Search Results (1,433)

Nostoc sphaeroides is a diazotrophic cyanobacterium that forms macroscopic spherical colonies in seasonally flooded paddy fields. Studies of its environmental physiology, colony development and cultivation have largely proceeded independently. This review integrates strain-resolved genomic, transcriptomic, physiological and ecological evidence to examine spherical multicellularity as a possible adaptation to a variable habitat. Developmental transitions between motile hormogonia and vegetative, heterocyst-forming filaments link dispersal with establishment, while an extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) matrix promotes water retention, ion binding and formation of an associated cyanosphere. Colony enlargement may improve persistence but also produces gradients of light, gases and nutrients that can limit carbon acquisition. Visible light, low-dose ultraviolet radiation, nitrogen form, phosphate, calcium, hydration and agrochemicals influence photosynthetic electron flow, carbon-concentrating mechanisms, repair and developmental investment. The NsHik33-NsRpaB pathway provides a causal connection between environmental sensing and ultraviolet acclimation, whereas many proposed colony-level functions remain supported mainly by omics data or evidence from model cyanobacteria. Important research priorities include spatial chemical mapping, defined cyanosphere communities, multiplex genetics and experiments under fluctuating environmental conditions. Together, the evidence identifies N. sphaeroides as a promising organism for studying how cyanobacterial developmental multicellularity promotes persistence in variable environments and may inform cultivation practices. Full article

Renewable-energy and transport infrastructure can fragment habitats and weaken ecological connectivity when siting is addressed only at the project-permitting stage. Using Western Macedonia, Greece, with detailed application in the Regional Unit of Florina, this study develops a screening-level decision-support framework that links biodiversity-relevant spatial evidence to strategic planning priorities. The framework combines exclusion and evaluation criteria derived from policy and the literature, elicitation from 17 regional experts, and PROMETHEE ranking of five strategic directions under four scenarios. GIS overlays relate existing and planned energy and transport infrastructure to Natura 2000 sites, wildlife refuges, roadless areas, pelican-use areas and terrestrial corridor proxies for large mammals. The perceived baseline assigned a normalized weight of 0.69 to energy and 0.01 to reversibility. The stakeholder-mean framework redistributed weight toward protected areas (0.21), reversibility (0.19), energy (0.18) and ecological corridors (0.16). The leading strategic direction changed from investment (+0.50) under the baseline to tourism (+0.43) under the stakeholder-mean scenario, while the between-direction spread narrowed from approximately 1.10 to 0.27 in the highest-score scenario. GIS screening identified persistent conflict areas in western Voras, pelican movement routes linking Prespa with other wetlands and the Kleidi terrestrial corridor. The mapped distances of 0.93, 1.81 and 2.00 km are stakeholder-derived scenario assumptions, not universal ecological thresholds or species-response distances. The framework is intended for early strategic screening and stakeholder deliberation, followed by species-specific surveys, cumulative-impact assessment and field validation. Full article

This article examines oil-spill-related environmental damage in the Russian North as an eco-social risk that affects ecosystems, Indigenous communities, traditional nature management, and territorial welfare. This paper develops a qualitative conceptual analysis based on interdisciplinary document analysis, literature-based synthesis, and illustrative case contextualization. It contributes to debates on eco-social policy and sustainable welfare by arguing that environmental remediation and monetary compensation often remain insufficient when ecological harm disrupts land-based livelihoods, food autonomy, cultural ecosystem services, and Indigenous participation. This article proposes the concept of traditional nature management as a form of territorial welfare: a place-based welfare arrangement that supports food security, mobility, intergenerational knowledge transfer, cultural continuity, and community autonomy. The analysis identifies several interconnected transformation channels through which oil spills affect Indigenous communities: resource degradation, disruption of mobility routes, weakening of traditional food systems, erosion of cultural ecosystem services, compensation conflicts, and marginalization of Indigenous and local knowledge. The synthesis further shows that the most important assessment gaps arise where legally recognized ecological damage is disconnected from fishery and food-system losses, seasonal mobility, cultural ecosystem services, and Indigenous participation. In the context of Russian legal policy, existing mechanisms recognize traditional nature use and compensation for damage to Indigenous habitat and livelihoods, but non-market territorial-welfare losses remain only partially operationalized in environmental damage assessment. The paper argues that these consequences reveal an institutional missing link between environmental liability, social protection, Indigenous rights, and corporate responsibility. To address this gap, this article proposes an eco-social assessment framework that combines economic valuation with participatory mapping, cultural ecosystem service assessment, Indigenous and local knowledge, long-term welfare-oriented compensation, and community-based monitoring. The framework is intended as a conceptual and policy-oriented instrument rather than an empirical valuation model; the 2020 Norilsk diesel spill is used solely as an illustrative vignette to demonstrate the institutional disconnect between legally recognized environmental damage and broader welfare-related losses. The findings are relevant for eco-social policy debates because they show how extractive-sector risks reshape welfare arrangements in peripheral regions and create new entanglements between state responsibility, corporate welfare, and community resilience in the context of conflicting ecological transitions. More broadly, this study demonstrates that sustainable recovery in northern resource-dependent territories requires the integration of ecological restoration, legally grounded compensation, long-term welfare monitoring, and meaningful Indigenous participation. Comparative Russian evidence from the Nenets and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrugs, Sakhalin, and Yakutia further indicates that compensation and benefit-sharing arrangements vary substantially with regard to procedural inclusion and transparency. The framework does not replace existing Russian statutory loss-calculation procedures; its added value is to connect them with community-defined territorial relationships, participatory mapping, co-validation of locally relevant indicators and repeated assessment of welfare recovery. Full article

