Search Results (6,215)

Cold sensitivity restricts the natural distribution of subtropical evergreen trees. In a representative species such as Phoebe bournei, evaluating physiological divergence among provenances is therefore essential for identifying cold-hardy germplasm and understanding adaptive evolution. This study investigated the photosynthetic capacity, redox homeostasis, and carbon metabolism of saplings from three provenances (WY, AF, and SC) under chilling stress and subsequent recovery. The results showed that low temperature significantly inhibited the net photosynthetic rate and photochemical efficiency in all saplings through predominant non-stomatal limitations. The northern provenance WY prioritized structural integrity and redox homeostasis by enhancing cyclic electron flow and timely antioxidant activation. The mid-latitude provenance AF demonstrated higher physiological plasticity and achieved more rapid recovery of photosynthetic activity upon rewarming. In contrast, the southern provenance SC was highly sensitive to chilling stress, exhibiting disrupted energy dissipation, severe lipid peroxidation, and impaired coordination of carbon metabolism and hormonal regulation. Overall, the pronounced divergence in adaptive strategies among provenances is evident. These findings provide a physiological basis for understanding intraspecific variation in P. bournei and offer guidance for germplasm selection under climate change. Full article

Global food production systems are increasingly challenged by population growth, climate change, water scarcity, and environmental degradation, necessitating the adoption of sustainable, resource-efficient food production strategies. Aquaponic systems integrate recirculating aquaculture with hydroponic crop cultivation, enabling nutrient recycling and improved water-use efficiency. Simultaneously, CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology has emerged as a powerful tool for precise genetic improvement of economically important aquaculture traits. This review critically evaluates current progress in CRISPR/Cas9 applications in aquaculture, with emphasis on Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus). Evidence from peer-reviewed studies indicates that targeted modification of genes associated with growth regulation, disease resistance, nutrient metabolism, feed efficiency, and stress tolerance can significantly enhance fish productivity and physiological resilience. Genes involved in hypoxia adaptation and nitrogen metabolism may further improve environmental performance in intensive recirculating systems by reducing ammonia accumulation and enhancing nutrient utilization. However, most genome-editing studies have been conducted under laboratory or conventional aquaculture conditions, with limited information available regarding the long-term performance, ecological interactions, microbial dynamics, and biosafety of genome-edited fish in aquaponic environments. Technical limitations including off-target effects, mosaicism, delivery efficiency, regulatory uncertainty, and public acceptance continue to constrain large-scale implementation. In the short term, CRISPR/Cas9 applications are likely to focus on practical trait enhancement under controlled aquaculture systems, whereas longer-term research may explore fish lines specifically optimized for nutrient cycling, environmental resilience, and integrated aquaponic sustainability. Overall, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing represents a promising but still emerging strategy for improving sustainable aquaculture and aquaponic food production systems. Full article

Aquatic environments that support tourism, including coasts, lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries, are experiencing accelerating eutrophication worldwide. This trend increases the frequency and intensity of algal blooms. These blooms undermine ecosystem services and weaken the socio-economic performance of destination areas. Despite these challenges, existing research remains fragmented. Aquatic sciences mainly examine nutrient enrichment and bloom dynamics. In contrast, tourism studies often treat blooms as episodic disturbances and rarely integrate exposure pathways, risk communication, or feedback to destination governance. This review synthesizes evidence across freshwater and marine systems to develop a coupled tourism–water ecosystem perspective. We link eutrophication drivers and bloom typologies to three dimensions. These are the degradation of tourism-supporting ecosystem services, compound health stressors, and communication filters. The first includes losses of water clarity and aesthetic value. The second involves multi-route exposure through contact, inhalation, and seafood ingestion. The third shapes perceived safety, trust, and behavioral adaptation. We further connect perceived health risks to observable tourist behaviors, including cancellation, destination substitution, and activity avoidance. These micro-level responses can aggregate into market-level demand contractions and consumption reallocation. They can also trigger regional economic cascades, including public management costs, employment impacts, and long-term reputational damage. Crucially, tourism is not merely a victim of blooms. It can also act as a reinforcing anthropogenic driver through wastewater burdens, infrastructure expansion, and pulse pressures. These pressures lower ecological resilience, especially under warming and hydrological stabilization. Finally, we identify governance leverage points. These include early-warning systems, threshold-based graded interventions, transparent risk communication, and integrated social–ecological modeling. These strategies can reduce uncertainty-driven losses and support adaptive destination management. Overall, this review reframes algal blooms as systemic social–ecological risks. It provides a structured basis for future empirical attribution and policy design in tourism-dependent waters under climate stress. Full article

