The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is an economically important region (e.g. oil and gas, fisheries) and with the expansion of oil drilling, harmful algal bloom events, oil blowouts, dead zones, anthropogenic eutrophication and contaminant loading, it is important that the ecological quality statuses (EcoQS) of different localities in the Gulf are closely monitored. The EcoQS, as implemented by the European

The Sasso Fratino Integral Natural Reserve (Central Italy), a rare example of climax Mediterranean forest, provides an extraordinary opportunity to create an important soundscape reference of old-growth forest. In this study, we describe the soundscape of three localities (Lama, Sasso 950, Sasso 1400) representative of a gradient of variety and complexity of habitats, recorded during the period 10

Global average temperature, frequency of temperature extremes and amplitude of daily fluctuations are all expected to change under prospected scenarios of climate change. The amplitudes of temperature variation and the ability of species to tolerate thermal stress are crucial for species fitness and survival in rapidly changing environments. Small differences in the life histories of species or in

Mountains have provided important insights on the impacts of climate change on species distribution. Organisms living in tropical mountains are expected to specialize in narrow temperature limits (demonstrating low thermal tolerance), often with narrow elevational distributions relative to temperate species, and may shift their elevational range in response to climate change. Importantly, insects are

Understanding the impacts of large-scale anthropogenic drivers on spatiotemporal processes in carbon storage through land-use patterns is a growing issue for the assessment of terrestrial ecosystems. However, an integrated assessment of changes in carbon storage, entailing complex land-use and land-cover (LULC) dynamics, remains a challenge. This study assessed the consequences of LULC changes on regional

Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor, a critical part of the Belt and Road Initiative program, is subject to the impact of various natural disasters and intense human activities, which have led to serious ecological vulnerability. This study proposed a prototype model using geographically weighted principal component analysis to quantify ecological vulnerability at the grid level, and an

In recent years, exchange of goods around the world has mostly been done by the sea, which increased the pollution coming from the port areas. Activities connected with shipping and handling of goods in ports may harm both human health and the environment. These activities include different (mostly diesel-fueled) machinery used in ports, resulting in air emissions including GHG, NOX, SOX, PM, etc.

The establishment of sustainable coastal industries requires better temporal and spatial monitoring of heavy metal (HM) pollutants, even at low concentrations and during pulse-release events, before their accumulation becomes hazardous for local ecosystems or for the use of seawater in desalination (for drinking water). Foraminifera, unicellular marine organism, build their shells by sequential addition

Unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss and intensifying human attempts to rectify the biodiversity crisis have heightened the need for standardized, large-scale, long-duration biodiversity monitoring at fine temporal resolution. While some innovative technologies such as passive acoustic monitoring are well suited for such monitoring challenges, many questions remain as to how they should be scaled

The main factors controlling plant litter decomposition rates are litter quality and environmental factors. We investigated how different salinity and inundation conditions influence the decomposition rate and how litter quality affects dynamic change during the decomposition process in the Yellow River Delta wetland in northeastern China. To do this, we designed a field experiment using the litter

Urbanization has brought devastating disasters to the species diversity of urban wetlands. However, due to the complexity of the urban environment, the process and causes of urban biodiversity distribution patterns are not clear. In this study, we explored the patterns and formation of spatial differentiation in zooplankton in the context of urbanization by using spatial instead of temporal methods

Small, surface-release dams are ubiquitous features of the landscape that typically slow water flow and decrease canopy cover through impounded reaches, potentially increasing stream temperatures. However, reported effects of small dams on water temperature are variable, likely due to differences in landscape and dam characteristics. To quantify the range of thermal effects of small dams, we deployed

New technologies like ecoacoustic surveys promise time and cost efficiency for biodiversity assessments, serve as a basis for effective conservation policies, and are particularly appealing for remote and highly diverse tropical areas. Acoustic indices facilitate the analysis of large acoustic datasets but no consensus on their performance has been reached yet. We evaluated the efficacy of four acoustic

