Search Results (3,259)

This paper examines the traditional ponds of the Kathmandu Valley through the lens of Biophilic Urbanism, situating them within the broader framework of water management system. The study utilised a case study approach, drawing on field observations and secondary sources to analyse the spatial distribution, ecological roles, and socio-cultural significance of three pond typologies. Findings suggest that these ponds are not merely historical artefacts or utilitarian water bodies, but integral components of a sophisticated socio-ecological system that played a significant role in balancing hydrological functions with sensory experiences and cultural practices. The study highlights how these water bodies embody a holistic model of the integration of nature into the built environment, offering critical insights for urban resilience, climate adaptation, and sustainable urban development in contemporary cities. Full article

Unsustainable forest management in the past and current climate change are altering the species composition and spatial structure of forest vegetation. As a result of these transformations affecting the entire forest ecosystem, both the quality and quantity of animal communities are also being modified. Insects are especially sensitive to environmental changes, and among them, carabid beetles (Carabidae) are widely regarded as model organisms. The aim of this study was to examine alterations in the structure of carabid beetle assemblages found in coniferous (CON) and deciduous (DEC) forests. The study was carried out in north-eastern Poland in four forest habitat types: deciduous fresh forest (Df), deciduous mixed fresh forest (DMf), coniferous mixed fresh forest (CMf), and coniferous fresh forest (Cf). Carabid beetles were captured using pitfall traps from May to October in 2013 and 2014. A total of 20,125 individuals representing 79 Carabidae species were collected. The recorded carabid beetles showed high ecological plasticity. Most species were distributed across both forest types despite differences in structure and environment, including vegetation characteristics and microclimatic conditions. No significant differences were observed between coniferous and deciduous forest assemblages in terms of carabid beetle abundance, species richness, or diversity. The differences observed between deciduous and coniferous forests were primarily related to species composition and the ecological structure of Carabidae. Unexpectedly, most of the distinguished ecological groups differed from the established pattern found in the literature, which states that deciduous forest communities are the primary refuge for forest carabid beetles. The similar species richness and diversity levels observed in both groups, together with the balanced distribution of predatory, winged and open-habitat carabid beetles across forest types, suggest the presence of detrimental ecological processes. Forest management is known to homogenize the qualitative, quantitative, and spatial structure of vegetation, which, along with climate change, may result in negative transformations reflected in carabid beetle assemblages. Therefore, maintaining structurally diverse forest stands and supporting habitat continuity may be important for biodiversity conservation, and incorporating biodiversity indicators such as carabid beetles into forest monitoring may support the long-term sustainability and resilience of forest ecosystems. Full article

Rapid urbanization and climate change have intensified environmental pressures and social inequalities, making the integration of urban resilience and sustainable development a critical global challenge, with Nature-based Solutions (NbS) emerging as a promising pathway; however, the knowledge structure, collaboration patterns, and evolutionary trends of NbS research remain fragmented and insufficiently understood. This study conducts a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 1261 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection (2005–2025), employing tools including VOSviewer 1.6.20, CiteSpace 6.4.R1, and Bibliometrix 4.1.3 to map publication trends, collaboration networks, knowledge bases, and thematic evolution. The results reveal a rapid expansion of NbS research since 2013, characterized by strong interdisciplinarity and a multicentric yet uneven geographical distribution dominated by China, the United States, and Europe. Four major research clusters are identified, encompassing policy governance, environmental benefits, ecosystem services, and social equity, reflecting a shift from ecological performance to integrated socio-ecological frameworks. Additionally, thematic evolution indicates growing emphasis on governance mechanisms, public health, and environmental justice. Overall, NbS research is transitioning toward a multi-scale, multi-objective, and governance-oriented paradigm. These findings highlight the need for strengthened international collaboration, standardized evaluation frameworks, and inclusive policy design to enhance the effectiveness and global applicability of NbS in advancing urban sustainable development. Full article

