An introduction to advances in sediment science and management
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EDITORIAL
An introduction to advances in sediment science and management Philip N. Owens 1 Accepted: 3 November 2020 / Published online: 13 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
1 The role of scientists in providing the evidence-based warning of crises For decades, scientists and others have expressed deep concern about the changes measured in the Earth’s atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. This concern and the associated attempt by scientists to inform society, in general, and policy developers, in particular, have intensified in recent years. Perhaps the most widely acknowledged and respected group of environmental scientists is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988. The IPCC has produced numerous reports which synthesize the best available scientific evidence on climate change and offer advice for how this may be addressed (see https://www. ipcc.ch/). Other scientific organizations have also provided reports and publications which provide “warnings” of the state of the planet and the consequences if humanity fails to act. For example, in 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued the “World scientists’ warning to humanity” (UCS 1992), which described the collision course between human beings and the natural world. These warnings have intensified in recent years with several publications by the Alliance of World Scientists and similar groups (e.g. Ripple et al. 2017, 2020; Cavicchioli et al. 2019; Albert et al. 2020; Jenny et al. 2020), as well as some initiatives which have built upon this at a national or regional level (e.g. Coogan et al. 2019). This science-based evidence has driven a wider recognition by society as a whole of the crisis that humanity and numerous other species appear to be facing from global * Philip N. Owens [email protected] 1
Environmental Science Program and Quesnel River Research Centre, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia V2N 4Z9, Canada
environmental change; here meant to incorporate global climate change. An example of this is the recent change in language from terms like “climate change” and “climate warming” to “climate crisis” by the media and others; some have argued that the magnitude and urgency of the problem were not made sufficiently clear by the former terms. Perhaps the most important mechanism for communicating advances in scientific and other knowledge is academic journals. Until recently, communication via journals was mainly between discipline-specific scientists and researchers. However, developments associated with the world-wide web—especially academic search engines like Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science—have expanded the availability and access to journal articles and reports from organizations like IPCC. Thus, in theory, the general public and decision-makers should now be more informed of scientific de
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