Search Results (2,565)

This study investigates the pedagogical landscape of state language instruction in Hungarian-medium schools in Slovakia. Situated within the wider context of European minority language policies, this study explores the institutional ecosystems, didactic approaches and teaching strategies, and the relationship between teacher- and student-centered methodologies in state language instruction. A questionnaire survey based on a self-developed Multi-Level Diagnostic Model was administered to a representative sample of teachers, accounting for 23% of the total Slovak teacher population working in this distinctive sociolinguistic setting (N = 112). Although the results indicate that the educational process is shaped by various factors and there is an endeavor to promote communicative practice, the competence–use gap persists due to the reliance on conventional teacher-centered teaching approaches. This trend is driven by a methodological vacuum, the absence of specialized L2 teaching materials and the lack of modern digital resources; it also suggests that teachers are forced to prioritize instructional security rather than being resistant to innovation. The findings suggest that the current educational system is ready for change, but it requires systemic investment in resources to promote the balanced development of intercultural communicative competence. Addressing the linguistic distance between Hungarian L1 and Slovak L2 through specialized materials may promote a model of additive bilingualism that ensures professional credibility and the protection of minority cultural identity. Full article

Cultural habitats are the relationships between traditional peoples and the plants, animals, and geological features of their ancestral landscapes. These relationships form the human dimension of geoheritage. However, research on cultural habitats and research on geoheritage have typically developed separately. This review brings these two frameworks together by drawing on four decades of ethnobotanical and ethnoecological studies, involving 24 research projects with Native American tribes and traditional communities in North America and the Caribbean. Using ethnographic methods, habitat mapping, and indices to measure cultural significance, the research documented how traditional communities use plants and define the extent of their cultural habitats. Analysis of six case studies shows that each cultural habitat is closely tied to a unique geological or landform feature. In all cases, the official heritage boundaries set by nomination processes are smaller than the areas traditional peoples recognize as their cultural habitats. This gap comes from differences between Western approaches to defining heritage and the ways indigenous and traditional communities understand their responsibilities to the land. The review calls for wider standards of evidence, collaborative approaches to setting boundaries, and co-stewardship to be included in geoheritage management policies. Full article

Vegetated coastal wetlands, especially mangroves, seagrass beds, and salt marshes, are biodiversity-rich ecosystems whose blue carbon outcomes depend on living communities, sediment dynamics, hydrological connectivity, and landscape context. Biodiversity conservation and blue carbon management are often assessed through separate scientific, monitoring, and policy frameworks. This review uses a staged literature search and thematic synthesis to examine biodiversity–blue carbon linkages across the three major vegetated coastal wetland types. It considers how taxonomic, genetic, functional, and habitat diversity influence productivity, sediment stabilization, trophic exchange, carbon stocks, carbon burial, and carbon retention. It also evaluates how climate change, habitat fragmentation, hydrological alteration, pollution, and anthropogenic disturbance weaken these linkages. The synthesis compares representative carbon-stock and burial-rate baselines, examines conservation and restoration synergies and trade-offs, and expands the discussion of seagrass regime shifts. Field surveys, remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles, environmental DNA, and AI-enabled data integration are placed within a tiered monitoring framework. The review further develops an operational decision pathway for biodiversity-centered blue carbon management. Persistent blue carbon benefits arise where conservation and restoration maintain native communities, hydrological exchange, sediment stability, habitat complexity, migration space, and long-term stewardship capacity. Full article

Sustainability transitions confront firms with the following informational paradox: the regulatory pressure to innovate green has intensified, yet the knowledge required to do so is dispersed across agencies, sectors, and jurisdictions that rarely speak to one another. Treating data as a strategic factor of production, this paper asks whether and how opening public data—the systematic release of government-held datasets—reconfigures the conditions under which firms generate green innovation. We model the green-innovation ecosystem as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) in which heterogeneous, bounded-rational agents co-evolve with a data-mediated selection environment. Within this frame, public data openness (PDO) is not marginal input but an exogenous shock to the fitness landscape that propagates through three coupling channels—supply–demand alignment, recalibration of government intervention, and amplification of green credit. Formal derivations link each channel to a testable proposition, and a multi-period Difference-in-Differences (DIDs) design built on the staggered roll-out of Chinese municipal open-data platforms identifies the causal effects, with Callaway–Sant’Anna estimators and double/debiased machine learning (DDML) addressing recent econometric critiques. The evidence supports each proposition and reveals the following distinctive heterogeneity signature consistent with absorptive-capacity heterogeneity: the policy is most consequential where agents and ecosystems are best able to convert data into knowledge. Reframing PDO as a systemic enabler clarifies why uniform rollouts yield uneven returns and motivates a tiered design that scales with the absorptive capacity of recipient firms and regions. Full article