The gut microbiome is a dynamic ecosystem that plays essential roles in host metabolism, immune regulation, colonization resistance, and maintenance of intestinal homeostasis. Antibiotic exposure profoundly disrupts this ecosystem by reducing microbial diversity, depleting beneficial commensals, reshaping microbial metabolic functions, and remodeling the gut resistome through the selection and dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Increasing evidence from longitudinal metagenomic, multi-omics, and experimental studies indicates that these perturbations may persist long after antibiotic withdrawal due to incomplete ecological recovery, sustained mobile genetic element-mediated ARG dissemination, and altered microbiome resilience. Beyond antimicrobial resistance, antibiotic-induced dysbiosis has been associated with reduced short-chain fatty acid production, altered bile acid metabolism, impaired epithelial barrier function, and broader disturbances in host metabolic homeostasis, although many of these relationships remain associative rather than causal. This review provides an integrated overview of antibiotic-driven gut microbiome dysbiosis, emphasizing the ecological, functional, metabolic, and resistome-level consequences of antibiotic exposure together with the mechanisms governing microbiome recovery. Current microbiome-targeted restoration strategies, including probiotics, phage therapy, fecal microbiota transplantation, and next-generation microbiome therapeutics, are critically evaluated with particular attention to their evidence maturity, limitations, and translational potential. Finally, key knowledge gaps and future research priorities are discussed to support the development of more effective microbiome-preserving antimicrobial strategies and to limit the long-term dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. Full article

Driven by shifting hydro-climatic regimes and accelerating infrastructure expansion, the ecologically fragile Taihang Mountains are experiencing severe landscape fragmentation, threatening regional habitat suitability. This study integrates multiscale spatial regression and dynamic network inference models to analyze habitat quality dynamics and their driving mechanisms from 2000 to 2020. The findings reveal that: (1) Mean habitat quality marginally declined from 0.7187 to 0.6982, driven by a significant 20.53% expansion of low-quality patches. (2) Spatial regression and network inference indicate that land-use/land-cover and terrain slope act as robust positive drivers, while gross domestic product impacts exhibit a distinct north–south bipolarity. Land-use composition serves as the primary structural determinant of habitat quality (influence coefficient: 0.877), with terrain slope rigidly constraining land-use transitions (0.676) and landscape configuration heavily governed by the landscape shape index (0.493). (3) Scenario-based simulations demonstrate that climate-driven vegetation greening alone is insufficient for habitat quality upgrades without corresponding land-use optimization. Consequently, regional management must shift from passive greening to active structural intervention, utilizing probabilistic safety thresholds to manage infrastructure expansion and fortify vital mountainous ecological barriers. Full article

Soil salinity is a major constraint to agricultural productivity, causing osmotic stress, ion toxicity, nutrient imbalance, and progressive deterioration of soil biological functions. Beyond its direct effects on plant performance, salinity also generates persistent soil legacies that influence subsequent plant growth through plant-soil feedback (PSF) processes. PSF provides an ecological framework for understanding how plants modify the physicochemical and biological properties of soil and how these altered soil conditions subsequently affect plant growth, health, and resilience. Salinity research has predominantly emphasized soil microorganisms as promoters of plant growth, while their broader role in regulating soil legacy effects remains comparatively underexplored. This review examines whether soil microorganisms may contribute to a transition from salt-amplified negative PSF toward more favorable feedback outcomes by reshaping rhizosphere chemistry, nutrient cycling, pathogen pressure, ion homeostasis, stress signaling, and soil structural stability. However, conditioned-soil bioassays and multi-season saline field trials remain scarce, these proposed pathways are treated as potential mechanisms or testable hypotheses rather than as established evidence of PSF regulation. We first summarize the mechanisms underlying PSF in non-saline systems and then describe how salinity alters plant-, soil-, and microbe-mediated feedback pathways. We further evaluate the potential of halotolerant plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, actinobacteria, disease-suppressive microbial communities, and synthetic microbial consortia as regulators of PSF, while distinguishing direct salt-tolerance effects from evidence of genuine feedback modulation. Specifically, improved salt tolerance in the inoculated plant is interpreted as direct stress mitigation, whereas demonstrated PSF regulation additionally requires measurable soil conditioning and an effect on a subsequent crop. The novelty of this review lies in organizing studies of salinity-microbiome interactions within an evidence-based PSF framework that differentiates immediate plant responses from rhizosphere modification, conditioned-soil effects, and subsequent-crop performance. The review concludes that microbial strategies for saline agriculture are most likely to succeed when developed as integrated PSF interventions that combine crop traits, indigenous microbiomes, optimized inoculant design, organic matter management, diversified rotations, and multi-season field validation. Full article

