Search Results (823)

Coastal wetlands are increasingly threatened by salinization and habitat degradation, which limit the natural regeneration of native halophytes. Suaeda heteroptera, an important halophytic species in temperate coastal wetlands, plays a critical role in vegetation restoration; however, its population recovery is constrained by limited seedling establishment. This study investigated the effects of seed heteromorphism, chemical priming, and environmental factors on the germination performance of S. heteroptera to provide insights for sustainable coastal wetland restoration. Two heteromorphic seed types of S. heteroptera were evaluated under potassium permanganate (KMnO₄), gibberellin (GA), and different salinity, temperature, and photoperiod conditions. The results revealed distinct germination strategies between seed types: Type B seeds showed faster germination initiation and higher early germination performance, whereas Type A seeds exhibited delayed germination characteristics, indicating differences in regeneration strategies between the two seed morphotypes. Both KMnO₄ and GA showed concentration-dependent effects, with low concentrations promoting germination and excessive concentrations inhibiting germination. Orthogonal analysis indicated that temperature had the greatest relative influence on germination, followed by salinity and photoperiod conditions. Within the tested experimental range, the optimal germination performance was observed under 10‰ salinity, 10 °C, and 24 h light exposure. These findings demonstrate that seed heteromorphism provides complementary regeneration strategies for S. heteroptera and that integrating chemical priming with environmental regulation may provide useful insights for coastal wetland restoration. Full article

Urban wetlands and agricultural lands are among the most important socio-ecological systems in urban areas. They support food production, biodiversity conservation, water regulation, climate resilience, and human well-being. However, rapid urbanization negatively affects wetland–agricultural coexistence (WAC) by destroying habitats, fragmenting landscapes, and intensifying land-use conflicts. Our study proposed a Wetland–Agriculture Coexistence Index (WACI) to assess the spatial pattern of WAC in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We considered four components for the WACI framework: wetland condition (WC), agricultural condition (AC), urban pressure (UP), and hydrological connectivity (HC). The WACI was developed using Landsat 8/9, Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) data, along with road network, population, and hydrological network data. Variables used in this study include land surface temperature (LST), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Modified Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI), Bare Soil Index (BSI), soil moisture, elevation, slope, population density, distance to roads, hydrological connectivity, and built-up %, which were normalized and integrated into four dimensions using an equal-weighted approach to develop the WACI. The results showed substantial spatial heterogeneity in WAC across Colombo. The average WACI was 0.51, indicating a moderate WAC. This study further identified that favorable environmental conditions, rich hydrological connectivity, and low urban pressure increased coexistence potentials. The spatial pattern of WACI identified priority areas for conservation, restoration, and sustainable urban planning implications in Colombo. Our WACI framework provides a practical and transferable method for assessing WAC in urban areas. The findings of this study support balanced urban wetland–agricultural management, conservation, food security, and long-term sustainability of rapidly urbanizing cities. Full article

Wetland ecosystems in large lake basins play a critical role in maintaining regional water security and ecological balance. Despite their importance, the long-term spatiotemporal dynamics of basin wetlands and their effects on lake water quality under intensive human disturbance remain elusive. This study leveraged multi-source satellite archives from 1986 to 2025 to construct a framework for extracting and classifying potential wetlands in the Chaohu Lake basin, Anhui province, China, and examined its evolution and its relationship with water quality. The resulting wetland maps are highly reliable, with overall accuracy ranging from 81.63% to 94.22% and precision approaching 99%, effectively addressing spectral confusion and boundary instability caused by hydrological fluctuations. In total, the basin contains approximately 2139.9 km² of potential wetlands (16%), which are spatially concentrated along the lake and river corridors. Over the 36-year period, wetlands underwent distinct phases of “relative stability—rapid decline—Emerging recovery,” with shrinkage primarily in the west and relative stability in the east, while ponds and paddy fields experienced the most frequent conversions. In recent years (2010–2025), changes in the water environment of Lake Chaohu showed strong spatiotemporal consistency with wetland dynamics. As partial wetland recovery emerged after 2015, concentrations of total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and chlorophyll-a (Chla) declined and stabilized, and the area affected by cyanobacterial blooms decreased by 46%, suggesting a potential role of wetland recovery in improving water quality and mitigating non-point-source pollution. This study provides a comprehensive characterization of wetland dynamics and their influence on water quality, offering valuable data and guidance for wetland conservation, ecological restoration, and integrated lake management in the Chaohu Lake Basin. Full article

