Journal of Environmental Management最新文献

Understanding public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services (CES) in urban coastal wetland ecological restoration areas was essential for coastal resource management and sustainable development. Although social media data has been increasingly utilized to develop CES indicators, significant technical challenges remained in conducting CES assessments and analyzing the primary influencing factors intelligently, accurately, and efficiently from large volumes of textual comments. To address these challenges, this study developed two artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods-using large language models with prompt engineering-to automatically identify CES categories and associated sentiments, and to analyze the key influencing factors. Using the coastal wetland ecological restoration area in Xiamen, China, as a case study, the results indicated that recreation (31.69%) and aesthetics (23.54%) were the two most commonly perceived CES categories. The average sentiment score across the nine CES categories in all restoration areas was positive (4.0-4.6). Differences in CES perceptions among the three distinct types of restoration areas-mangroves, beaches, and bays-were minimal. Public perceptions were primarily influenced by the ecological environment, historical culture, and management practices. These findings provide targeted recommendations for improving restoration planning and sustainable management in urban coastal wetlands. This study demonstrated an innovative interdisciplinary integration of computer science and marine ecology, highlighting the advantages of AI in advancing CES research and offering a new paradigm for understanding public perception.

Bangladesh is a major contributor to the global prawn export industry; however, its prawn aquaculture sector remains highly vulnerable to climate-related hazards. Therefore, assessing the resilience capacity of prawn farmers is critical for understanding how well they can cope with and recover from such shocks. This study assesses the resilience capacity of climate-exposed prawn aquaculture systems in the Bagerhat district of southwestern Bangladesh by identifying systemic strengths, vulnerabilities, and barriers to sustainable production. A total of 299 prawn farmers were surveyed using a stratified random sampling approach. Resilience was quantified through the USAID Market Systems Resilience (MSR) framework, which integrates absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities across eight interlinked fundamentals. Results show that the overall Resilience Assessment Index is low, suggesting a very limited ability of farmers to absorb, adapt to, and transform under climatic stress. The rule of law fundamental scored the highest, which shows the relative strength of national-level formal institutions and farmers compliance with regulatory systems even during disruption. Competition also performs moderately well, signifying individual entrepreneurial activity and market engagement. However, major weaknesses were found in cooperation, power dynamics, and business strategy, demonstrating poor collective organization, inequitable local governance, and a strong tendency toward short-term decision-making. These imbalances point to systemic constraints that reduce farmers' long-term adaptive potential. The findings suggest the importance of multi-level interventions, such as bridging the gap between national governance and local implementation, community cooperation, and climate-smart investment to enhance the resilience and sustainability of prawn aquaculture and safeguard coastal livelihoods in Bangladesh.

Applying the institutional logics perspective, we examine how pervasive corruption influences the economic, social and environmental dimensions of corporate sustainability. We argue that pervasive corruption functions as an institutionalized logic, whose compatibility with the stakeholder accountability logic, underpinning corporate sustainability practices, varies across sustainability dimensions, and that this relationship is moderated by stakeholder pressure, financial slack and institutional ties. Using time-lagged survey data from CEOs (t1) and sustainability managers (t2) in 242 domestic firms in Ghana, we find that pervasive corruption has a negative relation with environmental sustainability, a negative but insignificant, thus negligible, relation with social sustainability and a positive relation with economic sustainability. Firms' financial slack and institutional ties strengthen the negative relations, while pro-sustainability stakeholder pressure weakens the negative relations, but has not significant influence on positive relations. Our study extends the corruption-sustainability debate by highlighting its multidimensional nature and the conditions that perpetuate corruption and shape how pervasive corruption interacts with corporate sustainability.

Developing sustainable carbon materials with both dye adsorption and electrochemical properties offers a promising strategy for carbon neutrality. Herein, a coupled carbonization strategy was employed to prepare porous carbon with high-level heteroatom doping and hierarchical pores, involving the co-hydrothermal treatment of wood flour with phytic acid and melamine, followed by K₂CO₃ activation. Phytic acid and melamine act as P/N sources and structural builders, promoting hydrochar formation via phosphate coordination and condensation reactions, resulting in a stable cross-linked network rich in N, P, and O. The resulting N, P co-doped hierarchical porous carbon (NP-PC) exhibits an ultrahigh surface area (2792 m² g^-1, a 344 % increase compared to pure wood flour-derived carbon), suitable mesoporosity (36 %), and tailored surface chemistry (19.86 at% heteroatom content). At room temperature, NP-PC demonstrates an exceptionally high adsorption capacity for methylene blue (3028 mg g^-1 after 6 h contact) and rapid adsorption kinetics (90 % removal within 5 min), outperforming most reported carbon-based adsorbents. NP-PC retains an adsorption capacity above 2500 mg g^-1 even after five regeneration cycles. As a supercapacitor working electrode, NP-PC electrode also shows excellent electrochemical performance, delivering a specific capacitance of 380 F g^-1 at 0.5 A g^-1 and retaining 273 F g^-1 at 25 A g^-1. This study achieves the conversion of low-value biomass into high-performance functional carbons, providing a sustainable solution for integrated environmental and energy applications.