Human interaction with the environment depends on the integration of sensory input, cognitive processing, and motor output within dynamic sensorimotor loops. These processes are supported by distributed neural circuits and shaped by learning, memory, and neuroplasticity across the lifespan. This review synthesizes current understanding of the mechanisms underlying sensorimotor integration and highlights how experience-dependent plasticity supports functional recovery and performance optimization in both health and disease. Disruptions such as traumatic brain injury, neurodegenerative disease, and aging may frequently result in combined cognitive and motor impairments. Here, we review non-invasive interventions that leverage neuroplasticity, including physical activity, motor training, and cognitive training, with increasing emphasis on integrated cognitive–motor approaches. Emerging technologies such as virtual reality provide ecologically valid, immersive environments that simultaneously engage perception, cognition, and action, with the potential to enhance training outcomes. However, variability in effectiveness and limited evidence for far transfer remain key challenges. To address these limitations, we highlight the integration of immersive training with objective biological measures. In particular, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR)-based metabolomics offers a promising, non-invasive approach to identify biomarkers of neuroplastic adaptation. The integration of robust biomarker tools may facilitate the development and assessment of effective precision cognitive–motor interventions to optimize rehabilitation approaches and help build resilience in vulnerable individuals. Full article

Urban agglomerations are complex adaptive social–ecological systems, and understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of landscape ecological resilience is important for their sustainable management. This study extended the previously developed Risk–Potential–Connectivity (RPC) framework for the Changsha–Zhuzhou–Xiangtan Urban Agglomeration (CZXUA) by identifying adaptive cycle categories at the grid scale using Local Moran’s I and explicit classification rules. Previously generated SD–PLUS land use projections were used to evaluate future changes in the RPC dimensions, integrated resilience, and adaptive cycle composition. (1) From 2000 to 2020, mean landscape ecological resilience decreased from 0.3642 to 0.3345, representing a net decline of 8.15%. Global Moran’s I increased from 0.746 to 0.787, indicating stronger spatial clustering. The spatial pattern remained relatively stable, with higher resilience in peripheral ecological areas, lower resilience in urban cores, and a persistent northwest–southeast orientation. (2) Adaptive cycle composition changed only moderately. The conservation (K) category accounted for more than 45% of the study area, while the release (Ω) category accounted for approximately 19% and was concentrated mainly in urban cores. The exploitation (r) category declined after 2010, whereas the smaller reorganization (α) and transitional (t) categories were more sensitive to classification settings. (3) Using previously generated land use projections as scenario inputs, future RPC responses differed clearly among scenarios. SSP126 maintained more intact ecological patches, relatively stable connectivity, and the smallest resilience change, with increases in r and K. SSP245 showed the greatest connectivity decline, expansion of areas with declining resilience, a reduction in r, and increases in Ω and α. SSP585 produced the highest landscape ecological risk, the largest declines in ecological potential and integrated resilience, reductions in r and K, and increases in α and t. These conditional results indicate that limiting construction land expansion, protecting ecological land, and maintaining ecological connectivity may reduce resilience losses under future urban development. The RPC adaptive cycle framework can support the identification of priorities for ecological protection, restoration, connectivity enhancement, and risk reduction. Full article

Tugai forests represent key riparian ecosystems of the arid landscapes of Central Asia, where vegetation dynamics are strongly influenced by seasonal hydrological variability and increasing anthropogenic pressure. Assessing the population structure of dominant shrub species can provide important insights into the condition and resilience of these floodplain ecosystems. This study examines the demographic structure, vitality, and morphological variability of Lycium dasystemum populations in the Syr Darya River valley. Field surveys were conducted in six subpopulations located in Tugai forests differing in hydrological conditions and levels of anthropogenic disturbance. Population structure was assessed using ontogenetic spectra, ecological density, and regeneration indices, while vitality indices and morphological traits were analyzed to evaluate population condition and phenotypic variability. Species turnover dominated β-diversity patterns (βsim up to 81%), indicating floristic differentiation among the studied communities. Clear spatial differences in demographic parameters were detected among subpopulations. Subpopulations occurring in relatively stable habitats showed more balanced ontogenetic spectra, higher vitality indices, and signs of active regeneration, whereas subpopulations exposed to stronger anthropogenic pressure were characterized by demographic imbalance, reduced recruitment, and lower ecological density. Morphological analyses revealed moderate phenotypic plasticity, suggesting that some traits may be associated with local floodplain habitat conditions. These findings indicate that maintaining suitable floodplain moisture conditions and regulating grazing pressure may contribute to the persistence of L. dasystemum populations and the conservation of Tugai vegetation in the Syr Darya basin. Full article