Wetlands have been noted to provide us with a wide range of ecosystem services—climate, water quality, flood regulation, and habitat benefits among others. The evidence that supports these service benefits is fairly well documented in the literature. However, it is often scattered across studies, metrics, and valuation methods, making it difficult for planners and landscape architects to use in physical projects and plans. The empirical result of this difficulty is that wetlands are often overlooked and under-utilized as part of broader ecosystem and land based planning solution sets. This paper addresses this usability deficiency using an ecosystem accounting framework that translates wetland science into spatially specific design and planning metrics. The framework follows the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting-Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), an international statistical framework adopted by the UN to measure the environment’s contribution to the economy and human well-being. In our study, wetland extents in the state of Illinois are mapped on a statewide 30 m × 30 m grid. Individual wetland system conditions are estimated from floristic quality using a generalized additive model trained on 244 wetland sites that are part of the long-term Critical Trends Assessment Program (CTAP) at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). A floristic condition scalar, $w\left(x\right)$, provides a screening-level measure of ecological condition. It is applied only to a nonmonetary habitat-condition account and is not used to scale the monetary service accounts. Climate regulation, water purification, and flood regulation are quantified through service-specific physical models and reported as carbon-price and replacement-cost proxies. Under the central scenarios, these three monetary proxy accounts produce a combined subtotal of USD 1408.6 million per year. The annualized surface-storage replacement-cost scenario accounts for USD 1048.5 million, load-gated nitrogen-removal replacement cost for USD 338.0 million, and the climate-regulation carbon-price proxy for USD 22.1 million. These estimates are planning proxies rather than observed market benefits or realized avoided damages. The separate habitat-condition account totals 198,280 condition-weighted hectares, with a statewide mean $w\left(x\right)$ of 0.502, and is not added to the monetary subtotal. Climate performance varies across wetland types: methane emissions cause some emergent wetland categories to function as net greenhouse-gas sources under the central assumptions, while other categories remain net sinks. A protection-gap analysis shows that Tier 4 wetlands contain 70.1% of the classified vegetated-wetland area and 67.0% of the condition-weighted habitat area within the classified domain. Broadly, the framework demonstrates how ecosystem accounting can translate fragmented wetland evidence into consistent spatial metrics for planning. The resulting layers support statewide screening, comparison among wetland categories, conservation and restoration screening, and protection-gap analysis while preserving the distinction between monetary service proxies and nonmonetary ecological condition. Full article

Fine-grained mapping of riparian vegetation is important for ecological monitoring, invasive species control, and ecosystem restoration. However, riparian plant communities often exhibit fragmented patches, broad transition zones and high visual similarity among classes, making stable species-level segmentation difficult from conventional satellite imagery or lower-resolution UAV imagery. To address this gap, we present WetVeg-2mm, an ultra-high-resolution UAV dataset for fine-grained riparian vegetation semantic segmentation. Built from UAV surveys over a representative riparian section of the Jiuzhou River in Guangxi, China, the dataset provides 2054 image chips (1024 × 1024) with pixel-level annotations at 2 mm ground sampling distance. It contains 17 semantic classes in total, including 14 representative wetland plant classes, such as Colocasia, Eichhornia and Phragmites, together with water, bareland and background. Five baseline models, namely U-Net, Attention U-Net, DeepLabV3+, PSPNet and SegFormer, were evaluated using per-class IoU, mIoU, mDice, PA, Precision and Recall. Across all evaluated baseline settings, SegFormer with ImageNet pretraining achieved the best overall performance, with 76.23% mIoU, 86.01% mDice, 85.17% PA, 87.30% Recall and 85.42% Precision on the test set. Overall, WetVeg-2mm provides a reproducible and challenging benchmark for fine-grained riparian vegetation semantic segmentation. Full article

Rapid changes in coastal salt marsh vegetation highlight the need for accurate monitoring to support sustainable management. This study aims to track annual salt marsh landscape dynamics and discuss vegetation succession mechanisms. A novel approach was proposed to improve the discrimination of different plant species by integrating phenological features derived from NDVI time series, thereby enhancing salt marsh classification. The results showed that the proposed method achieves an overall accuracy of 93.6%, significantly outperforming schemes based solely on spectral indices (81.6%) or combined spectral and textural features (85.5%) (p < 0.05). The overall accuracy of annual classification maps for the Yancheng National Nature Reserve wetland from 1994 to 2025 averaged 90.5%, with a minor fluctuation of 2.8%, demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of this method for long-term monitoring of salt marsh landscapes. Annual classification maps revealed that the encroachment of Spartina alterniflora and Phragmites australis has intensified the fragmentation of Suaeda salsa. Notably, eradication efforts targeting Spartina alterniflora appear to have contributed to controlling this invasive species (decreasing by 33.22 km²) and restoring native species (increasing by 2.56 km²). This method serves as a reference for advancing salt marsh landscape classification frameworks. Full article

