustainability. Planning support systems are available to assist local authorities in developing strategies toward sustainability and resilience of urban areas, but are not always used in practice. We adapted an open-source planning support system to the case of Stockholm County, Sweden, where there is a productive working relationship between researchers, city planners, …
Implications of Projected Hydroclimatic Change for Tularemia Outbreaks in High-Risk Areas across Sweden
Hydroclimatic change may affect the range of some infectious diseases, including tularemia. Previous studies have investigated associations between tularemia incidence and climate variables, with some also establishing quantitative statistical disease models based on historical data, but studies considering future climate projections are scarce. This study has used and combined hydro-climatic projection outputs from multiple global climate models…
Understanding interactions between urban development policies and GHG emissions
Human-induced urban growth and sprawl have implications for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may not be included in conventional GHG accounting methods. Improved understanding of this issue requires use of interactive, spatial-explicit social–ecological systems modeling. This paper develops a comprehensive approach to modeling GHG emissions from urban developments, considering Stockholm County, Sweden as a case study. GHG projections to 2040 w…
European warm-season temperature and hydroclimate since 850 CE
The long-term relationship between temperature and hydroclimate has remained uncertain due to the short length of instrumental measurements and inconsistent results from climate model simulations. This lack of understanding is particularly critical with regard to projected drought and flood risks. Here we assess warm-season co-variability patterns between temperature and hydroclimate over Europe back to 850 CE using instrumental measurements, tre…
Potential for Hydroclimatically Driven Shifts in Infectious Disease Outbreaks
Hydroclimatic changes may be particularly pronounced in high-latitude regions and can influence infectious diseases, jeopardizing regional human and animal health. In this study, we consider the example of tularemia, one of the most studied diseases in high-latitude regions, which is likely to be impacted by large regional hydroclimatic changes. For this disease case, we use a validated statistical model and develop a method for quantifying possi…
Connecting the resource nexus to basic urban service provision – with a focus on water-energy interactions in New York City
Urban water and energy systems are crucial for sustainably meeting basic service demands in cities. This paper proposes and applies a technology-independent “reference resource-to-service system” framework for concurrent evaluation of urban water and energy system interventions and their ‘nexus’ or ‘interlinkages’. In a concrete application, data that approximate New York City conditions are used to evaluate a limited set of interventions in the …
Variability in climate change simulations affects needed long-term riverine nutrient reductions for the Baltic Sea
Changes to runoff due to climate change may influence management of nutrient loading to the sea. Assuming unchanged river nutrient concentrations, we evaluate the effects of changing runoff on commitments to nutrient reductions under the Baltic Sea Action Plan. For several countries, climate projections point to large variability in load changes in relation to reduction targets. These changes either increase loads, making the target more difficul…
Screening variability and change of soil moisture under wide-ranging climate conditions
Soil moisture influences and is influenced by water, climate, and ecosystem conditions, affecting associated ecosystem services in the landscape. This paper couples snow storage-melting dynamics with an analytical modeling approach to screening basin-scale, long-term soil moisture variability and change in a changing climate. This coupling enables assessment of both spatial differences and temporal changes across a wide range of hydro-climatic co…
Hydroclimatic changes and drivers in the Sava River Catchment and comparison with Swedish catchments
In this study, we investigate long-term hydroclimatic changes and their possible relation to regional changes in climate, land-use and water-use over the twentieth century in the transboundary Sava River Catchment (SRC) in South Eastern Europe. In a hydropower dominated part of the SRC, unlike in an unregulated part, we find increase in average annual evapotranspiration and decrease in temporal runoff variability, which are not readily explainabl…
Climate change effects on the Baltic Sea borderland between land and sea
Coastal habitats are situated on the border between land and sea, and ecosystem structure and functioning is influenced by both marine and terrestrial processes. Despite this, most scientific studies and monitoring are conducted either with a terrestrial or an aquatic focus. To address issues concerning climate change impacts in coastal areas, a cross-ecosystem approach is necessary. Since habitats along the Baltic coastlines vary in hydrology, n…