Resource-exhausted cities face intertwined economic, social, and ecological pressures during transition, yet the dynamic evolution and pathway-specific responses of their socio-ecological resilience remain insufficiently understood. Using Jiaozuo, China, a nationally designated resource-exhausted coal-mining city, this study develops an interpretable-machine-learning framework that integrates resilience assessment, XGBoost-SHAP interpretation, spatial statistical validation, scenario simulation, and sensitivity analysis. A multidimensional resilience index was constructed for 2012–2022, and alternative development pathways were projected for 2030 and 2035. The results reveal stage-dependent resilience evolution, with model-explained drivers shifting from economy- and policy-related factors in 2012–2017 to a more ecology-oriented and multidimensional structure in 2017–2022. SHAP dependence and interaction analyses further identify nonlinear response patterns and conditional interactions among key social, economic, and ecological indicators. Scenario simulations show that green transformation produces the strongest model-predicted gains and remains the highest-ranked pathway under alternative subsystem-weighting schemes. These findings suggest that resilience enhancement in resource-exhausted cities depends on coordinated ecological restoration, industrial upgrading, economic vitality, and social adaptive capacity. The proposed framework provides a transferable approach for diagnosing resilience evolution and comparing transition pathways in resource-exhausted urban systems. Full article

Background: Climate change is increasingly recognised not only as an environmental emergency but also as a structural determinant of health and health-system performance. Its clinical consequences will not be distributed evenly: high-income countries face rising heat mortality, infrastructure fragility, ageing-related vulnerability, and the need to decarbonise technologically intensive care; middle- and low-income countries face heterogeneous but often more compressed combinations of heat, infectious disease, food insecurity, water stress, displacement, conflict-related fragility, and limited fiscal capacity. Objective: This structured narrative review proposes a comparative framework for understanding how climate change will transform health care across high-, middle-, and low-income settings and identifies adaptation priorities that are resilient, equitable, and low-carbon. Methods: We synthesised major climate-health assessments, peer-reviewed epidemiological studies, modelling papers, systematic and scoping reviews, and health-system decarbonisation literature identified through targeted searches and reference chaining. Five climate-health pathways, specified a priori from established direct, indirect, and socially mediated pathway frameworks, were used to organise the review. Findings: Climate change will reshape health care through five interacting pathways: direct thermal injury and extreme-weather mortality; altered infectious disease ecology; food, water, and nutritional insecurity; mental, maternal-child, and occupational impacts; and damage to the infrastructure, workforce, supply chains, finances, and emissions profile of health systems. In high-income countries, climate stress exposes the limits of hospital-centred, carbon-intensive, just-in-time care. In middle-income countries, expanding coverage and technology coexist with uneven insurance, large informal workforces, and rapidly growing emissions. In low-income and fragile settings, the same hazards interact with undernutrition, weak surveillance, under-resourced primary care, and constrained finance to produce larger marginal health losses. Conclusions: The central contribution is the concept of the climate-health divide: the unequal conversion of shared climate hazards into clinical demand, service disruption, financial stress, and emissions-intensive responses. Climate resilience and healthcare decarbonisation should therefore be designed together rather than treated as separate agendas. Full article

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) is one of the most adaptable bacterial pathogens and a major cause of difficult-to-treat infections worldwide. Although antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is commonly attributed to resistance genes and their associated mechanisms, this perspective does not fully explain the ability of P. aeruginosa to survive antimicrobial exposure, establish chronic infections, and persist across diverse environmental and host-associated habitats. In this review, we examine P. aeruginosa within a complex adaptive systems framework, integrating evidence from molecular microbiology, physiology, ecology, population biology, and evolutionary genomics. We describe how environmental sensing, regulatory integration, phenotypic plasticity, population heterogeneity, persistence, biofilm formation, collective behavior, and evolutionary diversification interact across biological scales to shape bacterial survival and long-term success. Evidence from chronic infections and environmental reservoirs indicates that resistance emerges from interconnected physiological, ecological, and evolutionary processes rather than from isolated genetic determinants alone. Building on these observations, we propose an adaptive resilience cascade framework in which environmental sensing drives physiological diversification, persistence maintains survival under stress, evolutionary selection stabilizes advantageous traits, and ecological dissemination promotes the spread of successful lineages. This framework provides a systems-level explanation for treatment failure, chronic colonization, and resistance emergence while linking cellular responses to population, ecological, and evolutionary outcomes. Emerging approaches, including single-cell analyses, spatial omics, evolution-informed interventions, engineered biological therapeutics, and artificial intelligence–assisted modeling, further support a shift toward targeting adaptive resilience rather than resistance determinants alone. Viewing P. aeruginosa as a complex adaptive system offers an integrated conceptual foundation for future surveillance, therapeutic development, and antimicrobial stewardship strategies. Full article