Abandoned paddy wetlands (APWs) develop after rice cultivation ceases and may support carbon sequestration, soil conservation, and sustainable management of abandoned agricultural land. This study quantified soil and biomass carbon in six reference APWs in the central region of the Republic of Korea. Following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (GPG-LULUCF), soil samples were collected to a depth of 30 cm to estimate soil organic matter (OM), soil organic carbon (SOC), and soil organic carbon storage per unit area (SOCS). Land cover-based carbon absorption was evaluated within 300 m hydro-ecological impact zones for 2000, 2013, and 2021, and biomass carbon was estimated for woody, herbaceous, and mixed communities using field measurements and drone LiDAR-derived vegetation structure. The mean OM and SOC contents were 33.7 and 19.54 g/kg, respectively. The corrected mean SOCS was 61.20 ± 22.28 kg/m² (unadjusted mean: 67.97 kg/m²), approximately 8.5–40 times the reference values reported for South Korean forest soils and urban parks. The mapped mean carbon absorption was 20.45 tCO₂/ha in 2000, 35.30 tCO₂/ha in 2013, and 38.14 tCO₂/ha in 2021. Because only three mapped years were analyzed, these values describe observed differences and do not establish a continuous temporal trajectory or a stable plateau. The findings suggest that APWs may contribute to sustainable land management, wetland restoration, soil conservation, and climate-change mitigation through carbon retention in soils and vegetation. These field data provide region-specific evidence for evaluating sustainable management strategies and complementing broader-scale soil–vegetation carbon models. Full article

To reveal the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and driving mechanisms of ecosystem patterns in the mine ecological restoration project area on the western margin of the Junggar Basin, spatial data of ecosystem types from 2015 to 2024 were utilized, and the evolution characteristics and driving factors were analyzed by comprehensively applying the PNTIL model, landscape pattern indices, and the Geodetector. The results indicated: (1) Approximately 70% of the study area was consistently occupied by bareland; a net increase of 163.52 km² (+61.63%) was recorded for grassland area, while a net decrease of 118.08 km² (−15.95%) was observed for farmland area. (2) For forest, grassland, and wetland ecosystems, the negative transformation rates were all higher than the positive transformation rates, and the highest negative transformation rate was recorded for grassland, at 8.56% (2020–2024). (3) At the landscape level, increases in patch number and patch density were observed; at the class level, fragmentation was increased for bareland and farmland, while grassland patches were found to be more aggregated. (4) Annual mean evapotranspiration (q = 0.746), per capita GDP (q = 0.677), and annual mean temperature (q = 0.518) were identified as the primary driving factors, and the interaction between annual mean evapotranspiration and annual mean precipitation was found to be the strongest interactive driving factor. The findings of this study can be used as a theoretical basis for similar historically abandoned mine ecological restoration project areas in terms of land use planning, ecological restoration practices, and sustainable development. Full article

Against the backdrop of global climate change, enhancing the carbon sink capacity of ecosystems has become one of the key pathways for implementing climate action. This study takes the Western Hills–Yongding River Cultural Belt in Beijing as its study area to systematically investigate the coupling mechanisms between multidimensional spatial pattern factors and the carbon sink capacity of vegetation net primary productivity (NPP). The study employed the morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) method to structurally identify and quantify regional green space landscape elements. By integrating vertical vector data such as building height and canopy height, and incorporating terrain background and human activity intensity indicators, a comprehensive system of driving factors was established, encompassing two-dimensional landscape patterns, three-dimensional spatial structures and multi-dimensional attributes. Based on the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) classification system, a detailed classification of the study area’s land cover was carried out, and eight typical units—encompassing built-up settlements, brownfield sites, forested green spaces and riparian wetlands—were selected as the core objects of analysis. Building on this, multiple non-linear machine learning regression models were constructed to conduct fitting analyses and accuracy validation; the LightGBM model was identified as the optimal fitting model based on the test set coefficient of determination (R²) and root mean square error (RMSE) as core indicators; Furthermore, the SHAP interpretability analysis framework was introduced to systematically reveal the relative importance of each of the driving factors, their positive and negative effects, non-linear response characteristics, and two-factor interaction mechanisms. Based on these findings, category-specific, differentiated spatial regulation strategies for enhancing carbon sinks were proposed, providing scientific support for the optimisation of ecological spaces, the ecological restoration of brownfield sites, and the realisation of carbon sink potential within the study area. Full article

