Subject: Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Geosciences Contributions to Addressing Global Environmental Destabilization” – Terra Digitalis

Posted on 2026-10-05

We invite submissions for a special issue of Terra Digitalis focused on the role of Geosciences in documenting, understanding and responding to global environmental destabilization.

For approximately five decades, a robust and increasingly spatially explicit body of evidence has documented profound changes in multiple Earth system subsystems, pushing them away from the Holocene equilibrium state. Key destabilization processes include climate change, loss of biodiversity (biosphere integrity), critical alterations to the phosphorus and nitrogen cycles evident in continental water bodies eutrophication state, and ocean acidification. These processes represent planetary boundaries whose current trajectories indicate a significant departure from stable operating conditions. There is strong scientific consensus that human activities are the primary driver of destabilization in most of these subsystems, and near-consensus that all are fundamentally anthropogenic, with the prevailing global economic system identified as a key underlying factor.

Terra Digitalis is a peer-reviewed international journal and the only platform that publishes interactive maps directly embedded in its spatial data infrastructure. For this special issue, we welcome cartographic works and research results that illustrate how the geosciences contribute to characterizing and addressing global environmental destabilization. We encourage submissions that:

  • Map and visualize significant environmental trends linked to planetary boundaries and Earth system change;

  • Identify and represent alternative pathways for nature use and management that could help reverse or mitigate destabilization processes;

  • Integrate spatial data, interactive mapping, and online geovisualization to communicate geoscientific insights on global environmental change.

Submission window: Reception of manuscripts until 15 December 2026.
Publication: Continuous publication beginning 1 January 2027, throughout the first semester of 2027.

We particularly encourage contributions that leverage interactive 2D/3D maps, dynamic visualizations, and open spatial data to make complex geoscientific evidence accessible and actionable.

Guest Editors / Special Issue Coordinators:

  • Dr. Stéphane Couturier, Editor-in-Chief

  • Dr. Rosa María Prol Ledesma, Section Editor (Geophysics)

For author guidelines and submission instructions, please visit: https://terradigitalis.unam.mx

We look forward to receiving your contributions.