Climate change is reshaping agricultural systems by altering temperature and rainfall regimes, increasing the frequency of extreme events, and intensifying risks to crop productivity, water use, and farm decision-making. As climate–agriculture research expands rapidly, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify consolidated knowledge domains, emerging priorities, and evidence gaps. This study maps the structure and evolution of this literature using 219,261 Scopus-indexed documents selected from 290,560 records published between 1990 and 2025. A text-mining workflow combined BERTopic-based semantic modeling with supervised thematic classification into 18 macro-themes, while annual shares, z-scores, and document-level primary–secondary co-framing were used to assess temporal salience and cross-theme coupling. The results show sustained growth in research output, with 53.67% of publications produced between 2016 and 2025, and strong geographical concentration in the United States and China, which together account for 41.98% of the corpus. Hydrology and water management, crop production, impact assessment, and atmospheric processes remain central pillars, while socio-economic vulnerability, food security, sustainability, biotechnology, and greenhouse gas mitigation have gained prominence. The resulting evidence map provides a reproducible overview of the climate–agriculture knowledge landscape and can support research prioritization and policy design for climate-resilient agrifood systems. Full article

The urban landscape is a constant presence in the daily lives of urban residents, and its quality is closely linked to their overall quality of life. Therefore, it is essential to provide municipalities with effective tools to assess urban landscape quality. The identification of evaluation criteria, validated by an expert panel, contributes to the development of urban landscape assessment policies and supports the construction of a multi-criteria evaluation model. This study acknowledges the multidimensional nature of the urban landscape and is grounded in the definition of “landscape” established by the European Landscape Convention. It proposes a methodology for assessing urban landscape quality through the identification of evaluation criteria using the Delphi method, based on a panel of 24 experts. The process resulted in the identification of five key criteria: Human Dimension, Functional Diversity, Natural Elements, Identity, and Maintenance. Full article

Deep-mining operations are increasingly challenged by severe thermal hazards, which have become a critical bottleneck for achieving safe, efficient, and sustainable mineral extraction. While research on deep-mine cooling and heat hazard mitigation has proliferated, the field lacks a systematic, critical review that explicitly examines these advances through the lens of sustainability science. To address this gap, this study conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 432 publications (1994–2024) retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. The methodology employs Bibliometrix, Vosviewer, and CiteSpace to map the intellectual landscape, research hotspots, and evolving frontiers of the field. The results reveal a clear three-stage development trajectory and identify China, the USA, South Africa, and Canada as leading contributors, with national research emphases on ventilation, energy conservation, and refrigeration, respectively. Crucially, keyword clustering and burst detection uncover a notable paradigm shift: the focus has moved from isolated cooling techniques toward integrated, multi-objective strategies—including geothermal energy co-exploitation, phase-change material applications, and system-level energy optimization—signaling a growing alignment with resource efficiency and low-carbon mining principles. However, a critical finding is that the literature remains predominantly techno-centric, overwhelmingly evaluating performance through operational energy savings while largely neglecting life-cycle environmental impacts, holistic sustainability assessment metrics, and the influence of policy drivers. This review thus not only provides a structured overview of the domain, but, more importantly, exposes these critical knowledge gaps. We argue that future research must pivot toward a multi-dimensional sustainability framework that integrates technical, economic, and environmental dimensions, thereby guiding the next generation of research toward truly sustainable deep-mining practices. Full article

The aesthetic value of agricultural landscapes is gaining importance as rural tourism burgeons during urbanization. To ascertain key elements influencing the visual appeal of agricultural landscapes, this research employed a visual choice experiment in Hangzhou Plain during the spring flowering period to assess public preferences for four landscape attributes in ground and aerial perspectives. The mixed logit model was utilized to evaluate the respondents’ average preference, while the latent class logit model helped in identifying distinct preference groups. The research revealed that participants exhibited different preferences between the two perspectives. The diversity within public preferences was highlighted, with respondents favoring oilseed rape-dominated landscapes with a single agricultural land cover proportion in ground perspective while favoring diverse landscapes in aerial perspective. Gender, education level, landscape familiarity, connection to agriculture, and membership in relevant organizations significantly shape individual preferences. These results can help refine multi-objective policy targeting by incorporating aesthetic value perspective in agricultural landscapes. Full article

