Table of Contents

Anthropogenic activities have dramatically changed land uses over the last century, which has considerably increased soil disturbance. Despite considerable attention paid to the effects of land use on soil erosion, it remains controversial as to how much ...

Soil bacteria are vital to the modulation of soil carbon and nutrient cycling. However, the response of key microbiota and the metabolic potential of soil bacteria to tolerate disturbance have yet to be fully investigated across land-use types, especially ...

Background: Vegetation restoration influences soil properties considerably, which in turn interact with microbial community structure and regulate ecosystem stability. However, the influence of soil physical properties on soil microbial community ...

The continuous improvement of the Chinese people’s lifestyle and consumption level and the promotion of healthful and reasonable diets have created a greater demand for fruit production. There is an urgent to determine how to meet the increasing demand ...

Because of geographical position and high carbon storage potential, coastal salt marshes are recognized as an essential component of blue carbon and play an indispensable role in regulating climate and reaching carbon neutrality targets. Nonetheless, ...

Sea-level rise (SLR) is expected to suppress the growth of tidal marshes due to prolonged inundation, but this can be compensated by increasing surface elevation with SLR. Warming-induced growth regulation could make it more complicated. We applied a ...

The region containing 17 Asian countries located on and around the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Asian Water Tower) is experiencing a serious ecological crisis, representing a major challenge for both Asian and global ecological conservation. Identifying and ...

The strengthening of regional habitat quality is crucial to protect biodiversity and fully utilize ecosystem services such as those provided by forestry and aquatic ecosystems. However, the long-term patterns of change in the habitat quality of the ...

River health assessment is a critical basis for river sustainable management. Taking the Neijiang River in the Chengdu Plain in Southwest China as an example, the health of the typical human-dominated river ecosystem was assessed combining point-river-...

Mangrove forests play an important role in the carbon cycle by sequestering atmospheric CO₂ and storing it as carbon in plant materials and sediments. We evaluated the ecosystem carbon stocks and carbon accumulation rates of an 18-year mangrove ...

Ecological representativeness of protected area networks is essential for leveraging protected areas to achieve conservation goals. On the basis of China’s vegetation map and the spatial data of protected areas, we analyze the representativeness of China’...

In recent decades, the rivers in Lake Chaohu Basin have been subjected to intensive anthropogenic disturbance. However, previous studies have mainly focused on Lake Chaohu, and the inflowing and outflowing rivers have not been well examined. To ...

Aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing economic activities in the world that results in a high amount of nitrogen-rich wastewater discharge into mangroves and affects the plant tissue’s decomposition. However, a comprehensive analysis of above- and ...

While there is consensus that blue carbon ecosystems, such as mangroves, have an important role in mitigating some aspects of global climate change, little is known about mangrove carbon cycling under elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentrations (eCO₂). Here, ...

Waste management (WM) is a complex social–ecological system that should be evaluated by socioeconomic and environmental indicators. A new waste separation strategy was implemented in China in 2017. Whether the high recycling target in this strategy is ...

Climate technology transfer is vital to greening the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and strengthening the BRI cooperative partnership. The major concerns of technology transferrers are to clarify what to transfer and where to transfer. On the basis of ...

Background: Rapid increases in protected wildlife population can lead to increased human–wildlife conflicts, challenging conservation program sustainability. As wildlife continue to thrive and increase on the Tibetan Plateau, human–wildlife conflict is ...

Coastal wetland ecosystems are highly efficient in sequestering carbon (C) to mitigate climate change. However, it is still unclear how vegetation dynamics affect soil organic carbon (SOC) and its fractions (labile and recalcitrant C (LC and RC)) in ...

The construction of regional ecological security patterns (RESPs) has practical significance in guiding cross-regional synergistic ecological conservation; however, quantitative comparative studies within and beyond RESPs are lacking. Here, RESPs were ...

Despite tidal action, which is influenced by sea level rise, having a substantial impact on plant communities, salt marsh plant communities in coastal wetlands also act as a coastal zone barrier. Phragmites australis and Spartina alterniflora were ...

As an important clean energy source, the scale and quantity of wind power have steadily increased under the background of global change. The construction and operation of wind power facilities have massive impacts on grassland microclimates. However, the ...

The security of drinking water resources is an important concern for human survival. The extensive use of geographic information system and remote sensing data in risk assessments of water quality from a spatiotemporal perspective can complement water ...

Degraded forests still retain a high dose of nature that may evoke positive sentiments of visitors. This function reminds policy makers to reevaluate the development of degraded forests by using their nonmaterial services. Forest visitors have a general ...

In dry rivers, urban wastewater discharge forms a pond in the dry period, and surface runoff shapes a longer pond in the wet period. A water quality management model developed for dry rivers is applied on Wadi Rumah in Saudi Arabia. The sub-basin was ...

Tropospheric ozone (O₃) is found to be a severe threat to agriculture and natural vegetation. The present study was conducted to investigate the structural and functional changes in an intact seminatural grassland community when exposed to elevated O₃ (EO_...

Human activities through changes in land and water use have led to increase in provision ecosystem services (ESs) but decrease in some regulating, supporting, and cultural services in the past thousands of years. The impact of land and water use on ...

Recent research has shown that jellyfish blooms occur more frequently near nuclear power plants (NPPs), and a relationship between thermal discharges from the NPPs and the blooms has been hypothesized. There is, however, no direct evidence that links the ...

The Humboldt squid Dosidicus gigas is a pelagic cephalopod species extensively distributed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Geographically separated habitat patterns of D. gigas show large spatiotemporal variations due to the distinct different regional ...

A scientific and systematic approach that provides accurate carbon accounting is a fundamental prerequisite for responding to the climate crisis. The carbon accounting system has evolved from production-based accounting measuring territorial emissions to ...

An accelerating rate of sea level rise (SLR) is causing huge inundation pressure on coastal wetlands worldwide. Vegetation of coastal wetlands plays a key role in stabilizing the coast and accreting sediment in order to mitigate the negative impact of ...