This study evaluates the economic efficiency of the timber-production function across 24 forest stands in Czech Republic, representing monocultures, low-diversity mixed stands, mixed stands, and structurally differentiated stands, in the context of the profound changes that have affected forestry in the Czech Republic in recent years. Bark beetle outbreaks, climatic extremes, and the degradation of Norway spruce monocultures have increased concerns about their long-term production reliability and economic stability, highlighting the need to identify more resilient and sustainable management approaches. Mixed and structurally diversified stands, owing to their species diversity and higher ecological stability, represent a potential alternative; however, their management and economic assessment require more complex planning and interpretation. The study analyses the volume production of selected stands, timber market prices by assortments and tree species recalculated on a per-hectare basis and compares silvicultural and harvesting costs. Economic efficiency is expressed using the cost coefficient (Kn) and the efficiency coefficient (Ke), which quantify both direct production costs and the economic return of individual stand types. Results show that monoculture stands, especially those with a high share of valuable assortments, achieved the highest economic efficiency under the applied static cost–revenue assessment. This finding reflects the observed assortment structure, realized timber prices, and selected management costs. In the broader Central European forestry context, however, previous studies indicate that even-aged conifer monocultures may be more exposed to biotic and abiotic disturbance risks, which can affect their long-term production reliability and economic stability. Stands with higher species and structural diversity exhibit an economic profile that differs substantially from that of monocultures. Based on aggregated price and cost inputs for the reference period 2020–2024, low-diversity mixed and mixed stands reach intermediate values of cost intensity and efficiency, whereas structurally differentiated stands display the highest cost intensity and the lowest efficiency. Monocultures, by contrast, achieve the highest economic efficiency, primarily due to a greater share of high-quality timber assortments (classes I–III). Diversified stand structures (mixed and structurally differentiated stands) broaden the assortment composition and produce a more even distribution of monetization across quality classes. Diversification, therefore, did not maximize immediate economic efficiency in the static assessment; rather, it was associated with broader assortment composition and a less concentrated revenue structure across quality classes. Full article

Riparian zones provide vital ecosystem services, including water purification, soil aeration, and recreation. Anthropogenic activities and invasive plant species threaten native vegetation and alter fire patterns. This study investigates the impact of invasive vegetation cover (IVC) on riparian fire patterns in Otay Valley Regional Park, San Diego, California, using Sentinel-2 imagery to analyze 13 fires that occurred in 2019. The impact of IVC on fire patterns was assessed using high-resolution Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) from 2019 to 2023. We found nuanced fire dynamics relationship driven by species-specific traits. Results showed that post-fire NDVI was consistently highest in areas with <25% IVC, suggesting more stable vegetation recovery in native areas. In contrast, areas with >75% IVC had high NDVI variability and greater canopy loss, particularly where species such as Melilotus albus and mixed annual forbs dominated. IVC was evaluated descriptively rather than as an inferential predictor due to the small number of fire counts. Descriptive patterns indicate that post-fire vegetation response varied by dominant invasive species, with resilient taxa such as Arundo donax, Tamarix ramosissima, and Eucalyptus spp. showing evidence of rapid or sustained recovery. These findings highlight the complexity of fire dynamics in invaded riparian systems and the importance of species-specific monitoring. We recommend integrating remote sensing with targeted invasive vegetation species management to improve fire resilience and ecological integrity in urban riparian corridors. Full article

The planned Lubiatowo–Kopalino nuclear power plant (NPP) on the Polish Baltic coast requires a cooling technology that balances energy security, economic efficiency, and compliance with a multi-layered framework governing thermal discharge in a sensitive sea. This article integrates regulatory analysis across four instruments (EU Water Framework Directive, Polish discharge standards, HELCOM Baltic guidelines, and IAEA practice) with site-specific evidence from a 2D advection-diffusion thermal plume model. Four cooling options (once-through seawater, closed-loop towers, dry-air, and hybrid) are evaluated against regulatory criteria and against the documented vulnerabilities of the southern Baltic: eutrophication, restricted flushing, and ongoing warming. The modelling indicates that the acute thermal plume (ΔT ≥ 2 °C) remains limited to approximately 1.18 km² even under summer 90th-percentile conditions, whereas low-magnitude warming (ΔT = 0.1–0.5 °C) extends over approximately 1886.6 km². Although the once-through system with a multi-port diffuser satisfies current regulatory criteria, the extensive far-field anomaly represents an additional ecological stressor for an already eutrophic and warming marine ecosystem. A staged hybrid approach, with the first unit on validated once-through cooling and subsequent units on hybrid dry/wet systems, emerges as the most sustainable pathway, balancing empirical learning, regulatory foresight, and long-term climate resilience. The analysis offers a transferable framework for thermal-discharge assessment in shallow, microtidal, nutrient-enriched coastal seas, while demonstrating consistency with established regulatory practice and published knowledge on thermal-plume behaviour. Full article