Persistent open-vocabulary navigation enables robots to search for sequential language-specified objects using reusable visual semantic evidence. On edge GPUs, the pipeline is constrained by foundation-model inference, semantic projection, persistent map movement, frontier processing, and repeated target detection. Using OneMap as a controlled reference, we reorganize this workload through compiled mixed-precision perception, direct-to-map confidence-weighted feature aggregation, accelerator-resident semantic maps, compiled navigation operations, and language-conditioned detector scheduling. The resulting dataflow removes the dense image resolution feature intermediate and schedules target confirmation detection from current-view target similarity. On the complete Habitat-Matterport 3D benchmarks, our implementation retains 92.6% and 96.1% of the reproduced OneMap single- and multi-object success rates. Across 36 paired hardware-in-the-loop comparisons on a Jetson AGX Orin at four power modes, it achieves geometric mean speedups of 4.64× for on-device computation and 3.55× for the complete episode duration. It also reduces peak system random access memory (RAM) by 51.21% and a summed board-rail energy proxy by 75.32% on average while preserving every paired outcome. These results establish the coordinated dataflow and current-view target-conditioned execution as effective mechanisms for efficient persistent foundation-model navigation on power-constrained edge robots. Full article

The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), an iconic Australian marsupial, is listed as endangered in Queensland due to habitat loss, climate change, disease, and other anthropogenic pressures. As a result, protecting populations and identifying new conservation opportunities are urgent priorities. Woppa, an island off the coast of Central Queensland, has been identified as a potential site for future koala conservation. This preliminary study assessed koala food-habitat presence on Woppa by ground-truthing Queensland Government habitat maps to determine the alignment of the habitat assessment while also gathering data on dominant tree compositions in each selected area. Transect surveys (10 m × 50 m) were used to compare mapped expected vegetation with actual tree species composition. Woppaburra Traditional Owner perspectives were incorporated through an analysis of an interview with Woppaburra Traditional Owner and authorised Woppaburra representative, Juku-Dai Nerark Morris. Vegetation alignment varied across land zones, with some high-ranked habitats recording <75% alignment, while others exceeded 90%. Preferred koala food trees occurred in both high- and low-ranked areas. The interviewed Woppaburra Traditional Owner described historical accounts of koalas on Woppa and expressed in-principle support for conservation translocation as part of Caring for Country. This research highlights both opportunities and challenges for koala conservation on Woppa, providing baseline data to inform First Nations-led management and future translocation feasibility. Full article

Biotope mapping provides an essential spatial framework for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management, and sustainable landscape planning. However, a standardized and transferable GIS-based methodological framework for biotope identification and mapping is still lacking in Türkiye, limiting the systematic integration of biodiversity considerations into spatial planning processes. This study develops an integrated GIS-based biotope mapping framework for Çınarcık District, Yalova Province, Türkiye, integrating Digital Elevation Model (DEM), CORINE Land Cover 2018, Forest Management Plans, stand characteristics, vegetation, floristic, and hydrological data through spatial analyses. Additionally, 30 national and 15 international studies were systematically reviewed to identify the common indicators, data sources, and methodological components used in biotope mapping and to establish the proposed GIS-based framework. The proposed approach identified four main biotope groups (forest, aquatic, agricultural, and urban). Based on ecological similarity and growing environment characteristics, 12 sub-biotope types were identified within the forest biotopes. Forest biotopes were the dominant ecological units, mainly characterized by broadleaved communities dominated by Fagus orientalis, Castanea sativa, Tilia tomentosa, and Quercus petraea. A total of 72 forest stand types were identified, with Fagus orientalis-dominated forests in plateau environments representing the largest sub-biotope type (36.40%). The proposed framework provides a repeatable and transferable, inventory-based methodology that can serve as a preliminary decision-support tool for biodiversity assessment, conservation planning, and sustainable landscape management in forested landscapes with similar ecological characteristics, pending future field-based validation. Full article

