Future directions in human-environment research

•Citizen science and stakeholder-driven science will gain ground in the years ahead.•Training needs to ensure capacity to cross the natural sciences and the social sciences.•Ethical dimensions of sustainability science needs to address obligations to nature and to society.•Increased capacity for computationally sophisticated socio-ecological research is needed.

Human-environment research in the 21st century will need to change in major ways. It will need to integrate the natural and the social sciences; it will need to engage stakeholders and citizens in the design of research and in the delivery of science for the benefit of society; it will need to address ethical and democratic goals; and it will need to address a myriad of important theoretical and methodological challenges that continue to impede progress in the advance of sustainability science.