Recent assessments on the integrity of the Earth system and planetary health recognize the deteriorating resilience of the Earth system, with planetary-scale human impacts leading to increasing transgression of planetary boundaries, constituting a new epoch of Earth system dynamics: the Anthropocene. Earth resilience, the capacity of the Earth system to resist, recover, and regenerate from anthropogenic pressures, critically depends on the non-linear interplay of positive and negative feedbacks of biophysical and increasingly also socio-economic processes and human–Earth system interactions. These include dynamics, interactions, and feedbacks between the carbon cycle, the atmosphere, oceans, large-scale ecosystems, and the cryosphere, as well as the dynamics and perturbations associated with human activities. Studying Earth resilience requires a deeply integrated perspective on the human–Earth system in the Anthropocene. Science frontiers in this emerging field include the definition of planetary boundaries, the characterization of a safe operating space for humanity, informing the navigation of thresholds and critical transitions in the global socio-environmental system, and the identification of sustainable pathways for future development. Existing Earth system analyses and integrated assessment tools have provided essential information for diagnosing losses of resilience and informing options for action but largely overlook feedback loops between social and environmental processes. New tools are needed to adequately address these interactions and the new challenges they generate in a complex Anthropocene world of polycrises and global systemic risks. What is needed is a better understanding of the fully coupled co-evolutionary dynamics of human societies and the biophysical Earth system in the past, present, and future and also of the determinants of stability and system coherence through shifting regimes and reorganizations.

Review process: all papers of this special issue underwent the regular interactive peer-review process of Earth System Dynamics handled by members of the editorial board as well as guest editors designated by the ESD chief editors.