This study assesses the future availability of water resources in Lake Guiers by 2050, considering the combined impacts of climate change and human activities, using the Water Evaluation and Planning System. As Senegal’s main freshwater source, the lake faces growing pressure from agricultural expansion, aquatic plant overgrowth, competing stakeholder demands, and increasing water use. The study combines field data on hydrological flows and agricultural water use with climate projections under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. Climate data were downscaled and bias-corrected using CMhyd, multiple linear regression, and the Mann–Kendall test. Model calibration showed strong performance (NSE = 0.95; R² = 0.96). Results reveal decreasing precipitation and rising temperatures under both scenarios. Agricultural withdrawals (79,331,457.14 m³/year) already exceed crop water needs (69,115,088.03 m³/year), resulting in significant water losses estimated at over 10 million m³ per year. Scenario analysis indicates that high water demand under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways SSP8.5 could lead to critical declines in lake volume as early as 2026 (550 million m³), while moderate demand growth under SSP4.5 could maintain water availability until 2050. The proposed PREFERLO-Grand Transfer project would add further stress to the lake’s capacity. These findings emphasize the urgent need for sustainable water management and policy actions. Full article

Rising heatwaves threaten urban sustainability, necessitating a shift toward heat resilience. This study examines 38 cities across China’s three major coastal urban agglomerations (2016–2024) to quantify dynamic resilience responses. Utilizing a dual-threshold identification method and the Baidu Search Index to construct a Standardized Stress Index (SSI), the research evaluates urban heat vulnerability (UHV) through an exposure–sensitivity–adaptive capacity framework while applying NMF and machine learning models (XGBoost/SHAP) to analyze spatiotemporal heterogeneity. The results show that heatwave pressures peaked in 2022–2023, with Jing–Jin–Ji’s UHV evolving from localized clusters toward regional homogenization. Regional UHV profiles reveal that Jing–Jin–Ji is constrained by population pressures, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) by resource allocation, and the Pearl River Delta by industrial attributes; notably, the YRD’s systematic coordination effectively offsets structural vulnerability. Furthermore, the optimized XGBoost model achieves strong predictive performance (R² = 0.673), revealing that core factors like summer heat exposure intensity (SHE, 25.65% importance) trigger sharp non-linear surges in social stress upon crossing critical inflection thresholds (e.g., SHE at −0.10). The conclusion will lead to the formulation of differentiated, forward-looking climate adaptation strategies to enhance urban resilience across major regions. Full article

Mediterranean-type forest ecosystems are becoming increasingly vulnerable to intensifying drought, threatening the resilience of even highly adapted ecosystems such as the Northern Jarrah Forest in south-western Australia. This study quantifies multi-decadal dynamics of canopy water stress using a 36-year multispectral satellite archive (1988–2024) and the newly developed Infrared Canopy Dryness Index (ICDI). We combined this spatiotemporal dataset with a MaxEnt-based risk assessment framework to identify the biophysical drivers of drought-induced canopy loss and to delineate high-risk zones under accelerating climate-forcing changes. Our results demonstrate a systematic spatial expansion of canopy dryness, paralleling a deteriorating regional climatic water balance. Hotspot analysis revealed a transition from localized, peripheral stress to widespread, chronic drought conditions across the landscape. The modelling achieved high diagnostic accuracy (AUC = 0.952), significantly outperforming conventional assessment methods. Regolith depth was identified as the primary determinant of drought-induced canopy collapse, followed by ICDI, NDVI, and slope. Crucially, high-biomass stands exhibited disproportionately higher risk of collapse, revealing a density-dependent vulnerability that suggests productive forests are approaching critical hydraulic thresholds. Conversely, lower-stature forests to the east of the study area demonstrated greater stability, likely due to reduced evapotranspirative demand. These findings provide robust spatial evidence for transitioning from reactive monitoring to proactive forest management. We conclude that targeted interventions, such as ecological thinning and prescribed burning in identified high-risk zones, are imperative to protect the forest and preserve the structural integrity of Mediterranean ecosystems in a drying climate. Full article