Species-wise, this study focused on three local endemic plant species of Crete (Greece) protected by the Greek Presidential Decree 67/1981, namely Calamintha cretica, Micromeria hispida, and Teucrium cuneifolium (Lamiaceae). The species-specific bioclimatic conditions (temperature, precipitation) that characterize their natural habitats were determined to identify the requirements for successful natural seed germination, using distribution dot maps and open-source geodatabases in GIS (Geographic Information Systems). To facilitate their ex situ conservation, their seed germination was investigated at four different constant temperatures (10, 15, 20, and 25 °C) in growth chambers with a photoperiod of 12 h light/12 h dark. The results indicated that their seed germination requirements showed a range-specific temperature dependence, reflecting their adaptation to local ecological conditions. Specifically, the seeds of C. cretica showed the highest germination percentages at high temperatures (96.67% at 15 °C, 90.00% at 20 °C, and 93.33% at 25 °C). The highest germination percentages (58.33–63.33%) of M. hispida seeds were observed only at a temperature range of 10–20 °C and increasing the incubation temperature to 25 °C resulted in a significant decrease in the percentages of germinated seeds (9.17%). In T. cuneifolium seeds, the highest germination was observed at 15 °C. After their successful pilot pot cultivation, the present study paves the way for future conservation efforts through ex situ seed storage of different population samples and may accelerate their sustainable utilization in different economic sectors as potential novel crops sourced from the local biodiversity pool. Full article

The demand for lightweight, flexible, and lead-free radiation shielding for next-generation extravehicular activity suits and aerospace habitat liners is rapidly intensifying. This study investigates the structural organization and X-ray attenuation performance (10–60 keV) of polyethylenimine/graphene oxide (PEI/GO) composites with GO loadings up to 50 wt%. Microstructural evolution was systematically tracked via optical image quantification (dispersion, connectivity, and local mixing indices) correlated with micro-Raman spectral mapping. Raman analysis confirmed a structural transition at 40 wt% GO, driven by a dynamic competition between covalent amine–epoxide/carboxyl functionalization and localized π–π stacking of sp² domains. X-ray transmission and linear attenuation coefficients were evaluated using a dual approach, coupling experimental X-ray exposures with deterministic NIST XCOM calculations and stochastic Monte Carlo simulations. The results demonstrate that GO significantly amplifies low-energy photoelectric absorption due to its oxygen-rich functionalities. An anomalous thickness-dependent attenuation paradox, which can be explained by accounting for forward-scattered Compton buildup in thick blocks and spatial edge refraction along non-percolating cluster interfaces in thin films, was observed experimentally. These findings provide critical material design rules for advanced, flexible, and wearable photon shields operating without mass penalties. Full article

Understanding habitat suitability and environmental preferences of shortbill spearfish (Tetrapturus angustirostris) is essential for assessing and mitigating bycatch risk in pelagic longline fisheries. Using observer data collected by the Chinese Pacific tuna longline fishery, including 19,932 longline sets collected during 2010–2021, we compared five individual modelling algorithms and three ensemble strategies to predict habitat suitability across the Pacific Ocean and identify key environmental drivers. Model performance was evaluated using repeated 10-fold cross-validation with three repetitions. The stacking ensemble achieved the highest predictive performance (AUC = 0.872; TSS = 0.591), followed closely by random forest (RF; AUC = 0.869), although the absolute difference between these two models was small. A sensitivity analysis including log-transformed observed hooks resulted in only minor improvements in RF and stacking performance and did not materially alter the main habitat-suitability patterns. Both generally outperformed the other individual and weighted ensemble models. Permutation-based importance analyses consistently identified salinity as the strongest environmental predictor of habitat suitability, followed by chlorophyll-a concentration, distance to shore, and dissolved oxygen concentration. Partial dependence analyses showed that the stacking ensemble produced smoother and more readily interpretable responses to environmental gradients, particularly salinity and dissolved oxygen, whereas RF placed greater importance on a limited number of dominant predictors. Highly suitable habitat was primarily predicted in subtropical offshore waters of the southeastern Pacific (10° S–25° S, 100° W–130° W), which were characterized by relatively high salinity, moderate dissolved oxygen concentrations, and low chlorophyll-a concentrations. A secondary area of elevated suitability was identified in the central North Pacific (160° E–180° E, 15° N–25° N). Overall, the stacking ensemble provided robust predictions of shortbill spearfish habitat suitability, whereas RF remained useful for identifying dominant environmental correlates. The predicted habitat maps provide a spatial basis for identifying potential bycatch-risk hotspots and supporting adaptive management strategies, such as spatially targeted monitoring and mitigation measures in tuna longline fisheries. Full article