Plant diversity, habitat properties, and their relationships in karst caves remain poorly understood. We surveyed vascular plant and bryophyte diversities and measured the habitat characteristics in six karst caves in south China with different disturbance histories (one had been disturbed by poultry feeding, three had been disturbed by tourism, and two were undisturbed). The plant diversity differences

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a staple cereal crop and its demand is substantially increasing with the growth of the global population. Precisely predicting rice yields are of vital importance to ensure the food security in countries like China, where rice accounts for one-fifth of the total agricultural production. Previous studies found that the rice yields had been significantly impacted by climate

Global change drivers such as land use and climate changes are known to interact in their effects on biodiversity. The impact of these drivers on global biodiversity is increasingly evident in many forms including the spread of invasive species. Climate and land use changes affect introduction, colonization and spread of invasive species by affecting niche availability and dispersal potential. We tested

Climate and atmospheric pollutants, such as ozone (O3), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), herbicides and particulate matter, can elevate the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and increase stress on plants. However, many plants can tolerate stress, neutralizing ROS through their antioxidant defense system and physiological mechanisms. Some, such as bromeliad species, are even able

With the global increase of marine protected area (MPA) implementation, the need for monitoring and the evaluation of their effectiveness becomes ever more important. Currently there is a severe lack of information about the protection effects of soft-substrate ecosystems. While many different methods have been established for the monitoring of hard-substrate ecosystems, most of these minimally invasive

Disturbance affects the ecological structure and function of wetland ecosystems by altering plant and soil properties. To identify the response of soil carbon and nitrogen to wetland disturbance, this study was conducted in three disturbed and two reference Carex tussock wetlands in Momoge National Natural Reserve, China. The content and stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) were

Understanding the impacts of climate and land use/land cover (LULC) changes on water yield has great importance for water resource management and policy development, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. However, it is unclear whether land greening under the human land management is beneficial to the water yield of different geomorphic units under the unique climate models. Here, we used InVEST model

Sandy soil, as an important transition phase to desertification, has been an important environmental issue of global concern. This study explored the combined effects of organic fertilizer amendment and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF)-assisted phytoremediation on sandy soil improvement and revealed the mechanism of soil improvement from the perspective of microbial interactions. Furthermore, soil

Nutrient stoichiometry and trade-offs focusing on the mass balance of multiple nutrient elements play important roles in the response mechanism of plants to environmental stresses in wetlands. Nonetheless, little is known about the response dynamics and trade-offs of nutrient elements of wetland plants, especially potassium (K), under hydrological fluctuation conditions. Greenhouse experiments have

The alternations in soil physicochemical properties caused by the reclamation of coastal tidal land can strongly affect the activities of soil extracellular enzymes. Soil extracellular enzymes are one of the most active organic components in soil ecosystem, which is involved in almost all the biochemical reactions. Determining the importance of potential influencing factors of soil extracellular enzymes

Ecoacoustics is an emerging field that allows inferences about biodiversity trends and ecosystem health. Several acoustic indices have been developed for fast, automated assessments of ecosystem condition and are often used to assess changes in species richness/diversity across space or time. However, studies have reported inconclusive relationships between acoustic indices and species richness/diversity

We introduce and provide a new data-set of species-specific ecological indicator values (alternative ‘Ellenberg values’ for climatic variables, light, moisture, soil reaction/pH, salinity, nitrogen and phosphorus plus response to management and disturbance), physiological and reproductive traits (including symbionts, phenology, pollinators, nectar production, seed properties), indices of relevance

Climate change and land use management were competing explanations for vegetation dynamics in cold and semi-arid region of north-eastern Inner Mongolia, China. In order to reveal the role of human disturbance and clarify the regional climate-vegetation relationship, long-term (1982–2013) datasets of climate variables and vegetation dynamics in a forest-steppe transition zone of north-eastern Inner

How tree growth responds to climate is determined by temperature and water availability, but climate change is causing shifts in forest growth that could be evaluated through tree-ring growth studies given that it is annual radial increase is influenced by interannual and multiannual climatic variations. We evaluated the influence of oceanic-atmospheric indices and the climate response on the annual