Climate change and increasing water scarcity are intensifying pressure on irrigated agriculture, which currently represents 70% of global freshwater withdrawals. Remote sensing technologies have become essential tools for monitoring soil moisture, evapotranspiration, crop growth, and irrigation performance across multiple spatial and temporal levels. This review synthesizes 83 peer-reviewed studies published between 2002 and 2025, focusing on the use of optical, thermal, and microwave sensors to support irrigation water management under climate variability. The analysis highlights progress in multi-sensor integration, UAV-based monitoring, crop and agro-hydrological modeling, and emerging machine learning approaches that enhance irrigation scheduling, soil moisture estimation, and crop water stress detection. Despite these advancements, several methodological challenges persist, including data integration constraints, sensor-specific limitations, model transferability issues, insufficient ground validation, and difficulties in translating remote sensing outputs into operational decision support systems. In addition, structural gaps at the policy level restrict the evaluation of irrigation efficiency and climate resilience. This review aims to clarify current limitations and outline priority research directions to enhance the climate resilience and sustainability of irrigated agricultural systems. Full article

Rapid urbanization reshapes urban land systems and intensifies surface thermal heterogeneity, yet nonlinear day–night land surface temperature (LST) responses to grey–green spatial organization and building morphology remain insufficiently understood, particularly in thermally stressed areas across the urban–rural gradient. Using Xi’an, China, as a case study, this study develops a priority-area-based land–climate interaction framework. Priority areas were defined as grid cells where elevated LST coincided with relatively strong local explanatory relationships between LST and land-cover or morphological variables. Multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR), gradient boosting decision trees (GBDTs), SHAP-based interpretation, and threshold sensitivity analysis were combined to identify dominant drivers, nonlinear response patterns, and interaction structures of daytime and nighttime LST. The results show pronounced day–night differentiation: daytime hotspots were concentrated in the built-up core, whereas nighttime hotspots extended toward the urban–rural fringe. Daytime LST was mainly associated with building coverage and grey-space organization, while nighttime LST was more strongly related to mean building height and the cooling contribution of green-space coverage. The analysis further identified localized empirical response ranges for built-up intensity, grey-space connectivity, building height, and green-space coverage within the priority areas. These findings clarify how land-cover configuration and building morphology jointly shape day–night surface thermal responses and provide context-specific evidence for land-use planning and targeted urban heat mitigation. Full article

Rice monoculture systems, often involving double- or triple-cropping cycles annually, require intensive agricultural practices that can lead to land degradation. This study evaluates land degradation within the long-term rice monoculture systems of Nakhon Sawan, Thailand, using the Sustainable Development Goal 15.3.1 framework. By focusing exclusively on persistent rice-growing areas, the study minimized the confounding signals of land-use conversion, allowing for an evaluation of the trajectories driven by combined agricultural management and climatic factors. The assessment integrated land use and land cover (LULC), soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, and land productivity. Findings indicate that 83% of the original paddy area remained long-term monoculture, with LULC-related degradation limited to 4% of the original paddy cultivation area. While SOC depletion was observed in a few districts, a broader potential carbon accretion trend was identified across the province, likely driven by sustainable post-harvest practices such as stubble retention and organic amendments. Land productivity analysis revealed partial stress only in a few districts. The study demonstrated that long-term rice cultivation did not result in widespread deterioration of soil health on an aggregate provincial scale; however, district-localized degradation hotspots suffering from soil organic carbon depletion and climate-induced productivity stress were identified, demanding targeted regional management. Full article

