Search Results (6,740)

Climate-driven range shifts are redistributing biodiversity, yet the niche dynamics of Afrotropical and Saharo-Arabian species expanding into the Palearctic remain poorly quantified. The Namaqua Dove (Oena capensis), an arid-zone columbid at the Palearctic margin, was used to assess current and future climatic suitability in Türkiye and to compare its colonised and native niches. An ensemble niche model was fitted from occurrence and climate data, evaluated by cross-validation, and projected to 2070 and 2100 under three emission scenarios and five climate models. Suitability was predicted chiefly by precipitation, with low winter temperature as a secondary constraint, and roughly 92,000 km² is already climatically suitable. In environmental space, the colonised records formed a contained, cool-margin subset of the native niche, indicating partial filling rather than expansion into novel climate. Low niche overlap, non-significant similarity tests, and a failed native-model transfer indicate a non-equilibrium, still-establishing front rather than full niche conservatism. The suitable area increased under every scenario and shifted predominantly eastward, with a north-eastward component, rather than poleward. The eastward pattern reflects the geometry of the suitable climate across Anatolia rather than an intrinsic directional preference. Because most of the projected climate has no present-day analogue, the direction of change is better supported than its magnitude, though both are conditioned by this extrapolation. The projected magnitude is reported as scenario illustration rather than forecast. These results indicate that suitability for O. capensis in Türkiye is shaped jointly by precipitation and winter temperature, with colonisation tracking suitable climate rather than shifting into novel conditions. Full article

Quantifying the net hydrological impact of large dams amidst climatic and anthropogenic influences remains a major challenge. This study isolates the effect of Three Gorges Dam (TGD) regulation on discharge at Jiujiang Station in the middle Yangtze River (2009–2016) using a novel scenario-based framework. A Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network, optimized by the Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA), simulated daily discharge with high accuracy (Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency coefficient > 0.97). By comparing a “with-TGD” simulation against a “without-TGD” scenario—generated by replacing the dam’s regulated outflow with its reconstructed natural inflow—we quantified the net impact ($\Delta Q$). Results show that $\Delta Q$ is substantially modulated by river–lake interactions. For example, in December, the backwater effect from Poyang Lake amplified the direct flow reduction by an additional −82.5 m³/s. The “peak-shaving” effect was context dependent: TGD regulation increased high flows (>30,870 m³/s) by an average of +372 m³/s while slightly decreasing low flows (<12,711 m³/s) by −31 m³/s. The impact exhibits strong seasonality alongside considerable intra-seasonal variability, reflecting multi-objective operations (flood control, power generation, water supply). This framework provides a transferable approach for attributing hydrological change in large regulated rivers and supports integrated water resources management. Full article

Live fuel moisture content (LFMC) is a key determinant of fuel flammability and forest fire danger; however, its operational monitoring remains challenging due to the limited spatial and temporal coverage of field measurements. This study aims to assess the operational suitability of a Random Forest-based methodology for LFMC estimation by extending a previously validated local-scale approach to a regional and multi-year context. Weighted average LFMC was modeled across 67 shrubland plots in the Valencian Region (eastern Spain) from 2017 to 2025 using Sentinel-2 spectral indices and aggregated meteorological variables consistent with prior research. Model performance was evaluated under spatially independent and combined spatio-temporal training–testing scenarios designed to approximate real-world wildfire monitoring conditions. Results show that the model exhibits good spatial transferability when applied to shrubland plots not used during training within the same temporal domain, while temporal extrapolation is more limited and dependent on the stability of climatic conditions represented in the training data, with a marked decline in performance under changing temperature and precipitation regimes. These findings highlight key drivers of LFMC prediction, identify validation strategies under operational constraints, and contribute to the development of scalable monitoring approaches for wildfire danger assessment and fuel management in Mediterranean shrublands. Full article

