Jon C. Lovett

University of Leeds ·  Ecology and Global Change Group (EGC)

Aim: We test the hypothesis that wind dispersal is more common among emergent tree species given that being tall increases the likelihood of effective seed dispersal. Location: Americas, Africa and the Asia-Pacific. Time period: 1970–2020. Major taxa studied: Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. Methods: We used a dataset consisting of tree inventories f...

ChatGPT has revolutionized the travel industry. This study employs the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model to develop and validate a conceptual model for ChatGPT acceptance. Social influence and perceived value emerge as key determinants of user cognitive appraisals of ChatGPT’s expertise, trustworthiness, and emotional connections through paras...

ChatGPT has revolutionized the travel industry. This study employs the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model to develop and validate a conceptual model for ChatGPT acceptance. Social influence and perceived value emerge as key determinants of user cognitive appraisals of ChatGPT's expertise, trustworthiness, and emotional connections through paras...

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we inve...

Background Off-grid renewable electricity generation and distribution has become a cost effective way to supply electricity in rural areas remote from the grid system. However, in addition to the risk of not being able to pay for full cost tariffs, beneficiaries may not have the skills or time for the institutional and technical requirements to ope...

Climate change effects are not uniform and have disproportionate impacts among different groups of people within communities. It is therefore important to understand the underlying issues of intersectionality for climate change adaptation and human well-being. This paper aims to measure human capabilities and freedom of choice by analyzing perceive...

Mini-grids play a critical role in providing electricity to remote, off-grid communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, success of mini-grid projects can be hindered by poor cash flows and limited revenue returns. A clear understanding of off-grid households’ preferences for electricity services is a prerequisite for mini-grid stake- holders to se...

This edited volume emerged from an AHRC-funded network on Language and Nature in Southern and Eastern Arabia, which ran from 2017 to 2019. The network included three-day, face-to-face workshops at Qatar University in February 2017 and the University of Leeds in April 2019, and a video conference in October 2018. The volume takes a multidisciplin...

The sharing of travel experiences through social media platforms reflects contemporary consumer culture, but it is still a phenomenon being researched in tourism literature. In this paper, we theorize that sharing travel experience through social media may operate as a distinct social communication process, and investigate how it contributes to the...

Sustainable management of intact tropical peatlands is crucial for climate change mitigation, for biodiversity conservation and to support the livelihoods of local communities. Here, we explore whether sustainable fruit harvesting from Mauritia flexuosa palms could support these linked goals by increasing fruit production and incomes across the 2.8...

Motivation Progress in Indonesia towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 involves contestation between the global goals and the country's political ambition. The electrification rates ambition has triggered a policy trilemma. There are targets for meeting national energy demand; there are equally important targets for improving energ...

The Development of palm oil in Indonesia has been associated with its environmental impact. Concerns such as deforestation, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emission which will lead to climate change had triggered the stakeholders' urgency in initiating the sustainable palm oil certification scheme, namely RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil)....

Indonesia has gained its reputation as the one of the largest oil palm producer. The sustainability of Indonesian palm oil, however, being argued since the expansion often created various impacts. For instance, the draining and burning peatland for palm oil plantation were sent huge amount and carbon emissions which responsible for climate change a...

Access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services is the primary aim of Sustainable Development Goal 7 and underpins other SDGs for improving health and welfare. In keeping with the SDG objectives, national governments and development agencies have been advocating reduction of households’ dependency on traditional sources of energy and enco...

Aim Addressing global environmental challenges requires access to biodiversity data across wide spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales. Availability of such data has increased exponentially recently with the proliferation of biodiversity databases. However, heterogeneous coverage, protocols, and standards have hampered integration among these datab...

The Heat Release Rate (HRR) model of ICEs is known to be most sensitive to the ratio of specific heats, γ, which is known to be depended on temperature and the excess air ratio, λ. The HRR of ICEs cannot be measured directly. As such, accurate HRR models, as well as accurate expressions of γ and λ are required to model the HRR behaviour of ICEs mat...