Landscape evolution is occurring at rapid rates in alpine areas in response to recent climate warming, also due to the susceptibility and the heterogeneity of these environments. Here we present a prediction model of surface displacements that takes into account both topographic and climatic variables. Observed points of surficial displacements have been associated to non-climatic (altitude, slope

Understanding species-specific responses to urbanization is essential to mitigate and preserve biodiversity in the face of increasing urbanization, but a major challenge is how to estimate urban tolerances for a wide array of species applicable over disparate regions. A promising approach is to assess urban tolerance by integrating geo-referenced information on species detections from citizen science

The key challenge in the fields of conservation and resource management is to track local, regional and global species extinctions and preserve biodiversity through optimization of investment of funds. To fulfil that purpose modelling and mapping habitat suitability of species is becoming essential. The freshwater ecosystem is today one of the most threatened ecosystems and fishes are especially vulnerable

Intensive fish farming is a major industry, but the extent of organic matter (OM) and heavy metal pollution by fish farms is debated. This study established in situ reference conditions using geochemical parameters and fossil benthic foraminiferal assemblages in dated sediment cores to identify potential impacts of fish farming in two basins of the inner Øksfjord, Northern Norway. Living (rose Bengal

Forests can provide multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously that are related to biomass production, soil carbon stock, and nutrient cycling, and plant diversity is often important for the maintenance of ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF). However, the underlying mechanisms involved in regulating relationships between species richness and abundance and EMF in a subtropical coniferous forest still

As the largest tributary of the Yellow River and a large semi-arid area, the ecological status of the Wei River Basin, China, has become an important issue of concern. Habitat, water quality and biological pressure are the factors affecting the structure and function of rivers. However, it is a challenging task to determine the joint rather than isolated influence of factors on the watershed. Plankton

Lowland riparian hardwood forests are valuable habitats protected by EU Habitat Directive (EU code: 91F0). Today, in most areas across Europe they are extremely rare due to deforestation, drainage and river engineering. The remaining small forest patches are important parts of riparian ecological corridors and biodiversity hotspots, and provide valuable ecosystem services (ES) to humans. However, unlike

Mountain systems throughout the globe are conspicuously sensitive to on-going climate alterations. This condition is much more detrimental in the Himalaya, where the rate of warming and thus the glacier meltdown is much higher than elsewhere. The Himalayan coldwater species are concerningly most vulnerable to these changes because of their limited thermal range. Whilst climate studies strongly prognosticate

Global climate change can harm the food production globally by varying intensity and frequency of rainfall, occurrence of extreme weather and increment in greenhouse gases. Increased occurrence of extreme climate events results in greater variability of agricultural production. In this study, the climate change impact evaluation was done by using CERES-maize model for maize yield and yield attributes

Our study titled “The balancing act: Maintaining leopard-wild prey equilibrium could offer economic benefits to people in a shared forest landscape of central India” used an occupancy framework to provide baseline information on patterns and determinants of leopard occurrence and conflict in a human-dominated landscape. We also examined the role of wild prey in offsetting livestock depredation based

Study on the ecological cumulative effect (ECE) in mining area is an effective way to understand the impact of long-term coal mining on the ecological environment. However, the existing quantitative models to evaluate the ECE in mining area focus more on region-wide features, static analysis and multi-temporal comparison with numerical results, but less on the spatial heterogeneity, dynamic changes

Chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentration is an indicator of algal biomass. The Sentinel 2 platform offers greatly improved spatial resolution over other satellite platforms designed for water based chl-a retrievals and includes a “red-edge” band at 704 nm not present on the Landsat 8 operational land imager. This study provides validation of an improved version of a well known semi-analytical chl-a retrieval

Investigating the coordinated development between social economy and water environmental quality is an important basis for promoting the protection of water ecological environment. In this paper, a comprehensive index system was built to estimate the coupling coordination between social economy and water environmental quality subsystems in Nansi Lake catchment, China. Improved coupling coordination