The environmental effects of green finance policies involve complex systemic interactions across multiple levels, yet existing studies often adopt fragmented analytical approaches. Drawing on the multi-level perspective (MLP), this study conceptualizes the environmental impacts of Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones (GFRIPZs) as a process of systemic green transformation involving interactions among landscape, regime, and niche levels. Using panel data of 287 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2012 to 2022, this study applies a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model to evaluate the environmental impacts of GFRIPZs. The results show that GFRIPZs significantly reduce both PM_2.5 concentrations and CO₂ emissions. Mechanism analyses based on multiple mediation models and GSEM reveal pollutant-specific differences in underlying channels. Green technological innovation (GTI) constitutes one observable pathway for PM_2.5, whereas the policy effect is more closely associated with energy structure adjustment for CO₂. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that PM_2.5 mitigation is stronger in colder cities, while CO₂ reduction is more pronounced in developed cities. These findings reveal pollutant-specific mechanisms of green finance and offer policy implications for developing countries seeking to promote systemic green transformation. Full article

Rapid population ageing in China urgently demands improved attention to elderly friendly community green space design. Despite national efforts toward community renovation and urban regeneration, existing projects often overlook the systematic optimisation of green spaces explicitly tailored to elderly residents, leading to environments that inadequately support their physical, psychological, and social needs. Given that home-based care remains the predominant preference for elderly populations in China, creating optimised community green spaces is essential to facilitate healthy ageing-in-place effectively. This study systematically investigates the discrepancies between elders’ observed usage patterns and their stated landscape design preferences in two residential communities in Suzhou, China. By integrating year-round observational data with subjective interviews, the research identifies critical mismatches between elderly individuals’ actual behaviours and expressed preferences, highlighting significant deficiencies in current landscape designs. Comparative analyses reveal that prioritising microclimate comfort, accessible pathways, and targeted seating arrangements significantly enhances elderly usage frequency and satisfaction. Ultimately, this study provides practical, policy-aligned recommendations for designing climate-adaptive, elderly centric community green spaces, effectively contributing to sustainable urban renewal and the Healthy China 2030 initiative. Full article

In the context of global population growth and intensifying climate change, ensuring food security remains a critical challenge. Orchards are more productive than arable crops, contributing significantly to the nutrition of a growing population. Ecologically, due to the absence of frequent soil tillage, orchards resemble natural forest ecosystems more closely than other agricultural systems. Irrigated orchards are particularly productive and enhance biodiversity in territories where water scarcity is the limiting factor for ecosystems. This review, the result of extensive reflection and a comprehensive analysis of the literature on orchard sustainability, synthesizes evidence on the diverse ecosystem services provided by these perennial systems. Due to their structural complexity, well-managed orchards contribute significantly to climate regulation through carbon sequestration, microclimate cooling, and soil erosion prevention. Furthermore, they support nutrient cycling and provide cultural value. This paper establishes an integrated scientific framework to inform evidence-based policies and reshape societal perceptions. It argues that recognizing orchards as multifunctional landscapes, rather than mere resource consumers, is critical for environmental resilience, supporting their fair valuation as essential components of a sustainable bioeconomy. Full article

Traditional olive groves are widely recognised as providers of landscape, environmental and cultural public goods in Mediterranean rural areas, but their long-term economic viability remains uncertain. This study assesses the income gap between traditional, intensive and super-high-density (SHD) olive-growing systems in a representative hill olive-growing area in Tuscany (central Italy), characterised by physical and structural conditions typical of traditional Mediterranean systems. Using a discounted cash-flow framework, the analysis compares long-term financial performance through standard investment appraisal indicators and uses the Equivalent Annual Value (EAV) as a policy-relevant benchmark for calibrating support. The results reveal a clear structural divergence: while intensive and SHD systems achieve higher profitability and faster capital recovery, the traditional system exhibits a persistent income disadvantage under market conditions. The estimated EAV gap amounts to approximately 950 €/ha relative to the intensive system and 3104 €/ha relative to the SHD system—values that represent the additional annual support required to preserve traditional olive groves and prevent abandonment. These values can also be interpreted as the annual private opportunity cost of maintaining traditional olive landscapes rather than converting them to more financially competitive systems. Break-even analysis further shows that the traditional system requires an oil price of at least 9.6 €/kg to achieve economic viability without public support, compared to 6.97 €/kg and 4.13 €/kg for the intensive and SHD systems, respectively. The findings highlight a structural misalignment between private profitability and social value, suggesting that the conservation of traditional olive landscapes cannot rely on market mechanisms alone and requires targeted, evidence-based policy instruments. Full article