The paper addresses the intersection between modern built heritage preservation and Climate-Aided Design (CADe) processes in fragile coastal Mediterranean contexts. The study focuses on the city of Beirut in Lebanon, part of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region and considered a climate change hotspot facing extreme challenges. Rapid urbanization and socio-political instability, especially during the twentieth century, have undermined the city’s ability to mitigate and adapt to future climate change scenarios. Moreover, Beirut’s modern built heritage faces a constant threat of demolition due to the absence of protective legislation, compounded by aggressive real-estate development ambitions. The hypothesis is that the integration of climatic data and regenerative design with modern cultural heritage classification frameworks can aid the preservation process, drive a more adaptive and inclusive approach to urban regeneration, and inform legislative integration of climate adaptation in conservation frameworks. To test this hypothesis, a multi-scalar case-study-based methodology is adopted using a combination of digital tools to assess and analyze the current and future impacts of climate change on two main case studies. First, the St. George Hotel & Bay, one of the first reinforced concrete recreational buildings in the city, was built during the French Mandate (1920–1946) and is vulnerable to sea-level rise, flooding, and demolition. Second, the Beirut City Center “The Egg”, a Brutalist structure built during Beirut’s modernist “golden era”, which is prone to structural deterioration and demolition. The main objective is to highlight 20th-century built heritage as part of Beirut’s spatial narrative worthy of conservation and rehabilitation by analyzing their capability to adapt to, mitigate, or benefit from future environmental risk. Ultimately, the study explores their potential to catalyze climate-resilient urban regeneration practices in the city. Results show that the integration of current and future forecast environmental analyses informed early preservation and intervention decision-making stages to position 20th-century modern built heritage as an asset to climate action in addition to being a socio-cultural and economic asset. Full article

This study investigates historical and future climate variability in the Canagagigue Creek Watershed, located in southern Ontario, through statistical downscaling and trend assessment of key climate variables. Future climate projections from the Canadian Global Circulation Model (CGCM2) under SRES A2 and B2 emission scenarios were downscaled using the Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) to generate daily maximum temperature (T_max), minimum temperature (T_min), and precipitation series for the future period of 2025 to 2044. Historical observations were used to calibrate (1961–1990) and validate (1991–2001) SDSM performance as well as to evaluate long-term trends in local climate conditions. Results indicate that SDSM provides better downscaling performance for temperature variables than for precipitation, with reliable reproduction of historical T_max and T_min patterns (NSE > 0.98). Downscaled future projections suggest consistent warming across the watershed, characterized by warmer winters and hotter summers, along with reduced temperature variability. Historical trend analysis reveals significant increases only in T_min (0.033 °C per decade, p = 0.076), while T_max and precipitation trends show weak or statistically insignificant changes. Future trends similarly indicate notable increases in T_min, particularly during winter months (up to 0.13 °C per decade, p < 0.05), whereas changes in mean precipitation (P_mean) remain minimal. Increased summer precipitation variability, however, suggests a greater likelihood of heavy rainfall events, albeit with large uncertainty. Overall, this study demonstrates the utility of statistical downscaling for generating watershed-scale climate information and provides insight into evolving temperature and precipitation patterns that may influence environmental and resource management planning in southern Ontario. Full article

Waste tires as an alternative fuel in the cement industry offer multiple advantages, including reduced CO₂ emissions and decreased reliance on fossil fuels. In this study, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for cement clinker production with coal (CPC) as fuel and with waste tires as an alternative fuel (CPCT). The study adopted a “gate-to-gate” scope, with a functional unit of 1 ton of clinker. Environmental impacts were evaluated using the IMPACT 2002 + method. Global warming and non-renewable energy were the dominant impacts in cement clinker production. Compared to the CPC scenario, the CPCT scenario reduced the endpoint damage to resources, climate change, and human health by 19.91%, 2.30%, and 0.70%, respectively. However, the damage to ecosystem quality increased by 11.53%. When the waste tires substitution ratio increased from 5% to 20% according to scenario simulation results, the impacts on non-renewable energy and global warming dropped by 16.23% and 8.59%, respectively. Conversely, this higher substitution ratio exacerbated terrestrial acid/nutri (+10.75%), aquatic acidification (+9.70%), and respiratory inorganics (+5.76%). The results indicated a trend toward reduced reliance on coal and lower CO₂ emissions in the cement clinker production process through the substitution of waste tires. Nevertheless, the trade-off involved higher emissions of certain pollutants, most notably NO_x, leading to increased ecosystem-related impacts. Full article

