Search Results (142)

This study aims to investigate the perspectives of aquaculture producers in the Western Mediterranean Region (operating in Antalya, Burdur, and Isparta provinces) on climate change, examine the impacts of climate change on regional aquaculture, and develop solution proposals. Within the scope of this objective, the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the aquaculture producers in the Western Mediterranean Region, along with their knowledge levels regarding climate change, were obtained through a questionnaire technique. The results indicate that producers, who are predominantly engaged in rainbow trout aquaculture, are under severe economic pressure due to high-exchange-rate-driven input costs and the abolition of government subsidies. While all participants (100%) perceived that climate change has decreased production tonnage, the most prominent impact of the climate crisis is perceived as drought and the decline of water resources, with a response rate of 37.2%. Multivariable analysis further showed that aquaculture experience and satisfaction with aquaculture income were significantly associated with producers’ future outlook, highlighting the importance of socioeconomic factors in shaping perceived sectoral vulnerability. Due to both rising costs and environmental risks, 50% of the producers view the future of the sector pessimistically and do not recommend this profession to future generations. Consequently, these results emphasize the critical need for integrated land and water resource management policies, alongside targeted climate adaptation strategies, to ensure the long-term socio-ecological sustainability of forest inland aquaculture in the region. Full article

Brazil presents a distinctive convergence of continental-scale climatic diversity, extensive urbanization, large-scale biomass burning, rapid land-use change, persistent air-quality monitoring gaps, and deep social inequalities, producing highly heterogeneous and compound environmental health risks. In this context, treating air pollution and climate change as parallel environmental crises obscures their structural interconnections through shared emission sources, mutually reinforcing exposure pathways, and overlapping health and social consequences. In this narrative review, we critically synthesize scientific and institutional lines of evidence and argue that air pollution and climate risks can be more effectively addressed in Brazil through a single strategic agenda for science, public health, and governance. We first discuss why these challenges cannot be managed in isolation, emphasizing the effects of heat, drought, stagnation events, biomass burning, and extreme weather on pollutant formation, dispersion, and health burden. We then examine Brazil as a critical case where recent regulatory advances coexist with structural limitations in monitoring, data integration, and territorial coverage. Based on this diagnosis, we propose an integrated national agenda organized around five mutually reinforcing priorities: monitoring through hybrid networks; predictive science through climate-informed modeling and early warning; public health through the convergence of epidemiology, toxicology, and mechanistic research; equity-oriented research and action through the explicit incorporation of vulnerability, inequality, and climate justice; and policy appraisal through the assessment of disease burden, economic costs, mitigation co-benefits, and trade-offs. We further discuss the governance mechanisms needed to connect these priorities and translate evidence into coordinated action and adaptive public policies. We also argue that the Amazon should be approached not as an isolated ecological exception but as a central component of a broader Brazilian and Global South discussion on environmental health, land-use change, and climate justice. In this scenario, Brazil has the scientific capacity and regulatory momentum to become a reference in the integrated management of air pollution and climate risks, but this will depend on replacing fragmented approaches with a coordinated framework capable of linking exposure, mechanism, burden, inequality, and action. Full article

Climate-change-induced drought can increase domestic water shortage not only by reducing runoff but also by exposing weaknesses in local sources, reservoirs, and wide-area transfer networks. This study simulates domestic water shortage in the Seomjin River water system, South Korea, using the Korea-Water Evaluation and Planning system (K-WEAP), and proposes an integrated eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost)–Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) framework to diagnose the explanatory factors of the simulated shortage. Representative drought scenarios were selected from an ensemble of climate projections using a dryness score based on precipitation-related extreme climate indices. K-WEAP was used to simulate shortage for eleven administrative districts, and XGBoost (version 3.2.0) models were trained for districts with sufficient shortage samples. SHAP analysis and shortage-event clustering were then applied to identify dominant explanatory factors and recurrent shortage patterns. The XGBoost models reproduced the simulated shortage rates well, with test R² values exceeding 0.91. Wide-area water supply was the dominant explanatory factor in three inland districts, whereas reservoir supply was more influential in the southern coastal district. The dependence analysis revealed threshold-type responses, in which shortage risk increased sharply once key supply variables fell below district-specific critical ranges. The results indicate that domestic water shortage is governed by district-specific supply pathways and threshold-type system responses rather than by uniform basin-wide drought effects. Full article