Dissecting the ecosystem service of large-scale pollutant retention
Various features of a landscape contribute to the regulating ecosystem service of reducing waterborne pollutant loading to downstream environments. At local scales, wetlands have been shown to be effective in retaining pollutants. Here, we investigate the landscape-scale contribution to pollutant retention provided by multiple wetlands. We develop a general analytical model which shows that the retention contribution of wetlands and other landsca…
Interacting effects of change in climate, human population, land use, and water use on biodiversity and ecosystem services
Elmhagen, B., G. Destouni, A. Angerbjörn, S. Borgström, E. Boyd, S. A. O. Cousins, L. Dalén, J. Ehrlén, M. Ermold, P. A. Hambäck, J. Hedlund, K. Hylander, F. Jaramillo, V. K. Lagerholm, S. W. Lyon, H. Moor, B. Nykvist, M. Pasanen-Mortensen, J. Plue, C. Prieto, Y. Van der Velde, and R. Lindborg. 2015. Interacting effects of change in climate, human population, land use, and water use on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecology and Society 20(1…
Strategic environmental assessment and monitoring
The Arctic region undergoes rapid and unprecedented environmental change. Environmental assessment and monitoring is needed to understand and decide how to mitigate and/or adapt tothe changes and their impacts on society and ecosystems. This letter analyzes the application of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and the monitoring, based on environmental observations, that should be part of SEA, elucidates main gaps in both, and proposes an o…
Tipping points for seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers under rising sea level
This study considers different projections of climate-driven sea-level rise and uses a recently developed, generalized analytical model to investigate the responses of sea intrusion in unconfined sloping coastal aquifers to climate-driven sea-level rise. The results show high nonlinearity in these responses, implying important thresholds, or tipping points, beyond which the responses of seawater intrusion to sea-level rise shift abruptly from a s…
Spatial Characterization of the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin and Its Unmonitored Catchments
We present an updated, harmonized hydrologic base map of the entire Baltic Sea Drainage Basin (BSDB), including 634 subdrainage basins. The updated map has a level of detail approximately 5 to 10 times higher than the current standard and includes various spatial-aggregation possibilities of relevance for water management. All 634 subdrainage basins and their various spatial aggregations are characterized in terms of population, land cover, drain…
Understanding interactions between urban development policies and GHG emissions
Human-induced urban growth and sprawl have implications for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may not be included in conventional GHG accounting methods. Improved understanding of this issue requires use of interactive, spatial-explicit social–ecological systems modeling. This paper develops a comprehensive approach to modeling GHG emissions from urban developments, considering Stockholm County, Sweden as a case study. GHG projections to 2040 w…
Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis
A more complete accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration in urban landscapes
Understanding interactions between complex human and natural systems involved in urban carbon cycling is important when balancing the dual goals of urban development to accommodate a growing population, while also achieving urban carbon neutrality. This study develops a systems breakdown accounting method to assess the urban carbon cycle. The method facilitates greater understanding of the complex interactions within and between systems involved …
Climate change effects on the Baltic Sea borderland between land and sea
Coastal habitats are situated on the border between land and sea, and ecosystem structure and functioning is influenced by both marine and terrestrial processes. Despite this, most scientific studies and monitoring are conducted either with a terrestrial or an aquatic focus. To address issues concerning climate change impacts in coastal areas, a cross-ecosystem approach is necessary. Since habitats along the Baltic coastlines vary in hydrology, n…
Dissecting the ecosystem service of large-scale pollutant retention
Various features of a landscape contribute to the regulating ecosystem service of reducing waterborne pollutant loading to downstream environments. At local scales, wetlands have been shown to be effective in retaining pollutants. Here, we investigate the landscape-scale contribution to pollutant retention provided by multiple wetlands. We develop a general analytical model which shows that the retention contribution of wetlands and other landsca…