This study assesses the bioenergy potential of two types of aquatic biomass found in the Republic of Congo: the green macroalgae Ulva lactuca (UL) and Ledermanniella schlechteri (LS). Their combustion behaviour was assessed using elemental and biochemical analysis, TGA, bomb calorimetry and metal analysis. Their anaerobic digestion behaviour was de...

Global efforts to improve electricity access in developing countries need to go beyond the simple measurement of electrification rates to address the quality of electricity supply. Households’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for electricity supply is important information for policy makers, utility companies, and other stakeholders to plan...

Most disasters are attributed to natural phenomena, but in many cases, they actually occur or are worsened because of mismanagement and/or the inappropriate implementation of development policy. Unsustainable development practices, ecosystem destruction, extreme poverty, and climate change have led to an increase in the frequency and consequences o...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused strict regulations to lower transmission rates. Industries were shut down, people were in lockdown, and travel was curtailed. Restrictions were in effect for an enough period for people's behaviour to change. For example, online meetings rather than needing to travel. This opens the possibility for alterations to the pe...

Tropical forests store 40-50% of terrestrial vegetation carbon. Spatial variations in aboveground live tree biomass carbon (AGC) stocks remain poorly understood, in particular in tropical montane forests. Because of climatic and soil changes with increasing elevation, AGC stocks are lower in tropical montane compared to lowland forests. Here we ass...

Tropical forests store 40–50 per cent of terrestrial vegetation carbon1. However, spatial variations in aboveground live tree biomass carbon (AGC) stocks remain poorly understood, in particular in tropical montane forests2. Owing to climatic and soil changes with increasing elevation3, AGC stocks are lower in tropical montane forests compared with...

Extending narrative transportation theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of online reviews on destination choice and purchasing behaviour at a destination and to clarify the role of prior destination knowledge and perceived usefulness of online reviews. Data were collected from 432 tourists in Gulangyu, a UNESCO World Heritage...

Aim: Addressing global environmental challenges requires access to biodiversity data across wide spatial, temporal and biological scales. Recent decades have witnessed an exponential increase of biodiversity information aggregated by biodiversity databases (hereafter ‘databases’). However, heterogeneous coverage, protocols, and standards of databas...

Environmental policy is often characterized by differences of opinion and polarized perceptions. This holds for all groups involved in lobbying, creating, implementing, and researching policy. Q methodology is a technique originally developed by William Stephenson in the 1930s for work in psychology as an alternative to R methodology, which was dom...

Tropical forests are the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. While better understanding of these forests is critical for our collective future, until quite recently efforts to measure and monitor them have been largely disconnected. Networking is essential to discover the answers to questions that transcend borders and the horizons of...

The emergence of social media has revolutionized tourists’ decision-making processes and behaviours. This study focuses on the effect of user-generated content (UGC) on tourist loyalty behaviour by examining structural relationships between destination image, satisfaction, revisit intention, and word-of-mouth (WOM) publicity. Data were collected fr...

Tanzania has a high rural population, of which many rely on off-grid diesel generators to produce electricity. The focus of this paper is to assess if the waste biomass residues in Tanzania have sufficient energy potential to produce renewable electrical energy for small-scale electricity generation using off-grid diesel generators coupled with ana...

Tanzania has a high rural population, of which many rely on off-grid diesel generators to produce electricity. The focus of this paper is to assess if the waste biomass residues in Tanzania have sufficient energy potential to produce renewable electrical energy for small-scale electricity generation using off-grid diesel generators coupled with ana...

Climate change is causing species’ ranges to shift, many at unprecedented rates, all across the planet. This poses a challenge for planning and management of biodiversity conservation through area-based conservation, as conserved areas are fixed in place. However, nearly a decade of research shows that strategic planning for new conserved areas can...

Planning for community resilience to disasters is a process that involves co‐ordinated action within and between relevant organizations and stakeholders, with the goal of reducing disaster risk. The effectiveness of this process is influenced by a range of factors, both positively and negatively, that need to be identified and understood so as to d...

Never before has the biosphere, the thin layer of life we call home, been under such intensive and urgent threat. Deforestation rates have soared as we have cleared land to feed ever-more people, global emissions are disrupting the climate system, new pathogens threaten our crops and our health, illegal trade has eradicated entire plant populations...