Traditional species distribution models can identify climatically suitable areas but offer limited guidance for spatially explicit agricultural planning. In this study, we constructed a three-dimensional coupled framework of “suitability prediction–habitat quality filtering–ecological security screening” by integrating BIOMOD2 ensemble modeling, InVEST habitat quality assessment, and ecological security evaluation to identify candidate cultivation zones for Piper nigrum L. in China under climate change. Based on occurrence records and environmental variables, we simulated potential suitable habitats under current and future climate scenarios, identified key climatic drivers, and delineated candidate zones by overlaying habitat quality and ecological security levels. The results show that the current total suitable area for P. nigrum is 87.76 × 10⁴ km², with low-, moderate-, and high-suitability areas accounting for 37.28 × 10⁴ km², 25.12 × 10⁴ km², and 25.36 × 10⁴ km², respectively. Temperature seasonality and winter cold stress were identified as the dominant factors shaping the suitability pattern. Under future climate scenarios, the total suitable area shows an increasing trend, with highly suitable areas expanding toward the coastal regions of South China and the low-latitude hilly zones. After overlaying with habitat quality and ecological security, climatically suitable but ecologically fragile or intensively disturbed areas were effectively excluded, and the current candidate cultivation zones were identified as mainly concentrated in the southern Yunnan–southern Guangxi–Guangdong–Hainan coastal region. This framework enables a transition from identifying climatic suitability to collaborative climate–habitat–ecology screening, providing a scientific basis for sustainable cultivation and germplasm management of P. nigrum, and is transferable to priority cultivation area identification for other tropical cash crops. Full article

Climate variability represents a major threat to agricultural systems, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions such as the Beni-Amir irrigated perimeter, located in the Tadla plain in central Morocco. In this perimeter, olive trees are exposed to multiple environmental and management-related factors that are associated with variations in phenology and vegetation vigor, such as successive drought episodes. This study represents a spatio-temporal assessment of drought impact on olive using satellite- derived vegetation indices from Sentinel-2 imagery and precipitation satellite data from CHIRPS over the period 2015–2024. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI-12) was used to identify wet and dry phases over this period. The results indicate an alternation of dry and wet periods between 2015 and 2021, followed by a predominance of dry conditions from September 2021. Over the same period, the time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the other vegetation indices reveals marked interannual variability and a progressive degradation of olive tree phenological cycles. A land cover map derived from a supervised support vector machine (SVM) under three classification scenarios achieved high overall accuracies exceeding 94%. Post-classification change detection highlights a substantial reduction in mapped olive-growing areas between 2016 and 2024, with an estimated 72% loss of the initial area. The findings reported in this study indicate that the succession of drought episodes may have contributed to olive grove degradation, including disruptions in phenological cycles and a decline in maximum NDVI values. Even the most resilient olive groves appeared affected following the severe drought period after 2021. The study underscores the usefulness of satellite-derived vegetation indices and drought indicators for the effective monitoring of drought-related stress and supporting improved management practices under climate change. Full article