A Call for Urgent Monitoring of Food and Water Security Based on Relevant Indicators for the Arctic
This perspective paper argues for an urgent need to monitor a set of 12 concrete, measurable indicators of food and water security in the Arctic over time. Such a quantitative indicator approach may be viewed as representing a reductionist rather than a holistic perspective, but is nevertheless necessary for actually knowing what reality aspects to monitor in order to accurately understand, quantify, and be able to project critical changes to foo…
Does Divergence of Nutrient Load Measurements Matter for Successful Mitigation of Marine Eutrophication
Screening variability and change of soil moisture under wide-ranging climate conditions
Soil moisture influences and is influenced by water, climate, and ecosystem conditions, affecting associated ecosystem services in the landscape. This paper couples snow storage-melting dynamics with an analytical modeling approach to screening basin-scale, long-term soil moisture variability and change in a changing climate. This coupling enables assessment of both spatial differences and temporal changes across a wide range of hydro-climatic co…
Nature as the “Natural” Goal for Water Management
The goals for water-quality and ecosystem integrity are often defined relative to "natural" reference conditions in many water-management systems, including the European Union Water Framework Directive. This paper examines the difficulties created for water management by using "natural" as the goal. These difficulties are articulated from different perspectives in an informal (fictional) conversation that takes place after a workshop on reference…
Water conflicts under climate change
Climate change is known to worsen conflicts, but its combination with other factors affecting water-related conflicts remains less explored. Using a scoping review, this study examined research in the climate–water–conflict nexus. Using semi-automatic text mining approaches, key research gaps and differences in conflict factors and themes across different regions and conflict types were analyzed. Studies focused on Asia and Africa, with few explo…
Healthy ecosystems for human and animal health
Climate warming is occurring most rapidly in the Arctic, which is both a sentinel and a driver of further global change. Ecosystems and human societies are already affected by warming. Permafrost thaws and species are on the move, bringing pathogens and vectors to virgin areas. During a five-year project, the CLINF – a Nordic Center of Excellence, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, has worked with the One Health concept, integrating envir…
Interacting effects of change in climate, human population, land use, and water use on biodiversity and ecosystem services
Elmhagen, B., G. Destouni, A. Angerbjörn, S. Borgström, E. Boyd, S. A. O. Cousins, L. Dalén, J. Ehrlén, M. Ermold, P. A. Hambäck, J. Hedlund, K. Hylander, F. Jaramillo, V. K. Lagerholm, S. W. Lyon, H. Moor, B. Nykvist, M. Pasanen-Mortensen, J. Plue, C. Prieto, Y. Van der Velde, and R. Lindborg. 2015. Interacting effects of change in climate, human population, land use, and water use on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecology and Society 20(1…
Relevance of Hydro-Climatic Change Projection and Monitoring for Assessment of Water Cycle Changes in the Arctic
Renewable Energy
Spatial Characterization of the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin and Its Unmonitored Catchments
We present an updated, harmonized hydrologic base map of the entire Baltic Sea Drainage Basin (BSDB), including 634 subdrainage basins. The updated map has a level of detail approximately 5 to 10 times higher than the current standard and includes various spatial-aggregation possibilities of relevance for water management. All 634 subdrainage basins and their various spatial aggregations are characterized in terms of population, land cover, drain…
Nutrient cycling and N 2 O emissions in a changing climate
This study has quantified the subsurface (groundwater, soil, sediment) water system role for hydrological nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loading to the coast and agricultural N2O emissions to the atmosphere in a changing climate. Results for different climate and hydrological model scenarios in the Swedish Norrström drainage basin show that the subsurface water system may largely control a long-term increase in the coastal nutrient loading, in p…
Nature as the “Natural” Goal for Water Management
The goals for water-quality and ecosystem integrity are often defined relative to "natural" reference conditions in many water-management systems, including the European Union Water Framework Directive. This paper examines the difficulties created for water management by using "natural" as the goal. These difficulties are articulated from different perspectives in an informal (fictional) conversation that takes place after a workshop on reference…
Hydro-climatic trends and water resource management implications based on multi-scale data for the Lake Victoria region, Kenya
