Liu joined the faculty of Michigan State University in 1995. He has been the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability since 2004 and University Distinguished Professor since 2005. In 2004, he became the founding director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.[1]
Liu has published approximately 400 journal articles, book chapters, and books, in collaboration with hundreds of students and scholars around the world. His publications cover a variety of topics, such as telecoupling, systems integration, sustainability, protected areas, biodiversity, ecosystem restoration, ecosystem services, forest dynamics, drivers of environmental change (e.g. divorce and household proliferation), coupled human and natural systems, ecology, ecological economics, conservation, environment, food systems, land use and land cover change, landscapes, metacoupling, climate change impact, nature-based climate solutions (e.g., natural carbon capture and sequestration), natural resources (e.g., bioenergy, forests, land, water), sociology (e.g., social norms), sustainable development goals, systems modeling, technology (e.g., AI, geographic information systems, machine learning, remote sensing), and wildlife. Below are a few highlights.
Xu, Zhenci, Sophia N. Chau, Xiuzhi Chen, Jian Zhang, Yingjie Li, Thomas Dietz, Jinyan Wang, Julie A. Winkler, Fan Fan, Baorong Huang, Shuxin Li, Shaohua Wu, Anna Herzberger, Ying Tang, Dequ Hong, Yunkai Li and Jianguo Liu (2020)." Assessing progress towards sustainable development over space and time". Nature. 577 (7788): 74-78.
Liu, Jianguo (2020) Telecoupling. In: The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology. Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Liu, Jianguo, Vanessa Hull, H. Charles J. Godfray, David Tilman, Peter Gleick, Holger Hoff, Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Zhenci Xu, Min Gon Chung, Jing Sun and Shuxin Li (2018). "Nexus approaches to global sustainable development". Nature Sustainability 1(9):466–476.
Liu, Jianguo, Vanessa Hull, Mateus Batistella, Ruth DeFries, Thomas Dietz, Feng Fu, Thomas W. Hertel, R. Cesar Izaurralde, Eric F. Lambin, Shuxin Li, Luiz A. Martinelli, William J. McConnell, Emilio F. Moran, Rosamond Naylor, Zhiyun Ouyang, Karen R. Polens (2013). "Framing sustainability in a telecoupled world". Ecology and Society 18(2):26.
Liu, Jianguo, Thomas Dietz, Stephen R. Carpenter, Marina Alberti, Carl Folke, Emilio Moran, Alice N. Pell, Peter Deadman, Timothy Kratz, Jane Lubchenco, Elinor Ostrom, Zhiyun Ouyang, William Provencher, Charles L. Redman, Stephen H. Schneider, William W. Taylor (2007). "Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems". Science 317(5844):1513-1516.
Liu, Jianguo; Marc Linderman; Zhiyun Ouyang; Li An; Jian Yang; Hemin Zhang (2001). "Ecological degradation in protected areas: The Case of Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas" Science 292(5514):98-101.