Societal Impact Statement Bioenergy is a major component of the global transition to renewable energy technologies. The plant and fungal kingdoms offer great potential but remain mostly untapped. Their increased use could contribute to the renewable energy transition and addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 “Ensure access to...

Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi project provides assessments of our current knowledge of the diversity of plants and fungi on Earth, the global threats that they face, and the policies to safeguard them. Produced in conjunction with an international scientific symposium, Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi sets an important inte...

Aim Palms are an iconic, diverse and often abundant component of tropical ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services. Being monocots, tree palms are evolutionarily, morphologically and physiologically distinct from other trees, and these differences have important consequences for ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration and storage) and...

Bioenergy is a major component of the global transition to renewable energy technologies. The plant and fungal kingdoms offer great potential but remain mostly untapped. Their increased use could contribute to the renewable energy transition and addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sus...

Aim: Palms are an iconic, diverse and often abundant component of tropical ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services. Being monocots, tree palms are evolutionarily, morphologically and physiologically distinct from other trees, and these differences have important consequences for ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration and storage) an...

International gas prices have increased rapidly in the last few years. However, the domestic gas price in Indonesia has not been adjusted accordingly, staying relatively low at almost one third of export prices. The low domestic gas price keeps gas producers from selling the gas to the domestic market, so price adjustments are necessary to provide...

The sensitivity of tropical forest carbon to climate is a key uncertainty in predicting global climate change. Although short-term drying and warming are known to affect forests, it is unknown if such effects translate into long-term responses. Here, we analyze 590 permanent plots measured across the tropics to derive the equilibrium climate contro...

The sensitivity of tropical forest carbon to climate is a key uncertainty in predicting global climate change. Although short-term drying and warming are known to affect forests, it is unknown if such effects translate into long-term responses. Here, we analyze 590 permanent plots measured across the tropics to derive the equilibrium climate contro...

Adaptation is an essential part of climate change policy. In areas where impacts are likely to be severe, migration is considered to be an adaptation option. In Bangladesh coastal areas migration due to climate change is contingent on people’s freedom of choice at individual and household level. Following Amartya Sen’s capability approach, we argue...

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest ‘carbon sink’ will continue for decades. Here we assess trends in the c...

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions1–3. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest ‘carbon sink’ will continue for decades4,5. Here we assess trends in...

Limiting climate change to less than 2°C is the focus of international policy under the climate convention (UNFCCC), and is essential to preventing extinctions, a focus of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The post-2020 biodiversity framework drafted by the CBD proposes conserving 30% of both land and oceans by 2030. However, the combin...

Limiting climate change to less than 2°C is the focus of international policy under the climate convention (UNFCCC), and is essential to preventing extinctions, a focus of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The post‐2020 biodiversity framework drafted by the CBD proposes conserving 30% of both land and oceans by 2030. However, the combin...

A key feature of life’s diversity is that some species are common but many more are rare. Nonetheless, at global scales, we do not know what fraction of biodiversity consists of rare species. Here, we present the largest compilation of global plant diversity to quantify the fraction of Earth’s plant biodiversity that are rare. A large fraction, ~36...

A key feature of life’s diversity is that some species are common but many more are rare. Nonetheless, at global scales, we do not know what fraction of biodiversity consists of rare species. Here, we present the largest compilation of global plant species observation data in order to quantify the fraction of Earth’s extant land plant biodiversity...

Green spaces in cities are under pressure from increasing population, urbanization, and development, making governance of these common pool resources a complex and multi-dimensional process. Governance of urban green spaces can be improved by participatory approaches. However, many developing countries do not have the institutional structures and p...

We are developing software tools to help design minigrids optimised for developing countries. In particular, the minigrids must be resilient to weather and climate, provide predicable generation, with a long maintenance-free lifetime. Solar PV and biofuels are the primary energy sources, although this will depend on the local resource. Batteries wi...

Even when they are societally relevant, scientific research results do not always contribute to policy development for solving societal problems, with science and policy often on parallel lines failing to intersect. For scientific research to be useful for decision making, it must answer questions relevant for bridging the gap to policy, and so enh...