Awareness of the need to shift conservation priorities from protecting isolated habitats to ensuring their connectivity has resulted in the development of several approaches to modelling landscape and ecological connectivity (EC). However, a significant gap between data and the knowledge of EC, and their implementation in spatial planning practice, remains. The presented research has two objectives: to collect, interpret and map existing knowledge and data on EC in Slovenia, and to showcase the possibility for its inclusion into Slovenian spatial planning practice. The surrogate species concept was adopted to address the first objective, followed by two case studies. The concept covers the main groups of terrestrial and flying species with broad habitat and connectivity requirements, sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbances, and conservation status: large carnivores, ungulates, waterfowl, and soaring birds. The concept utilizes existing studies and data on EC for specific species and enables generalized EC mapping that is suitable for spatial planning—the contribution of this article is thus in the usable reinterpretation of existing data. The sites of special concern for each species group are presented on habitat and corridor maps. The proposed concept offers a comprehensive yet robust and pragmatic tool for implementing EC in spatial planning practice, as showcased in the case studies. Although the data were collected and tested within the Slovenian territory and spatial planning framework, the robustness of the concept allows its modification and adaptation to other environments. Full article

This study presents a high-resolution geomorphological and habitat map of the Sinuessa coastal sector (Tyrrhenian Sea), revealing the presence of an extensive and exceptionally shallow coralligenous bank developed between 5 and 16 m water depth. Multibeam bathymetry, side-scan sonar backscatter, sediment analyses, and Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) observations were integrated within a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework to characterize seabed morphology, acoustic facies, and associated benthic habitats. ROV surveys document a diverse macro- and epimegabenthic community, including both sciaphilous and photophilous taxa, as well as several protected and structuring species. Water depth alone does not discriminate among the mapped substrate classes (Kruskal–Wallis, p = 0.578), whereas acoustic backscatter, slope, and terrain ruggedness all do (p < 0.01), indicating that depth-independent controls govern the distribution of the bioconstruction. We hypothesize that persistently elevated turbidity and terrigenous input from the Volturno and Garigliano river systems reduce light penetration and generate, at 5–16 m, optical conditions comparable to those normally found at greater depths. This hypothesis is consistent with the geomorphological, sedimentological, and biological evidence presented here and with published oceanographic observations in the Gulf of Gaeta, but it has not been verified by in situ optical measurement, which we identify as the priority for future work. Relative backscatter intensity correlates significantly with mean grain size (Spearman ρ = −0.710, p < 0.001) and with gravel and mud content, and the four mapped classes differ significantly in backscatter, slope, and terrain ruggedness. These findings provide new insights into the environmental controls on coralligenous development and highlight the ecological relevance of shallow, turbidity-driven coralligenous systems within highly impacted Mediterranean coastal areas, with direct implications for habitat conservation and spatial management. Full article

Climate-driven range shifts may create new environmentally suitable areas, but whether these areas provide favourable habitat conditions or adequate protection remains poorly understood. We assessed conservation gaps for three rare pheasants (Syrmaticus humiae, S. ellioti and S. reevesii) in Guizhou Province, southwestern China. Using camera-trap records from 1573 sites surveyed from January 2023 to January 2026, we integrated MaxEnt modelling, 2041–2060 climate projections, InVEST-based relative habitat-condition assessment and protected-area overlays. Dominant predictors differed among species: S. humiae and S. reevesii were mainly associated with climatic factors, whereas S. ellioti was more related to soil organic carbon, karst rocky desertification and the Human Footprint Index. Projected potential suitable areas increased for all species under future climate scenarios, but most projected expansion areas under SSP126, SSP245 and SSP585 occurred outside protected areas. Predicted high suitability did not always coincide with favourable habitat condition. S. reevesii showed the clearest suitability–quality mismatch, whereas S. ellioti showed the highest protected-area representation of high-suitability × high-quality areas. Predictions for S. reevesii should be interpreted cautiously because of its limited occurrence records and sensitivity to individual records. These findings show that suitability maps alone may misguide conservation priorities and highlight candidate areas for field verification, restoration, protected-area optimization and climate-adaptation monitoring in karst landscapes. Full article