This study explores the challenges and opportunities for embedding the Natural Capital Approach (NCA) in policy processes, especially in the framing of the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP), which is England’s strategic framework for improving the natural environment, including cleaner air and water, healthy soil, thriving wildlife and climate-adapted landscapes. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with policymakers working in Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and its Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs) organisations to investigate their views on the barriers and enablers to the adoption of the NCA. It has been widely recognised that the NCA provides unifying concepts that are able to connect economists and ecologists, and it can help to embed nature across government departments and supports to make the business case for nature improvement. On the other hand, there are perceived challenges in mainstreaming the NCA in environmental policy processes. There is some lack of agreement on the usefulness of the approach, problems with the oversuse of monetary valuation in policy appraisal, isolation of work, policy processes and government departments and difficulties in the communication of the benefits of the NCA. Recommendations to overcome the barriers include cross-departmental work placements of natural capital scientists, establishing cross-agency natural capital working goups to work on the use of the NCA to frame environment improvement policies, and prioritising the adoption of deliberative approaches to better understand local values on nature that are difficult or even impossible to monetise. Full article

Rural sustainability planning requires spatially explicit methods that integrate agricultural resource bases, ecological condition, low-carbon feasibility, community implementation support, and cultural landscape values. Although the Circular and Ecological Sphere (CES) concept offers an integrative framework for rural transition, empirical CES studies remain largely qualitative or policy-oriented. This study develops a FarmMap-integrated Python-GIS workflow for proxy-based CES-oriented spatial prioritization in Yangpyeong-gun, a peri-rural county on the eastern fringe of the Seoul metropolitan region in Korea. Public spatial and administrative datasets were integrated into thirteen indicators grouped under five CES-relevant axes. The model does not measure realized circular material flows, governance quality, resident participation, or carbon emission reduction directly; instead, it identifies where CES-relevant spatial potentials co-occur. An axis-balanced entropy model assigned equal total weight to each axis while applying entropy weighting within axes. Robustness was tested through equal-weight, axis-emphasis, raw entropy diagnostic, Monte Carlo perturbation, and spatial-scale sensitivity analyses using 100 m diagnostic, 500 m, and eup/myeon supports. The final 250 m priority surface identified the top fifth of analyzed Yangpyeong-gun area as very-high relative priority and remained stable across weighting and spatial-support diagnostics. Rural-experience villages and village enterprises had significantly higher CES scores than random background locations. The results demonstrate a reproducible first-stage spatial screening workflow for CES-oriented rural planning while clarifying the limits of proxy-based circularity, governance, and low-carbon indicators. Full article

Rurbanization and peri-urbanization are among the most dynamic territorial processes affecting metropolitan regions in Morocco, particularly within the Casablanca–Settat region. These transformations, driven by rapid urban growth, demographic pressure, and socio-economic change, generate complex transitional spaces between rural and urban environments. In this context, the present study proposes a hybrid methodology for detecting, classifying, and analyzing the rural–urban continuum by using remote sensing data and artificial intelligence techniques. The approach integrates Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, spectral indices, Global Human Settlement Layer datasets, and socio-demographic indicators derived from the Moroccan census. Two models, Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and Graph Neural Networks (GNN), were applied to classify territories into four categories: urban, peri-urban, rurban, and rural. Model outputs were combined with expert-based decision rules to improve classification robustness and interpretability. The SOM model achieved up to $89.3\%$ agreement with expert classifications and a Cohen’s Kappa coefficient of $0.842$, demonstrating strong interpretability and consistency, while the GNN model reached $53\%$ agreement and effectively modeled spatial dependencies and neighborhood interactions. Diachronic analysis between 2014 and 2024 revealed a $54\%$ increase in peri-urban municipalities, a $24\%$ decrease in rurban territories, and a decline in rural municipalities, highlighting intensified urban sprawl and fragmentation of agricultural landscapes. Beyond its scientific contribution, this study provides a valuable decision-support framework for urban planners, environmental agencies, and policy makers involved in territorial governance and sustainable development. It can support land-use planning, monitoring of urban sprawl, protection of agricultural lands, and the implementation of adaptive territorial policies aimed at improving the resilience and sustainability of rurban environments. Full article