Mangrove ecosystems store large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC). However, degradation processes associated with invasive species can alter vegetation structure, hydrological conditions, and carbon cycling, with uncertain consequences for SOC storage and greenhouse gas emissions. This study evaluated changes in SOC stocks to 0–50 cm depth, soil CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O fluxes, and early restoration responses four years after ecological restoration in the Térraba–Sierpe National Wetland, Costa Rica. Comparisons were conducted among a conserved mangrove, a degraded mangrove dominated by Acrostichum aureum, and three restored sites subjected to hydrological rehabilitation with contrasting reforestation intensities. The degraded site showed significantly higher SOC contents (171 ± 31 Mg C ha⁻¹; p < 0.0001) compared to the conserved site (103 ± 26 Mg C ha⁻¹). CO₂ fluxes did not differ significantly between March and October. CH₄ and N₂O fluxes remained below the detection limits in most measurements. Redundancy analysis identified a significant association between vegetation composition and the measured environmental variables (p = 0.005). Higher CO₂ emissions were associated with the dominance of A. aureum. Plant density was positively related to SOC content (R² = 0.78). MR1 site, where hydrological rehabilitation was combined with high-density reforestation, had significantly higher SOC content than the degraded site (242 ± 24.3 Mg C ha⁻¹; p < 0.001). Soil CO₂ emissions at MR1 were also significantly lower than at the degraded site (p = 0.001). This study provides a pioneering field assessment of mangrove restoration through the control of A. aureum invasion. The results suggest that restoration design may influence soil carbon storage during the early stages of recovery. Full article

Aquatic ecosystems are increasingly impacted by anthropogenic pressures, including nutrient over-enrichment, industrial discharge and physical habitat alteration, resulting from industrialization, urbanization, agricultural intensification and population growth. In recent years, microalgae have been extensively studied in engineered and controlled systems for their potential role in aquatic ecosystem restoration, owing to their capacity to assimilate nutrients, sequester contaminants and interact with microbial consortia, alongside valuable biomass generation. While most of the existing studies are based on ex situ systems, such as high-rate algal ponds, wastewater treatment reactors, algal–bacterial granular sludge, constructed wetlands and aquaculture effluent treatment units, these processes provide mechanistic insights relevant to aquatic ecosystem restoration. Hence, this review critically evaluates the emerging role of microalgae in aquatic ecosystem restoration, mainly through two implementation pathways, namely ex situ engineered systems and in situ applications, based on the current state of the art in microalgae-driven processes, with particular emphasis on nutrient uptake pathways and mechanisms. Furthermore, key challenges and future directions associated with the translational potential of microalgae-based approaches, including field-scale validation, ecological performance assessment, operational stability and regulatory integration, essential for real-world aquatic ecosystem restoration, are discussed. Despite the limitations in direct field-scale restoration, microalgae-based strategies are promising and sustainable platforms for aquatic ecosystem rehabilitation, which align with Sustainable Development Goals 6 and 14. Full article

With the acceleration of global urbanization and intensified agricultural activities, approximately 61% of the world’s wetlands have degraded over recent decades, significantly weakening their carbon sequestration capacity. The Shibalianwei Wetland, a crucial tributary system of Lake Chaohu in China, has suffered severe degradation due to land use and cover change, nutrient loading and hydrological disruption. In response, large-scale ecological restoration has been implemented since 2018. To quantify the restoration outcomes, this study integrated remote sensing, GIS, and machine learning techniques, employing the XGBoost model to evaluate and predict carbon sequestration in 2017 and 2024 based on 2010 carbon data. The results reveal that the average carbon density increased from 48.70 t ha⁻¹ in 2017 to 90.18 t ha⁻¹ in 2024, representing an overall increase of 85.2% in total carbon storage. This substantial enhancement is primarily attributed to land use transitions and ecosystem-scale restoration effects, including vegetation recovery and hydrological rehabilitation. Model validation indicated moderate prediction errors (RMSE = 0.47–0.74), with consistent performance across repeated iterations. Together with complementary MAE and R² metrics, the results suggest that the XGBoost model is capable of capturing relative spatial patterns and restoration-induced changes in wetland carbon sequestration, while retaining reasonable predictive stability under changing landscape conditions. Overall, the findings demonstrate that large-scale wetland restoration can rapidly and effectively enhance regional carbon sink capacity and highlight the potential of data-driven modeling frameworks to support wetland management and carbon-neutrality strategies. This provides important guidance for policymakers to promote sustainable land use and optimize ecosystem management under China’s dual-carbon development goals. Full article