River-health assessment in small rural watersheds requires the integration of multiple environmental indicators, yet correlated variables may be repeatedly represented when they are weighted independently. This study evaluated the ecological health of the Yuejiang River in Dongpo District, Meishan City, Sichuan Province, for 2011, 2018, and 2024 using a principal component analysis (PCA)–entropy weighting framework. Fourteen effective indicators represented riparian habitat, climate–hydrology, water environment, human disturbance, and water quality. Water-quality data for 2011 and 2018 were treated as monitored regional background conditions, whereas continuous reach-scale observations were unavailable for 2024 and scenario-constrained regional background inputs were therefore used. PCA retained four components that explained 95.94% of the total variance, and the resulting combined weights were used to calculate the River Health Index (RHI). Mean RHI values increased from 0.290 in 2011 to 0.578 in 2018 and 0.634 in 2024. In 2024, 83.92% of the mapped assessment area was classified as Good and 16.08% as Moderate. High PCA loadings and combined weights are interpreted as statistical contributions within the assessment framework, rather than as evidence of direct ecological causation. The results support temporal comparison and identification of relatively weak reaches, while the 2024 findings should be interpreted as conditional on the adopted water-quality background scenario. Full article

Marine debris threatens aquatic habitats and complicates inspections in ports, seabed environments, and offshore infrastructure. Previous lightweight detectors remain vulnerable to weak texture, blurred boundaries, and cluttered multi-scale features, while direct network expansion conflicts with restricted onboard resources. This study adapts YOLO11n by integrating Receptive-Field Aggregation (RFA) with a Residual Channel-Spatial Recalibration (RCSA) implementation based on dynamic residual groups. Experiments used a public 15-class dataset with 10,884 training images and 1001 model-selection validation images containing 1892 annotated objects. All principal checkpoints were trained for 100 epochs. Across seeds 42, 2026, and 3407, RFA + RCSA achieved validation precision 0.861 ± 0.016, recall 0.801 ± 0.012, mean average precision at IoU 0.5 (mAP@0.5) 0.848 ± 0.001, and mAP@0.5:0.95 0.511 ± 0.002. On an audited group-disjoint holdout (498 images; 963 instances), the corresponding means were 0.820 ± 0.033, 0.748 ± 0.014, 0.779 ± 0.018, and 0.467 ± 0.007. The detector contains 4.19 M parameters and requires 8.91 giga floating-point operations (GFLOPs). These results position it as a lightweight candidate for resource-constrained remotely operated vehicle (ROV) perception; they do not establish real-time embedded deployment. Full article

Geographic digital twins (GDT) are increasingly used as place-based platforms to support monitoring of environmental and social processes underpinning social innovations. This research addresses a specific methodological gap: whether a modular GDT architecture can sustain consistent deployment across five distinct European Transition Coastal Labs (TCLs). Three bottlenecks shaped the research: baseline datasets were held by different organisations and were rarely maintained as a shared reference; real-time sensor observations were managed within IoT systems separate from contextual GIS layers; and participatory inputs remained disconnected from mapped evidence. EmpowerCoast was designed and deployed within the Horizon Europe EmpowerUs project across Connemara (Ireland), Træna (Norway), Cap de Creus (Spain), Limassol (Cyprus) and Åland Islands (Finland). The platform implements a modular, OGC-compliant full-stack architecture integrating spatial storage, microservices, RESTful APIs, 3D visualisation and vendor cloud IoT ingestion. Four deployed proof-of-concepts are reported: near-real-time solar irradiance monitoring in Connemara, near-real-time chlorophyll-a monitoring in Træna, participatory storytelling and citizen science across all five TCLs, and ingestion of harmonised EMODnet habitat layers for Cap de Creus and the Åland Islands. Analysis of the deployed codebase, within a single consortium deployment, shows that consistency was located in exchange format, delivery protocol and structural pattern rather than in shared instances: sensor observations from two unrelated commercial ecosystems, differing in authentication, payload schema and measured parameter, produced structurally identical platform behaviour. By demonstrating that architectural consistency survives vendor, domain and jurisdictional heterogeneity, the UN Ocean Decade endorsed EmpowerCoast platform enables coastal communities across Europe’s Arctic, Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic shores to observe and interpret environmental changes through a shared spatial infrastructure. Full article