Phoracantha recurva Newman (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), a wood-boring beetle native to Australia, threatens Eucalyptus L’Hér plantations worldwide. Despite established populations across North America, South America, Europe, and Africa, its global colonization potential and niche dynamics under climate change have received limited attention. Here, we used the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model, integrating 844 occurrence records and eight bioclimatic variables, to predict the potential geographical distribution of P. recurva under current conditions and three future climate scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) for 2041–2070 and 2071–2100. We quantified niche dynamics using the COUE framework through calculations of niche stability, expansion, unfilling, and Schoener’s D, complemented by niche equivalency and similarity tests. The model exhibited excellent predictive performance (AUC = 0.954 ± 0.004; Boyce index = 0.999). Suitable habitats for P. recurva occurred primarily between 60° N and 55° S. Under all three future scenarios, total suitable area displayed a gradual decline while the potential distribution shifted toward higher latitudes, particularly across Europe and China. Niche analysis confirmed substantial niche conservatism during global invasion, yet revealed considerable niche unfilling during colonization of the Eurasian continent—indicating persistent potential for further range expansion. Niche comparisons between native and invaded ranges under model-projected distributions yielded expanded overlap across all regions except Africa, where invasive populations may undergo niche differentiation under changing climatic conditions. Our findings emphasize the ongoing invasion risk that P. recurva poses to major Eucalyptus-planting countries and call for strengthened inspection and quarantine measures to protect global forestry plantations. Full article

Ecosystem services (ESs) underpin human well-being and regional development by linking ecological processes with human land–use activities. However, for arid oasis urban agglomerations, evidence remains limited on long-term ES changes, landscape-type contributions, and future responses under alternative development pathways. We quantified five ESs in the UCS from 1990 to 2020 using InVEST and statistical allocation methods and related the resulting service maps to landscape-type contributions and service-pair relationships. The PLUS model generated 2030 land–use pathways, which were used to compare ES responses under BAU, ED, and EP scenarios. The LEAS module identified how climatic, socioeconomic, topographic, and accessibility factors contributed to land–use expansion and thereby indirectly shaped ES patterns. The results show that (1) from 1990 to 2020, food production (FP) increased with fluctuations from 16.30 to 62.06 t·km⁻², whereas water yield (WY), carbon storage (CS), soil conservation (SC), and habitat quality (HQ) declined by 27.8%, 5.7%, 27.0%, and 5.4%, respectively; (2) the five ecosystem services showed clear spatial heterogeneity, with food production characterized by high values in the central oasis plain and low values in the northern and southern parts, whereas the other four services showed a south-high/north-low gradient; forestland, grassland, and water bodies were the major landscape types supporting ecosystem-service supply; (3) ecosystem-service interactions changed dynamically: FP showed clear Pearson trade-offs with HQ and weak trade-offs with SC, whereas WY-CS, WY-SC, CS-SC, SC-HQ, WY-HQ, and CS-HQ were mainly synergistic; FP-WY and FP-CS also showed positive Pearson correlations, indicating that food-production expansion in oasis areas was partly coupled with water-resource and cropland–related carbon-storage patterns; and (4) the 2030 scenario simulations showed differentiated responses: under BAU and ED, FP remained nearly stable or slightly decreased, whereas WY, CS, SC, and HQ increased slightly; under EP, all five services improved relative to 2020, with FP, WY, CS, SC, and HQ increasing by approximately 4.08%, 2.33%, 3.13%, 9.60%, and 0.79%, respectively, making EP the most favorable pathway for enhancing ecosystem-service supply and mitigating FP-related trade-offs. The results identify where provisioning gains conflict with water, soil, carbon, and habitat functions and provide a basis for differentiated oasis management in Urumqi, Changji, Shihezi, and Wujiaqu. Full article