Unreliable rainfall may be a main cause of poverty in rural areas, such as the Kisumu district by Lake Victoria in Kenya. Climate change may further increase the negative effects of rainfall uncertainty. These effects could be mitigated to some extent through improved and adaptive water resource management and planning, which relies on our interpretations and projections of the coupled hydro-climatic system behaviour and its development trends. I…
Renewable Energy
Opportunities and limitations to detect climate-related regime shifts in inland Arctic ecosystems through eco-hydrological monitoring
This study has identified and mapped the occurrences of three different types of climate-driven and hydrologically mediated regime shifts in inland Arctic ecosystems: (i) from tundra to shrubland or forest, (ii) from terrestrial ecosystems to thermokarst lakes and wetlands, and (iii) from thermokarst lakes and wetlands to terrestrial ecosystems. The area coverage of these shifts is compared to that of hydrological and hydrochemical monitoring rel…
Relevance of Hydro-Climatic Change Projection and Monitoring for Assessment of Water Cycle Changes in the Arctic
Does Divergence of Nutrient Load Measurements Matter for Successful Mitigation of Marine Eutrophication
Strategic environmental assessment and monitoring
The Arctic region undergoes rapid and unprecedented environmental change. Environmental assessment and monitoring is needed to understand and decide how to mitigate and/or adapt tothe changes and their impacts on society and ecosystems. This letter analyzes the application of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and the monitoring, based on environmental observations, that should be part of SEA, elucidates main gaps in both, and proposes an o…
Tipping points for seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers under rising sea level
This study considers different projections of climate-driven sea-level rise and uses a recently developed, generalized analytical model to investigate the responses of sea intrusion in unconfined sloping coastal aquifers to climate-driven sea-level rise. The results show high nonlinearity in these responses, implying important thresholds, or tipping points, beyond which the responses of seawater intrusion to sea-level rise shift abruptly from a s…
A Call for Urgent Monitoring of Food and Water Security Based on Relevant Indicators for the Arctic
This perspective paper argues for an urgent need to monitor a set of 12 concrete, measurable indicators of food and water security in the Arctic over time. Such a quantitative indicator approach may be viewed as representing a reductionist rather than a holistic perspective, but is nevertheless necessary for actually knowing what reality aspects to monitor in order to accurately understand, quantify, and be able to project critical changes to foo…
Variability in climate change simulations affects needed long-term riverine nutrient reductions for the Baltic Sea
Changes to runoff due to climate change may influence management of nutrient loading to the sea. Assuming unchanged river nutrient concentrations, we evaluate the effects of changing runoff on commitments to nutrient reductions under the Baltic Sea Action Plan. For several countries, climate projections point to large variability in load changes in relation to reduction targets. These changes either increase loads, making the target more difficul…
Screening variability and change of soil moisture under wide-ranging climate conditions
Soil moisture influences and is influenced by water, climate, and ecosystem conditions, affecting associated ecosystem services in the landscape. This paper couples snow storage-melting dynamics with an analytical modeling approach to screening basin-scale, long-term soil moisture variability and change in a changing climate. This coupling enables assessment of both spatial differences and temporal changes across a wide range of hydro-climatic co…
Hydroclimatic changes and drivers in the Sava River Catchment and comparison with Swedish catchments
In this study, we investigate long-term hydroclimatic changes and their possible relation to regional changes in climate, land-use and water-use over the twentieth century in the transboundary Sava River Catchment (SRC) in South Eastern Europe. In a hydropower dominated part of the SRC, unlike in an unregulated part, we find increase in average annual evapotranspiration and decrease in temporal runoff variability, which are not readily explainabl…
Climate change effects on the Baltic Sea borderland between land and sea
Coastal habitats are situated on the border between land and sea, and ecosystem structure and functioning is influenced by both marine and terrestrial processes. Despite this, most scientific studies and monitoring are conducted either with a terrestrial or an aquatic focus. To address issues concerning climate change impacts in coastal areas, a cross-ecosystem approach is necessary. Since habitats along the Baltic coastlines vary in hydrology, n…
Dissecting the ecosystem service of large-scale pollutant retention
