Research articles

Hydropower dams fragment rivers and degrade habitats, increasing extinction risk for freshwater species, with over 85% of species showing status changes moving to higher threat categories, based on Global Dam Tracker and IUCN Red List data from 1996 to 2022.

Observations over a decade at the Sheshan Station in the Yangtze Estuary support pre-landfall erosion, highlighting the necessity to consider such erosion and sediment stratification in predictions of storm-induced coastal alterations, according to analysis of morphodynamic observations and sediment dynamics of Typhoon Fung-wong.

E-bikes show stronger heat adaptation and steadier mobility than walking or cycling, according to a Beijing study of 4,068 travelers observed with panoramic cameras and AI-based behavior recognition during hot weather.

Coastal microbiomes adapt to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon stress via a conserved genomic division of labor where chromosomes retain upstream specificity, while plasmids mobilize downstream detoxification modules, shown by sampling in China’s Pearl River Estuary.

The conventional cleaning process of fuel-oil contaminated Black Sea birds is not always effective for some bird species, and the analysis of their survival rates using Kaplan-Meier and Cox methods reveals sound and kinetic deterrents as potential conservation measures.

The failure stress threshold for fluid injection to activate a damaging earthquake at the Pohang site was about one order of magnitude larger than expected for natural earthquakes, according to stochastic poromechanical simulations of the fault zone

CO₂ emissions from Arctic lakes are higher and more variable in drier regions than in wetter ones, likely due to limited fluvial export that allows carbon to accumulate and be more efficiently emitted, based on the analysis of a pan-Arctic CO₂ dataset.

Climatic shift affects the atmospheric oxidative capacity of the Tibetan Plateau, highlighted by an increase in biogenic nitrogen oxides emissions from microbial soil activity, as revealed through nitrate isotopic measurements from an ice core to analyze atmospheric oxidative capacity since 2002.

Local human disturbances, such as pollution and land-use change, globally suppress coral reefs, particularly inshore, turbid reefs, that may be climate refugia if local stressors were reduced, based on 12,892 coral-reef sites and Bayesian analysis.

Most individuals tend to support a mix of justice principles and show sensitivity to how climate policy packages distribute resources, according to an analysis that uses a survey experiment with 2,230 participants.

Multisensor InSAR and dynamic rupture simulations suggest the Mw 7.0 Dingri earthquake in southern Tibet involved bimodal slip on steep conjugate faults, with the west-side episode requiring near-critical prestress or additional weakening.

In Asia, climate pledges and their implementation fall short of meeting the 1.5 degree centigrade and SDG targets, and countries need tailored mitigation strategies to balance ambition, sustainability, and economic impacts, according to an integrated assessment framework analysis.

In Africa, green growth initiatives enhance the value added per worker in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, as well as cereal yield, but they have a negative impact on total fisheries production, according to an analysis that combines agricultural and economic data with a statistical approach.

Trees outside forests, particularly in croplands, grasslands, and urban areas, accounted for 20.8–32.9% of China’s above-ground carbon in 2019, occupying 3.6–5.7 Pg C, based on a two-step machine learning approach integrating diverse remote sensing data.

Megaquakes off Hokkaido and the region of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake occur at characteristic intervals between periods of gradual stress recovery in their source zones, according to an analysis of b-values and seismic data from 2000 to 2025.

Water-borne invasions of the golden mussel, Limnoperna fortunei, can become more widely distributed where inland basins are connected by humanmediated channels, according to an ensemble framework combining niche and dispersal models.

Agricultural intensification in China became more sustainable from 2000 to 2020 by reducing reliance on fertilizer and machinery and focusing on resource efficiency and environmental protection, based on remote sensing and landscape index analysis.

Pyrodiversity leads to structural, functional, and taxonomic diversity in savannas, driven by landscapes with varying fire frequencies, based on data from a multi-decadal fire experiment across a rainfall gradient in South Africa

A study of 19 major Chinese urban agglomerations finds poor or uneven coordination between 3D urbanization and ecosystem services, using coupling coordination degree across intra-, peri-, and tele-coupling scales.

The recent increase in Antarctic Ice Sheet mass is driven by enhanced precipitation from frequent atmospheric rivers, stronger westerlies, and reduced sea ice, which together offset ice loss from outlet glacier discharge, according to reanalysis and regional climate modelling.