Climate-resilient land-use planning increasingly requires methods that can translate heterogeneous climate-risk knowledge into actionable territorial recommendations. This study develops the Hazard–Sector Translation Framework, a planning-oriented method for linking regional hazard pathways with affected territorial systems, land-use domains, recommendation families, planning instruments, and resilience functions. The framework was developed through a qualitative cross-regional synthesis of five Southern European regions: Sicily, Costa del Sol, Osijek-Baranja County, Central Greece, and the Troodos Mountain Range. The analysis identifies how diverse hazard pathways, including heat, drought, water scarcity, pluvial flooding, wildfire, hail, frost risk, and tourism climate-suitability pressures, become actionable through recurring land-use domains. Results show that heterogeneous regional risks converge around five main land-use resilience domains: buildings, agriculture, blue-green infrastructure, transportation, and protected-area conservation, while governance and capacity are treated separately as cross-cutting implementation conditions. The operational matrix demonstrates how region-specific hazard pathways can be converted into traceable recommendation structures without reducing local complexity. The framework does not replace detailed hazard modeling or climate-risk assessment; rather, it provides an intermediate methodological bridge between climate-risk evidence and land-use planning action. The approach is transferable to other regions seeking to organize stakeholder-derived needs and adaptation recommendations into coherent, sector-specific planning responses. Full article

Over the past few decades, South Africa has experienced recurrent drought events of varying intensity. The Musina Local Municipality is particularly vulnerable due to a semi-arid climate, erratic rainfall, and rising temperatures which collectively contribute to heightened environmental stress. This study analyzed drought spatiotemporal patterns, livelihood impacts, and associated coping strategies in Musina from 1991 to 2023. Adopting a mixed-method approach, the research integrated quantitative climate data from the Copernicus Climate Data Store with qualitative insights gathered through semi-structured questionnaires administered to local community members. Drought frequency and distribution were examined using rainfall anomalies, temperature trends, and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). With more than 15 drought events recorded between 1991 and 2023, the findings indicate that Musina experiences recurrent drought episodes including major drought events in 1991–1992 and 2015–2016, characterized by rising temperatures that intensify evapotranspiration and exacerbate water scarcity. SPEI results highlight repeated drought conditions over the study period, with over 14 identified episodes and variable recovery periods, while notably negative values during major events (1991–1992 and 2015–2016) reflect severe moisture deficits associated with elevated temperatures. These climatic shifts have significantly undermined agricultural productivity, livestock health, and household water security, thereby threatening overall livelihood stability. More than 50% of the households experienced water shortages, with 17% reporting crop losses and 17% livestock mortality. While the study identified various coping mechanisms—such as reliance on boreholes, government water aid, conservation agriculture, and livelihood diversification—community vulnerability remains high due to limited water infrastructure and ongoing climate variability. These results contribute to efforts to reduce localized drought risk by providing a detailed understanding of drought dynamics and the effectiveness of community-based adaptation strategies in Musina. Full article

Assessing projected hydrological scenarios from a risk perspective facilitates water governance and management. This study, framed in an informed and contextualized potential impact assessment process, evaluates the physical sensitivity to climate change on low flows and droughts, in a water supply sector, for illustrative purposes. More specifically, we evaluated 28 neutral scenarios using the WaSiM-ETH model on six catchments in Quebec, Canada. Guided by CORDEX—RCP 8.5 projections, the 28 scenarios are constructed around seven annual temperature changes ranging from 0 °C to 6 °C and four non-uniform monthly changes in precipitation ranging from −10% to +20%. The results show, for example, that for a scenario involving a 10% increase in precipitation and a 3 °C rise in temperature, the low flows reductions (7Q2) would range from 15% to more than 30%, the deficit in water volume during the droughts would increase by 2- to 3-fold, and the duration would vary little. No clear correlation was found between low flows and drought behaviour, with each catchment responding individually to the same climatic changes. This study thus advocates a tailored and context-specific methodology to operationalize risk assessment and make water resource management more efficient. Full article