Background/Objectives: Dental procedures are generally not considered environmentally sustainable; however, there is a growing emphasis on the implementation of environmentally conscious practices in dentistry. Despite this shift, the environmental impact of oral surgical interventions remains insufficiently investigated. The odontectomy of impacted teeth represents the most frequently performed procedure in oral surgery. The aim of this study was to conduct a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment of the odontectomy of submucosal and intraosseous impacted teeth. Methods: To perform the life cycle assessment, a life cycle inventory was compiled based on the observation and measurement of odontectomy procedures carried out at the dental clinic of George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Târgu Mureș, Romania. The analysis was carried out using the OpenLCA 2.5 software and the ReCiPe 2016 v1.03 midpoint and endpoint impact categories. Results: Odontectomy of intraosseous impacted teeth had higher environmental impact values than submucosal procedures across all midpoint categories examined. The climate change (GWP) results were 1.43 kg CO₂-eq (submucosal) and 1.56 kg CO₂-eq (intraosseous) in the average-case scenario, while in the worst-case scenario these values increased to 2.21 and 2.35 kg CO₂-eq, respectively. The overall DALY value was also higher in the intraosseous group. Single-use materials contributed the most to the majority of impact categories, while the contribution of reusable instruments was also noticeably higher in intraosseous procedures. Conclusions: A comparison of the two surgical procedures indicates that the environmental burden is primarily associated with the complexity of the procedure and the associated equipment requirements. Integrating sustainability considerations into clinical protocols could potentially yield significant environmental benefits in oral surgery. Full article

Sustained warming is displacing montane species upslope, yet trees already at the upper limit of their mountains face a finite vertical refuge. This study assessed whether the world’s highest-elevation tree, Polylepis tarapacana, can remain within climatically suitable terrain as the climate warms across its South-Central Andean range (Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina), with field validation in Tacna, southern Peru. The aim was to quantify, under CMIP6 scenarios extending to 2100, how much suitable habitat the species retains and what fraction of any loss leaves no reachable higher-elevation refuge. A MaxEnt model, benchmarked against Random Forest, was calibrated on the full known range from GBIF occurrences and field plots using collinearity-filtered bioclimatic predictors and a sampling-bias-corrected background, projected as a multi-GCM ensemble under CMIP6 twenty-first-century scenarios, and validated externally against 148 field-mapped stand polygons (12,874 ha). A novel elevational-ceiling and “no-escape” framework quantified, for each scenario, the suitable area lost without any reachable higher-elevation refuge. The models discriminated suitable habitat well (external AUC $=0.85$, Boyce $=0.98$). Under the highest-emission pathway, suitable habitat in Tacna contracts from $-13\%$ (2030s) to $-100\%$ (2090s) and the highly suitable class collapses by $99.4\%$; across the partial-loss scenarios, the suitability centroid shifts upslope by up to $+195$ m. By 2081–2100 the no-escape fraction reaches $100\%$ at every tested dispersal buffer—to date the first quantitative evidence of mountaintop-extinction risk for the world’s highest-elevation tree. These results argue for anticipatory ex situ conservation and Peru–Bolivia cross-border protection of the highest-elevation Altiplano refugia, before the vertical escape route closes. Full article

Long-term energy system models often represent renewable energy technologies using aggregated potentials and average capacity factors, which may insufficiently reflect the spatial and technological heterogeneity of weather-dependent resources. This study develops and implements resource- and performance-based renewable energy supply curves for solar photovoltaics, onshore wind and offshore wind in the TIMES-PL energy system model for Poland. These supply curves are coupled with time-dependent techno-economic assumptions in TIMES-PL, allowing the modelled attractiveness of individual renewable resource classes to change across model years. The proposed approach combines spatial resource assessment, GIS-based data processing and differentiated hourly capacity factor profiles. The supply curves were constructed using data from the JRC ENSPRESO database, the PVGIS interface and the Copernicus Climate Data Store, with QGIS applied to classify renewable resource potential according to regional conditions, wind farm location and photovoltaic panel orientation. Two model scenarios were compared: a base scenario without supply curves and a scenario with implemented supply curves. The results show that incorporating spatial and technological constraints changes the modelled optimal capacity mix, although the overall system-level differences remain moderate. Accordingly, the results should be interpreted primarily in terms of installed capacity expansion rather than as a full comparison of system costs, electricity generation, unit dispatch or balancing effects. The total installed capacity in the supply-curve scenario is 1.91–3.44 GW higher than in the base scenario, corresponding to less than 3% of total system capacity. This increase results from the model being required to use renewable resource classes with lower capacity factors once the most favourable potentials are fully utilised. This study demonstrates that renewable energy supply curves can improve the representation of spatially differentiated renewable deployment options in long-term national energy system modelling. Full article