Various features of a landscape contribute to the regulating ecosystem service of reducing waterborne pollutant loading to downstream environments. At local scales, wetlands have been shown to be effective in retaining pollutants. Here, we investigate the landscape-scale contribution to pollutant retention provided by multiple wetlands. We develop a general analytical model which shows that the retention contribution of wetlands and other landsca…
Interacting effects of change in climate, human population, land use, and water use on biodiversity and ecosystem services
Elmhagen, B., G. Destouni, A. Angerbjörn, S. Borgström, E. Boyd, S. A. O. Cousins, L. Dalén, J. Ehrlén, M. Ermold, P. A. Hambäck, J. Hedlund, K. Hylander, F. Jaramillo, V. K. Lagerholm, S. W. Lyon, H. Moor, B. Nykvist, M. Pasanen-Mortensen, J. Plue, C. Prieto, Y. Van der Velde, and R. Lindborg. 2015. Interacting effects of change in climate, human population, land use, and water use on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecology and Society 20(1…
Connecting the resource nexus to basic urban service provision – with a focus on water-energy interactions in New York City
Urban water and energy systems are crucial for sustainably meeting basic service demands in cities. This paper proposes and applies a technology-independent “reference resource-to-service system” framework for concurrent evaluation of urban water and energy system interventions and their ‘nexus’ or ‘interlinkages’. In a concrete application, data that approximate New York City conditions are used to evaluate a limited set of interventions in the …
European warm-season temperature and hydroclimate since 850 CE
The long-term relationship between temperature and hydroclimate has remained uncertain due to the short length of instrumental measurements and inconsistent results from climate model simulations. This lack of understanding is particularly critical with regard to projected drought and flood risks. Here we assess warm-season co-variability patterns between temperature and hydroclimate over Europe back to 850 CE using instrumental measurements, tre…
Potential for Hydroclimatically Driven Shifts in Infectious Disease Outbreaks
Hydroclimatic changes may be particularly pronounced in high-latitude regions and can influence infectious diseases, jeopardizing regional human and animal health. In this study, we consider the example of tularemia, one of the most studied diseases in high-latitude regions, which is likely to be impacted by large regional hydroclimatic changes. For this disease case, we use a validated statistical model and develop a method for quantifying possi…
Open-source planning support system for sustainable regional planning
Population increases and environmental degradation are challenges for urban sustainability. Planning support systems are available to assist local authorities in developing strategies toward sustainability and resilience of urban areas, but are not always used in practice. We adapted an open-source planning support system to the case of Stockholm County, Sweden, where there is a productive working relationship between researchers, city planners, …
Implications of Projected Hydroclimatic Change for Tularemia Outbreaks in High-Risk Areas across Sweden
Hydroclimatic change may affect the range of some infectious diseases, including tularemia. Previous studies have investigated associations between tularemia incidence and climate variables, with some also establishing quantitative statistical disease models based on historical data, but studies considering future climate projections are scarce. This study has used and combined hydro-climatic projection outputs from multiple global climate models…
Understanding interactions between urban development policies and GHG emissions
Human-induced urban growth and sprawl have implications for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may not be included in conventional GHG accounting methods. Improved understanding of this issue requires use of interactive, spatial-explicit social–ecological systems modeling. This paper develops a comprehensive approach to modeling GHG emissions from urban developments, considering Stockholm County, Sweden as a case study. GHG projections to 2040 w…
Is wetter better? Exploring agriculturally-relevant rainfall characteristics over four decades in the Sahel
The semi-arid Sahel is a global hotspot for poverty and malnutrition. Rainfed agriculture is the main source of food and income, making the well-being of rural population highly sensitive to rainfall variability. Studies have reported an upward trend in annual precipitation in the Sahel since the drought of the 1970s and early ‘80s, yet farmers have questioned improvements in conditions for agriculture, suggesting that intraseasonal dynamics play…
Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis
Environmental Science (28 works) · Ecology (25 works) · Geography (20 works) · Geology (18 works) · Climate change (17 works) · Oceanography (14 works) · Ecology (13 works) · Environmental resource management (12 works) · Biology (10 works) · Ecosystem (9 works)