Semi-arid wetlands are highly sensitive to changes in hydrological regimes, as strong evaporation often exceeds limited natural recharge. Ecological water replenishment is widely used to restore these systems, but schemes designed only to meet water-volume targets may cause excessive hydrodynamic disturbance, promote sediment resuspension, and increase the release of internal pollutants. In this study, we developed an ecological water-replenishment assessment framework for Chahannaoer Wetland that incorporates ecological water-demand thresholds, suspended-solids disturbance, and an AHP–entropy weight–TOPSIS decision model. Using hydrological and meteorological data from 2014 to 2024, six replenishment scenarios were evaluated in terms of water-balance recovery, disturbance control, and habitat suitability. The results show that Chahannaoer Wetland experienced a persistent evaporation-dominated water deficit. The mean annual natural recharge was 0.225 × 10⁸ m³, with a mean annual ecological water shortage of 1.03 × 10⁸ m³ and an evapotranspiration-to-recharge ratio of 3.42–4.56. Based on the previous comprehensive water-quality assessment using DO, COD, NH₃-N, TN, and TP, the minimum water volume required to maintain Class IV water quality was 0.86 × 10⁸ m³, whereas the suitable ecological water demand ranged from 1.27 × 10⁸ to 1.56 × 10⁸ m³. With the total replenishment volume held constant, centralized replenishment met the required water volume but substantially increased near-bed disturbance and sediment resuspension risk. By contrast, decentralized uniform replenishment performed best, with the highest relative closeness coefficient of 0.9105, a disturbance index of approximately 0.32, and water depths maintained within the suitable habitat range of 30–50 cm. These findings suggest that ecological restoration in semi-arid wetlands should move beyond volume-based water supplementation and pay greater attention to the timing, pathway, and hydrodynamic effects of replenishment. The proposed framework provides a quantitative basis for optimizing ecological water replenishment in evaporation-dominated wetlands and other inland lakes in arid and semi-arid regions. Full article

Ecological network resilience is an important indicator for evaluating whether regional ecosystems can maintain structural connectivity and functional stability under external disturbance. However, long-term changes in ecological network structure and robustness in the Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone remain insufficiently understood. Based on land-use data from 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020, this study integrated Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA), landscape connectivity assessment, the MCR model, complex network analysis, and robustness simulations to evaluate the spatio-temporal evolution of ecological network resilience in the Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone. The results showed that the area of selected ecological sources in the study area decreased from 39.97% in 1990 to 33.14% in 2020, indicating continuous source-area shrinkage and habitat fragmentation. The ecological resistance surface showed increasing spatial heterogeneity, with relatively low resistance in mountain and lakeside wetland areas and high resistance in the central plain areas affected by agricultural and construction-land expansion. Topological analysis showed that network density increased from 0.10 to 0.15, average path length decreased from 3.04 to 2.53, and network efficiency increased from 0.34 to 0.45, suggesting enhanced local connectivity and transmission efficiency. However, the largest connected component decreased from 37 to 26, indicating a decline in regional-scale connectivity and an increasing risk of network fragmentation. Robustness simulations further showed that the network was relatively tolerant to random disturbance but highly sensitive to the priority failure of key nodes and corridors. Overall, the ecological network evolved from relatively continuous connectivity toward local clustering and residual trunk corridors. These findings suggest that ecological restoration in the Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone should prioritize major ecological sources, cross-regional corridors, stepping-stone habitats, and critical linkage areas to improve network-level resilience. Full article

Wetland area and quality have continued to decline worldwide due to the combined impacts of global climate change and human activities, so there is a need for a scientific and standardized framework to assess wetland degradation risk and support conservation and restoration efforts. In this study, a wetland degradation risk assessment framework integrating pressure level and degradation level was developed and applied to the western Songnen Plain, one of China’s major marsh wetland regions, using data from 2000, 2010, and 2020. The results showed that: (1) anthropogenic activity intensity and wetland area change were the most influential indicators. The degradation risk index ranged from 0.20 to 0.68, with mean values of 0.52, 0.46, and 0.46 in 2000, 2010, and 2020, respectively, indicating a slight overall decline. (2) The pressure level increased from 0.56 to 0.59 from 2000 to 2020, suggesting a growing influence of external pressures. In the same period, the degradation level decreased from 0.34 to 0.30, reflecting a reduced effect of internal environmental conditions. (3) Spatially, medium-risk areas have expanded from 47.5% to 64.1% and became the dominant area, while high-risk areas remained relatively stable at 14–16%, whereas relatively high-risk areas decreased sharply from 33.87% to 6.29%. These results provide useful guidance for regional land management for sustaining ecological systems, and the proposed framework provides a transferable assessment logic for wetland degradation risk, but its application to other regions require local calibration of indicators, weights, thresholds, and validation datasets. Full article