The use of structural timber in buildings can serve as a significant source of long-term biogenic carbon storage and a tool for climate change mitigation. This study assesses the potential of structural timber and its associated Harvested Wood Products (HWP) within the Latvian building stock using a normative building typology and a material intensity modelling approach. The model links statistical data on the Latvian building stock, the official functional classification of buildings, and structural timber material intensity coefficients. It analyses changes in total building floor area and timber building floor area from 2010 to 2025 and develops deterministic HWP development scenarios up to 2050. Under the assumed typological configuration, the reference models indicate that structural timber intensity decreases with the number of storeys and approaches approximately 0.07 m³/m² in the extrapolated range. A significant disproportion was identified between the share of timber buildings by count and by floor area, with the largest latent HWP potential concentrated in multi-apartment, industrial, agricultural, and logistics building groups. Under the historical timber floor-area trend scenario, the reference embedded structural timber stock increases from 0.957 million m³ in 2025 to 1.194 million m³ in 2050. After applying the material intensity correction factors, the adjusted HWP stock estimate reaches 1.313–1.611 million m³, corresponding to 1.05–1.29 million t CO₂eq of biogenic carbon storage. Under the 50% reference floor-area scenario, where the timber floor-area share in selected functional groups increases linearly to 50% of the 2025 reference floor area by 2050, the reference embedded structural timber stock reaches 6.764 million m³. The adjusted HWP stock estimate reaches 7.441–9.132 million m³, corresponding to 5.95–7.31 million t CO₂eq of biogenic carbon storage. The required annual increase in reference embedded structural timber stock under this benchmark scenario is approximately 0.232 million m³/year, or about 6.6% of Latvia’s annual sawn timber production flow. The results suggest that targeted promotion of structural timber in priority building groups could substantially increase long-term carbon storage in the built environment, while providing an order-of-magnitude link between construction sector development and national HWP carbon accounting. Full article

Mediterranean grasslands are highly sensitive to climate variability because their productivity is strongly constrained by water availability. Understanding how future climate change may affect forage production across hydroclimatic gradients is essential for the adaptation of extensive grazing systems. This study evaluated the response of Mediterranean grassland productivity to future climate scenarios along a climatic gradient in central Spain using the ecohydrological model SIMPAST driven by an ensemble mean of six CMIP6 global climate models under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Three representative grassland systems located in mountain, foothill, and semi-arid flatland environments were characterized according to vegetation composition, soil properties, and historical biomass production. The model was calibrated using productivity data from 2016 to 2023 and independently validated with biomass observations from 2024 to 2025. Calibration focused on radiation use efficiency and water use efficiency parameters, achieving high agreement between simulated and observed biomass (R² = 0.90) with calibration absolute errors below 20 kg DM ha⁻¹ across the three study sites. Independent validation using biomass observations from 2024 to 2025 resulted in RMSE values ranging from 506 to 771 kg DM ha⁻¹. Simulations revealed clear spatial differences in future productivity responses. Mountain grasslands exhibited stable productivity throughout most of the century, with projected biomass reductions of approximately 4% and increases in interannual variability of 14% under SSP5–8.5 relative to the historical period. In contrast, foothill grasslands showed moderate productivity declines (25%) and higher variability (37%), while semi-arid flatland systems revealed the strongest reductions in biomass production (33%) together with the largest increase in interannual variability (72%). These results indicate that arid environments are considerably more vulnerable to future climatic stress due to stronger water limitations. Simulations also suggested increasingly variable and less predictable forage availability under future climate conditions, particularly under higher-emission scenarios. Overall, the findings highlight the central role of water availability in regulating Mediterranean grassland productivity and demonstrate the usefulness of ecohydrological models for supporting adaptive grazing management and climate change adaptation in Mediterranean livestock systems. Full article