Under the context of global climate change, extreme droughts constrain sustainable development in arid and semi-arid regions of Northwest China. This study took 22 counties in Ningxia as research units and established urban resilience and drought risk evaluation systems. The urban resilience evaluation system includes economy, society, ecology, infrastructure and governance, while the drought risk evaluation system covers hazard factors, vulnerability of the disaster-forming environment and exposure of hazard-affected bodies. It applied an entropy method, improved coupling coordination degree model and obstacle degree model to examine their coupling coordination and key obstacles from 2015 to 2022. The results were as follows. First, the overall urban resilience of county-level regions in Ningxia increased steadily from 2015 to 2022, with an average annual growth rate of 7.32%, while drought risk showed phased fluctuation. Second, the coupling coordination degree between urban resilience and drought risk generally evolved from a relatively high level to a high level, with an average annual growth rate of 2.39%. Its spatial distribution also exhibited marked county-level differences. Crucially, this elevated coordination represents optimized structural balance and narrowed gaps in relative development levels between the two systems, rather than an automatic, synchronous improvement in absolute resilience or risk mitigation. Third, the key factors restricting improvements in coupling coordination included land for cultivated land area, land for water conservancy facilities and medical resources. At the criterion layer, exposure of hazard-affected bodies was the primary obstacle. The findings imply that despite higher system coordination, resilience enhancement and risk prevention do not progress in a fully synchronized manner, remaining constrained by structural bottlenecks like resource endowments and public services. Therefore, tailored disaster-specific governance and operations are highly required for sustainable county-level development. Full article

Flash drought, an abruptly intensifying meteorological anomaly, poses a growing threat to agricultural production, ecosystem stability, and regional carbon cycling, particularly in croplands of monsoon regions. Existing studies have largely focused on point-scale identification or conventional vegetation indices, whereas the regional spatiotemporal evolution of flash droughts and crop-specific differences in photosynthetic recovery remain poorly understood. Using multi-source remote sensing data for the North China Plain and the Middle–Lower Yangtze Plain during 2001–2024, this study integrated triple-collocation error assessment, root-zone soil-moisture percentile identification, connected-component tracking, and Random Forest–SHAP analysis to characterize flash drought trajectories and their vegetation impacts. The results showed that the southern Middle–Lower Yangtze Plain exhibited a high-frequency but low-intensity pattern, whereas the central North China Plain was characterized by lower frequency yet higher intensity and longer duration. Rice-based systems were more vulnerable to frequent flash drought shocks, whereas rainfed and rotation systems faced stronger cumulative risks. Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) responded to flash droughts 6–9 days earlier than gross primary productivity (GPP), and all cropping systems displayed a “rapid physiological response–lagged carbon-assimilation recovery” pattern. The month of occurrence, drought duration, and decline rate were identified as the dominant factors governing photosynthetic recovery. These findings extend the flash drought monitoring framework to incorporate regional connectivity and crop recovery mechanisms, providing a remote-sensing basis for agricultural early warning, drought mitigation, and food-security management. Full article

The changing climate raises the level of hydroclimatic non-stationarity and export of pollutants at the event scale in agricultural, mixed-land-use, and urbanizing watersheds. In this review, there is an emphasis on nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment; however, selective references are made to pesticides, pathogens, microplastics, and wet-weather mixed-source processes when characteristics similar to event-driven transport, threshold exceedance, and adaptive control are identified. Drawing on a structured literature search of studies published from 2000 to December 2025, this narrative review synthesizes evidence from 138 selected references on how extreme rainfall, drought–rewetting, warming, and freeze–thaw processes alter source activation, hydrological connectivity, biogeochemical processing, and receiving-water hazards. Our resilience assessment is based on resistance, recovery, robustness, and persistence, which we interpret using exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. It is shown that standard average-load and fixed-baseline measurements may not detect short pollution pulses, cross-scenario failure, and long-term drift; operational measurement must thus involve event thresholds, recovery trajectories, tail-risk measures, and propagation of uncertainty. Extrapolation, interpretability, data demand, and applicability for data-sparse basins are used to compare process-based, data-driven, and hybrid models. Adaptation options are associated with measurable triggers as part of a monitoring–trigger–action cycle with location-specific instructions for monsoon-agricultural, cold-region, semi-arid and urban systems. The novel aspect of this framework is the integration of mechanism-based evidence, quantitative resilience indicators, model uncertainty, and adaptive governance into one decision-focused workflow. This sustainability-oriented framework advances long-term watershed management by linking water-quality protection and resilient development. Full article