Rise of transnational business governance has been used to argue that state control has declined, giving rise to the metaphor of a ‘hollowed-out state’. However, an alternative hypothesis is that, instead of a weakening of the state, a transformation occurs. This study uses interviews and discourse analysis to explore the main factors that trigger...

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to provide to a better scientific understanding of Indonesia’s domestic gas allocation policy and its effects on the national economy and to answer the question of what best priorities can be set in allocating the natural gas for the domestic market to maximize the benefits for the national economy. Design/meth...

Lake Chad lost more than 80% of its surface area over the past decades as a result of environmental change and climate variability. It is not yet known how climate change will affect water resources availability in the basin over the coming decades. In this study, the reliability ensemble averaging (REA) technique was used to evaluate the performan...

While considerable advances have been made in mainstreaming climate adaptation into sectoral policies in most regions across Africa, little is known about Central Africa (CA) even though the sub-region has enormous potentials to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through the Congo basin forest. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the progres...

Sustainability is a key concept in economic and policy debates. Nevertheless, it is usually treated only in a qualitative way and has eluded quantitative analysis. Here, we propose a sustainability index based on the premise that sustainable systems do not lose or gain Fisher Information over time. We test this approach using time series data from...

Characterisation of 27 types of biomass was performed together with an assessment of regional resource availability. Charcoal was produced under two conditions from all samples and their yields were compared. Sugarcane bagasse, sal and pine produced the best charcoal with a low volatile matter and high calorific value. The amount of high quality ch...

Understanding hydrological processes at catchment scale through the use of hydrological model parameters is essential for enhancing water resource management. Given the difficulty of using lump parameters to calibrate distributed catchment hydrological models in spatially heterogeneous catchments, a multiple calibration technique was adopted to enh...

Sustainability is a key concept in economic and policy debates. Nevertheless, it is usually treated only in a qualitative way and has eluded quantitative analysis. Here, we propose a sustainability index based on the premise that sustainable systems do not lose or gain Fisher Information over time. We test this approach using time series data from...

Topographic variables such as slope and elevation partially explain spatial variations in aboveground biomass (AGB) within landscapes. Human activities which impact vegetation, such as cattle grazing and shifting cultivation, often follow topographic features and also play a key role in determining AGB patterns, although these effects may be modera...

Significance Identifying and explaining regional differences in tropical forest dynamics, structure, diversity, and composition are critical for anticipating region-specific responses to global environmental change. Floristic classifications are of fundamental importance for these efforts. Here we provide a global tropical forest classification tha...

Upon publication of the original article [1], the authors noticed that the figure labelling for Fig. 4 in the online version was processed wrong. The top left panel should be panel a, with the panels to its right being b and c. d and e should be the panels on the lower row, and f is correct. The graphs themselves are all correct. It is simply the l...

The standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized streamflow index (SSI) were used to analyse dry/wet conditions in the Logone catchment over a 50-year period (1951–2000). The SPI analysis at different time scales showed several meteorological drought events ranging from moderate to extreme; and SSI analysis showed that wetter conditions...

Since 2001, the Indonesian government has issued natural gas master plans annually holding the planned gas infrastructure developments in order to motivate private parties who are not motivated due to the lack of the gas infrastructure increase. Since 2002, there were only three segments of gas pipelines that have been tendered (IEA, 2008) which ar...

Water sourced from Asian mountains is vital to the survival of an estimated 1.4 billion people, but current and anticipated changes in snow, ice cover, and precipitation patterns may threaten these supplies and, in turn, the food security of tens of millions of people. Despite the severity of this developing environmental hazard, the relative impor...

Access to, and control over, water for irrigation is one of the most important factors for increasing agricultural productivity, thereby affecting household food security and levels of poverty in developing countries. However, investments in the irrigation sector have often failed to consider equity aspects of irrigation interventions. Using data f...

Policies and strategies for disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Indonesia have been transformed politically and institutionally. Studies have shown that current progress for DRR in Indonesia has been largely focused at the national level. More efforts are needed to strengthen local institutions, increase focus on the community, and adopt a more integr...