Information Design, Decision-Making and Uncertainty in Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues,

Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems characterized by nonlinear interactions, emergent behaviors, feedback loops, and pervasive uncertainty. As climate change, biodiversity loss, urbanization, and resource pressures increasingly interact across scales, effective environmental management requires moving beyond data accumulation toward the design of actionable ecological information. This Special Issue requests contributions that advance the science of how information is generated, organized, communicated, and utilized to support decision-making under uncertainty in ecosystems.

We welcome studies that explore ecosystem intelligence, ecohydrological and ecological networks, information theory, uncertainty quantification, resilience assessment, systemic risk analysis, and decision-support frameworks. Particular emphasis is placed on approaches that bridge ecological processes with management actions through innovative information design, including network-based models, digital twins, ecosystem observatories, explainable artificial intelligence, computational ecomimicry, and nature-positive design strategies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Information theory and ecosystem organization;
• Socio-ecohydrological networks;
• Ecosystem intelligence and information/decision support systems;
• Systemic risk, resilience, and vulnerability assessment;
• Uncertainty propagation and adaptive management;
• Explainable AI and machine learning for ecosystem design and management;
• Climate adaptation and mitigation under deep uncertainty;
• Ecosystem digital twins and predictive ecosystem modeling;
• Real-time ecoclimatic sensing and actuation;
• Nature-based solutions and nature-positive design;
• Multi-scale monitoring, sensing, and eco-environmental informatics;
• Human-environment interactions and collective decision-making;
• Data-driven approaches for biodiversity and ecosystem service management.

The Special Issue will foster a new generation of frameworks for transforming eco-environmental data into meaningful information, actionable knowledge (also through automated technology), and informed decisions, enabling societies to navigate uncertainty while enhancing ecosystem resilience, sustainability, and adaptive capacity in a rapidly changing world.

Dr. Matteo Convertino
Guest Editor

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