Climate warming and the increasing frequency of extreme climate events have exerted a systemic shock on global Agricultural Production Resilience (APR). Clarifying the impact mechanism is essential to ensuring global food security. This study employs a cross-country network meta-analysis framework. We systematically synthesize 76 empirical studies published between 2005 and 2025. This paper aims to quantify the impacts of five climatic factors on APR. These factors include extreme high temperature, extreme drought, extreme flooding, precipitation variability, and temperature anomaly. Heterogeneity and moderating effects across latitudinal regions, agricultural production modes, agricultural structures, and irrigation conditions are examined, followed by robustness tests and publication bias analysis. The results show that: (1) At a cross-country scale, all five climatic factors have significant negative impacts on APR. The intensity of impact ranks in descending order as extreme flooding, extreme high temperature, extreme drought, precipitation variability, and temperature anomaly, with extreme climates as the dominant risk factor. (2) The impact effects exhibit significant latitudinal heterogeneity. The absolute value of adverse shocks to APR in low-latitude regions is markedly larger than that in mid- and high-latitude countries; extreme floods constitute the primary risk for low-latitude areas, while extreme high temperatures dominate mid- and high-latitude regions. (3) Rain-fed agriculture and crop farming suffer substantially stronger climatic impacts than irrigated agriculture and animal husbandry. (4) Agricultural structure and production modes exert prominent moderating effects. A higher share of crop cultivation and rain-fed farmland corresponds to stronger adverse climatic impacts, whereas animal husbandry, facility agriculture, and well-developed irrigation facilities can partially mitigate such disturbances. This study provides empirical evidence for countries and regions to implement differentiated adaptation policies within agricultural climate governance frameworks and enhance APR. Full article

Under global warming, compound extreme events such as Drought–Flood Abrupt Alternation (DFAA) are becoming increasingly common, yet the structural asymmetry and spatial dynamic evolution between Drought to Flood (D–F) and Flood to Drought (F–D) processes remain under-researched. Using high-resolution daily precipitation data spanning 1961 to 2022 from nine major river basins in China, DFAA events were identified via the Standardized Weighted Average Precipitation (SWAP) index coupled with run theory, and their evolution was analyzed using multidimensional spatiotemporal metrics. Our results reveal a spatial frequency and severity mismatch, where southern basins exhibit high frequency occurrences dominated by slight to moderate events, whereas northern and inland basins experience lower overall frequency but a significantly higher proportion of severe events. Spatial polarity asymmetry is evident, with D–F events dominating nationwide and exceeding 74% in northern and inland basins, while southern humid basins exhibit a more balanced D–F/F–D structure. Temporally, D–F processes involve prolonged moisture accumulation, whereas F–D processes manifest as short-lived post-rainfall moisture deficits. Based on risk trajectories, basins were categorized into four impact patterns: highly oscillatory pattern, intensifying pattern, long-cycle accumulative pattern, and baseline pattern. Ultimately, regional DFAA risks are governed by polarity asymmetry and non-stationary evolution rather than absolute frequency alone, providing a critical scientific basis for basin-specific disaster mitigation strategies under climate change. Full article

Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) have gained increasing attention as institutional mechanisms for improving the resilience of smallholder farming systems under changing climatic conditions. This study examines the role of FPOs in promoting the adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices, improved irrigation strategies, and sustainable land management in the arid region of Pali district, Rajasthan, India. A comparative assessment was conducted between FPO-associated member and non-member farmers to evaluate differences in climate change perception, adoption behaviour, and adaptive capacity. The study employed a mixed-methods research design using primary data collected from 408 farm households through structured interviews, focus group discussions, and key informant consultations. Descriptive statistics, mean comparison tests and regression analysis were used to examine adoption patterns and identify the major factors influencing farmers’ responses to climate risks. The findings indicate that delayed rainfall, rising temperatures, and increasing drought frequency are widely perceived by farmers as major threats to agricultural production. FPO membership was associated with higher levels of climate-risk awareness and greater reported adoption of CSA practices; however, these findings should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects. Farmers linked with FPOs reported stronger uptake of improved and stress-tolerant crop varieties, crop diversification, mixed farming systems, agroforestry, soil moisture conservation, rainwater harvesting, improved irrigation methods, and integrated pest management practices. Education, farm size, access to extension services, market linkages, and climate information were also found to significantly influence adoption decisions. The study highlights the important contribution of FPOs in reducing transaction costs, improving access to inputs, technical knowledge, credit and markets, and encouraging collective responses to climate stress. Strengthening FPO governance, expanding extension support, and targeting vulnerable farmer groups can substantially enhance climate resilience and support sustainable agricultural transitions in arid regions. The findings demonstrate that farmer organizations can serve as effective intermediary institutions linking household-level adaptation strategies with broader goals of irrigation efficiency, land management, and rural sustainability. Full article