Water scarcity is increasingly recognized as a slow-onset ecological crisis with major environmental, socio-economic and governance effects, yet systematic assessments of how research on this topic has evolved remain limited. This study addresses this gap through a bibliometric and thematic analysis of water-scarcity publications from 2000 to 2025, using VOSviewer (version 1.6.20), Biblioshiny™ (Bibliometrix version 4.3.1) and RStudio (version 2024.12.1 + 563) to map research trends, conceptual clusters and leading contributing countries, institutions and authors. The analysis shows that water scarcity research is organized around four dominant themes: adaptive water management and climate resilience, plant physiological responses to drought and water stress, ecosystem resilience and biodiversity under water scarcity, and water-limited agriculture and food security. Early scholarship focused heavily on biophysical processes such as drought tolerance and hydraulic conductivity, while recent studies increasingly incorporate socio-ecological, governance and policy dimensions, reflecting a shift toward holistic, solution-oriented approaches. Overall, the study provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and global distribution of water scarcity research, highlighting the importance of integrating biophysical knowledge with human-centered strategies to support evidence-based decision-making, strengthen inclusive water governance, and enhance socio-ecological resilience in the face of a changing climate. Full article

In the context of subtropical cities, the slow-moving environment of HOD (Hospital-Oriented Development) faces the dual challenges of spatial fragmentation and an extreme hot and humid climate, which also restricts the outdoor space’s thermal environment performance. Taking the Macau Light Rapid Transit (LRT) Union Hospital Station as an example, this study constructs a “topology-climate” dual quantitative assessment framework that integrates space syntax and parametric universal thermal climate index (UTCI) simulation. In response to the current problems of mixed pedestrian and vehicular traffic and high-intensity heat radiation, a comprehensive intervention strategy combining three-dimensional stitching and spatial optimization is proposed. The results show that: (1) The implantation of three-dimensional corridors improved the spatial integration of the core area of the site by 67.0%, significantly optimizing network connectivity. (2) During the extreme high-temperature period of daytime (9:00–18:00) in summer and autumn, the intervention strategy precisely opened up a continuous low-heat-stress linear shade zone through the synergistic mechanism of building projection shadows, physical shading of connecting corridors, (landscape shading effect, original evaporation removed). (3) The study confirms that landscape-coupled shading layout is the most effective method, reducing potential pedestrian heat exposure across the entire area, while the three-dimensional connecting corridors precisely control the thermal environment of core walkways. Together, these two elements construct a “topology-climate” optimization framework, achieving a synergistic improvement in spatial accessibility and simulated thermal comfort performance under standard meteorological input and quantitatively verifying the optimization effectiveness of the tiered intervention scheme. This study provides a data-driven decision-making basis for optimizing potential walking thermal conditions for vulnerable groups and reshaping the space’s potential to improve microclimate via shading design of medical hub areas and also provides a scientific paradigm for TOD microclimate planning focused on shading-based thermal environment optimization. Full article

Preharvest climatic conditions and irrigation management are decisive determinants of avocado postharvest performance. Avocado trees are highly susceptible to the water regimen, conditions that disrupt carbon assimilation, mineral nutrient uptake, and biomass partitioning. This study evaluated the effects of deficit irrigation imposed during early stages of fruit growth, coinciding with active cell division, on fruit development and postharvest quality of ‘Hass’ avocado. Deficit and excess irrigation induced physiological stress, reducing stem water potential (≈−1 MPa) and altering photochemical efficiency, while F_V/F_M remained unaffected. Fruit growth was strongly affected, with weight reductions of up to 26% during development and 22% at harvest under severe deficit, resulting in fruits becoming more yellowish-green. In contrast, excessive irrigation promoted larger fruit with darker green skin, with delayed maturation. Metabolomic revealed that the fruit developmental stage was the main driver of metabolic variation, while irrigation effects were minor and stage-dependent, limited to osmotic-related metabolites such as GABA. These findings indicate that early-season water imbalances primarily affect fruit growth through changes in water relations rather than metabolic reprogramming, highlighting the importance of precise irrigation management during critical developmental stages. Fine-tuning water supply during early developmental stages is a strategic tool for optimizing fruit size and postharvest quality in avocado. Full article

