Advances and gaps in mitigation and management practices across critical landscapes and scales

Environmental systems are increasingly stressed by the interacting effects of climate change, land-use change, agricultural intensification, urbanization, and emerging contaminants. This paper synthesizes contributions to the Journal of Environmental Management special collection, “Advances and gaps in mitigation and management practices across critical landscapes and scales,” which examines current progress and remaining challenges in environmental mitigation and best management practices. The reviewed studies span diverse landscapes, scales, and management contexts, with emphasis on water quality, water quantity, pollutant transport, ecological resilience, and sustainable agricultural systems. Four major themes emerge: the combined pressures of climate and human activity on environmental systems; innovations in modeling, monitoring, remote sensing, and statistical forecasting; evaluation of management interventions and mitigation strategies; and cross-cutting insights related to spatial variability, extreme events, long-term dynamics, and implementation gaps. Collectively, the studies demonstrate that mitigation effectiveness is highly context-dependent and influenced by hydrologic connectivity, land use, climate variability, management history, and social factors. Advances in process-based models, machine learning, geospatial technologies, and monitoring, reporting, and verification frameworks are improving the ability to predict environmental responses and evaluate intervention outcomes. However, persistent gaps remain in long-term monitoring, maintenance of management practices, adaptation to extreme events, and translation of scientific findings into policy and practice. This synthesis highlights the need for integrated, adaptive, and stakeholder-informed approaches to strengthen environmental resilience across critical landscapes.