Climate change and rapid urbanization increasingly threaten water security in large river basins, yet existing assessments often fail to capture the multi-scale interactions between hydroclimatic extremes and human activities. To address this gap, we developed an integrated framework combining risk assessment, multi-method driver diagnosis (Geodetector, Multi-Scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR), and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)), and Zoned Management. Using a landscape-derived Ecological Risk Index (ERI) as a proxy indicator of runoff and non-point source potential, based on established empirical linkages between landscape metrics and hydrological processes, we applied the framework to three major urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Basin from 2000 to 2020. Our results reveal three distinct risk mechanisms: in the Chengdu–Chongqing area (CYUA), a 165.8% increase in impervious surfaces drives altered runoff; in the Middle Reaches (MRC), the q-value of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) rose from 0.017 in 2000 to 0.146 in 2020, corresponding to a 759% relative increase. Although the absolute q-value of SPI remains moderate at around 0.15, its rapid rise suggests increasing hydrological sensitivity of the MRC’s river–lake system to precipitation extremes; in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), socioeconomic activities exert overriding pressure. Based on these diagnostics, we propose tailored strategies for water environment management, adaptive planning, and disaster mitigation. This framework offers a scientific basis for differentiated water governance in large river basins facing coupled anthropogenic and hydroclimatic pressures. Full article

Climate-related disasters are escalating in frequency and severity, yet global adaptation finance remains critically insufficiently structured to respond after disasters occur rather than before. This study empirically examines disaster loss data, climate finance flows, and financial instrument evidence to test two hypotheses: whether climate finance is disaster-reactive, and whether policy uncertainty constrains it. We integrate data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), covering seven climate-induced hazard types (droughts, extreme temperatures, floods, glacial lake outburst floods, wet mass movements, storms, and wildfires), in addition to the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS), the World Uncertainty Index (WUI), the ND-GAIN vulnerability index, and the World Governance Indicators, the Green Climate Fund Open Data Library, and the Artemis Deal Directory across 131 countries (2011–2024) for Hypothesis 1 and 100 countries (2012–2024) for Hypothesis 2. Fixed-effects panel regressions with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors confirm that prior-year disaster losses significantly predict subsequent climate finance flows (β = 0.040, p = 0.009; N = 1769 country-year observations), establishing a reactive financing pattern. Policy uncertainty interacting with high vulnerability is found to suppress adaptation finance flows (β = −2.587, p = 0.080, N = 878 country-year observations), with the effect concentrated among the most climate-exposed economies. We propose a risk-layered climate finance architecture aligning instruments with distinct hazard tiers across the Global South. Credible policy signals, strategic public investment, and systematic integration of insurance mechanisms are essential preconditions for unlocking scalable, forward-looking resilience finance. Full article

Drought, one of the most severe natural disasters globally, has inflicted notable impacts on animal husbandry production, yet the current research on drought impact assessment in pastoral systems is plagued by obvious gaps, such as the lack of comprehensive quantitative evaluations integrating grassland ecosystem and livestock production indicators, unclear quantitative relationships between drought severity gradients and multi-level pastoral impacts, and the absence of validated quantitative assessment frameworks linking drought indices with actual pastoral economic losses. To fill these gaps, this study takes Inner Mongolia grasslands as the research area, analyzes the spatiotemporal characteristics of drought and its impacts on grassland net primary productivity (NPP) over the 50-year period from 1961 to 2012, and quantifies the differential impacts of three representative gradient drought events (1974 moderate, 1986 severe, and 1965 extreme) on grassland NPP, standard hay yield, sheep units and livestock economic losses. The long-term analysis shows that drought frequency in the study area decreases with increasing severity, with the typical steppe having the highest drought frequency and a “nine droughts in ten years” pattern in the central and western regions; drought intensity increases westward, and duration extends with rising severity, and its spatial distribution is highly consistent with the east–west precipitation gradient. Drought is the dominant driver of NPP variation, explaining up to 84% of NPP anomalies, with meadow steppe being the most sensitive to drought and desert steppe showing stronger drought resilience due to adaptive traits such as deeper root systems. The assessment of the three representative drought events reveals that drought impacts exhibit a linear amplification effect with severity, with extreme drought causing an average NPP loss 2.8 times greater, hay yield loss 1.1 times greater, and economic loss 4.4 times greater than those caused by moderate drought, and different grassland types show distinct response characteristics to drought of varying severity. The NPP loss spatial distribution is highly consistent with severe drought areas, and sheep unit loss is directly correlated with drought severity. Most importantly, the study validates a robust quantitative assessment framework ($SPI\to NPP\to hay yield\to sheep units\to economic loss$) with relative errors of less than 9% compared with historical disaster records, which systematically links drought indices with practical pastoral economic losses. This research clarifies the quantitative relationships between drought and multi-dimensional pastoral impacts, and provides actionable scientific insights for drought risk governance in arid and semi-arid pastoral areas such as Inner Mongolia. Full article