Small and medium-sized (SMS) lakes in cold–arid regions are highly sensitive to climate change and play critical roles in regional hydrological and ecological processes. However, their long-term dynamic evolution along aridity–humidity gradients remains insufficiently understood. This study aims to reveal the spatiotemporal variations in SMS lakes on the Inner Mongolia Plateau and clarify their climatic driving mechanisms. Based on Landsat imagery and meteorological data (1984–2021) on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, this study quantified the spatiotemporal variations in SMS lakes and adopted an ecological–geographical zoning framework to characterize lake responses across aridity–humidity gradients. Results indicate that, from 1984 to 2021, the total area of SMS lakes showed an insignificant linear trend but a net increase of 117% (396.50–860.33 km²), while the lake number increased by 155%, with 59 new lakes. The dynamics followed four stages: expansion (1984–1993), fluctuation (1994–2002), low-level stability (2003–2011), and recovery (2012–2021). Notably, recovery levels remained below the pre-2003 peak, with 2003 identified as a critical turning point. Lake numbers responded to climatic stress earlier than area changes. Spatially, lake variations in arid regions were primarily controlled by energy-related factors (e.g., temperature and potential evapotranspiration), while lake changes in semi-humid regions were dominated by precipitation-regulated water availability. Semi-arid regions presented transitional characteristics constrained by both energy and water factors. Although extreme weather events did not dominate long-term lake evolution, they significantly exacerbated short-term lake fluctuations. Overall, the controlling mechanism of SMS lakes shifted from energy limitation to water regulation under ongoing climate warming, highlighting pronounced regional differences in climate–lake interactions. Full article

This study evaluates the demand dynamics of the 20 leading strategic destinations in the global tourism market by modeling the interactions between traditional macroeconomic determinants and climate-linked environmental sustainability indicators. The primary objective is to assess the predictive capacity of physical and structural environmental factors—including water stress, air pollution, renewable energy adoption, and sanitation infrastructure—relative to established economic metrics like GDP per capita. Employing non-parametric predictive frameworks on a panel dataset of 400 observations (2000–2019), the empirical analysis suggests that tree-based ensemble models, notably Extra Trees (90.54%) and CatBoost (84.75%), yield higher predictive accuracy than conventional multiple linear regression (73.97%). Interpretations derived from cooperative game theory via SHAP analysis suggest that environmental determinants may serve as important predictive drivers of tourism demand. Specifically, variables such as water stress (28.20%), renewable energy share (27.12%), and sanitation infrastructure carry substantial predictive weight, whereas the benchmark macroeconomic indicator (2.30%) exerts a relatively marginal influence within the model architecture. These findings imply that environmental sustainability metrics may capture international tourism demand variations more effectively than traditional economic variables. The results suggest that acute environmental vulnerabilities may be associated with reduced tourism inflows, potentially reflecting limitations in destination sustainability thresholds. Broadly, the evidence is consistent with the notion that contemporary global tourism demand may be increasingly interdependent with ecological resilience and low-carbon transition policies. It is important to note that the findings reported here reflect predictive associations derived from machine learning models and should not be interpreted as evidence of causal relationships. Full article

Investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban heat islands and their responses to urban forest (UF) landscape patterns is crucial for mitigating urban thermal stress. However, the nonlinear influence and conditional constraints of UF landscape composition and configuration on the warming effects across varying urbanization gradients remain inadequately understood. By integrating land use/cover data, MODIS-derived land surface temperature (LST), and meteorological datasets, this study employed the XGBoost-SHAP model to quantify the nonlinear and interaction effects of UF landscape patterns on developed and developing urban regions of the Pearl River Delta. The results indicate that (1) spatial clustering patterns of warming varied significantly between the two regions, with substantial seasonal heterogeneities (p < 0.05). Summer exhibited the most intense warming, characterized by more rapid temperature increase in developed areas than in developing regions. (2) Relative to UF landscape metrics, the proportion of impervious surfaces, precipitation, and temperature exerted greater influence on regional warming. Coverage area, fragmentation, and connectivity of UFs emerged as the primary landscape drivers modulating warming. In developed areas, spatial configuration metrics exerted greater influence on LST than compositional metrics. (3) The responses of LST to diverse UF landscape patterns are characterized by nonlinearity and pronounced threshold effects. These landscape thresholds vary by season, revealing critical tipping points for warming suppression; however, this regulatory effect is highly context-dependent. Specifically, under high percentages of impervious surface, the warming-suppression capacity of UFs intensifies with increasing percentage of UF area or core. Our findings highlight the necessity of strategic UF planning and forest fragmentation mitigation for developing effective climate resilience strategies. These results provide a foundation for adaptive planning tailored to specific urbanization stages and the implementation of targeted UF cooling strategies. Full article