Wave climate influences the morphodynamics of sandy beaches and is the main driver of coastal impacts. Since impacts depend strongly on local characteristics, a framework for morphological impact assessment must harmonize climate scenarios with the status of key features such as river discharge and seagrass meadows. This study aims to provide a framework for assessment based on the combination of What-If Scenarios (WIS) and Nature-based Solutions (NbS), representing a broad range of estimates for impacts under different climates. In this work, the framework is tested on the Ropotamo Beach (Western Black Sea, Bulgaria), a well-conserved sandy beach extensively used by local communities. The WIS and NbS were explored with the XBeach model across 200 numerical experiments, incorporating variations in river discharge and wave climate. Future wave conditions were derived from regional projections forced with CORDEX-EU11 for 2070-2100 and compared with a historical baseline (1975-2005). The WIS explored scenarios for the 95th percentile of significant wave height and wave peak period, while the NbS explored the capacity of seagrass meadows to buffer impacts. Results summarize a comprehensive set of risk metrics quantifying erosion and hazards induced by circulation. Seagrass meadows significantly reduced nearshore erosion and strong currents by 94% across the majority of scenarios, demonstrating their effectiveness under projected climate change conditions. The novelty of this study lies in integrating local features within a Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO) framework to evaluate coastal morphological impacts. This approach highlights the potential of NbS to enhance coastal resilience and support sustainable shoreline management in regions lacking data.

The grounding grid of transmission equipment suffers corrosion due to abundant soil anions and microorganisms, posing a risk to the power system. In this study, the effects of different concentration ratio of Cl^-/SO₄^2- and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) on the corrosion of grounding grid were investigated, and the chemical-biological coupling corrosion patterns in complex environments were revealed. The results showed that corrosion rate of Q235 steel was improved with the increase of Cl^-/SO₄^2- concentration ratio. The maximum I_corr value of 159.650 μA cm^-2 and the most severe corrosion of Q235 steel were observed at a Cl^-/SO₄^2- concentration ratio of 5. In contrast, the corrosion rate of galvanized steel exhibited an initial increase followed by a decrease with the rising concentration ratio of Cl^-/SO₄^2-. The I_corr reached the maximum value of 7.332 μA cm^-2 when the concentration ratio of Cl^-/SO₄^2- was 7.5. Under the protection of the galvanized layer, the overall corrosion rate of galvanized steel was significantly lower than that of Q235 steel. The Cl^- preferentially entered oxide film voids and accelerated metal dissolution due to its small ionic radius and strong penetration ability. The SO₄^2- could promote the cathodic depolarization process of SRB and facilitate anodic metal dissolution. The results of this study have important guiding significance for the protection of grounding metal corrosion in the soil and the timely adjustment of control measures.

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), known as Asia's "Water Tower" and a global biodiversity hotspot, plays a pivotal role in sustaining water security for billions of people downstream and in regulating atmospheric circulation at the hemispheric scale. However, accelerated climate change and intensifying anthropogenic pressures have triggered widespread ecosystem degradation. Spatially explicit restoration-protection (Res-Pro) frameworks that incorporate ecosystem services (ESs), climate and human drivers, and inter-ES relationships remain underdeveloped. In this study, we developed a novel ESs-climate-human ecological framework by synergistically coupling InVEST-based ES quantification, self-organizing map (SOM)-driven landscape zoning, and spatial statistical diagnostics using GeoDa and Spearman's rank correlation analysis. The results indicate that most ESs exhibit a similar spatial pattern, generally decreasing from southeast to the northwest. From 2000 to 2020, the high-value areas of water yield (WY), soil retention (SR), and carbon sequestration (CS) expanded in the southeastern region, habitat quality (HQ) remained stable, while sand fixation (SF) declined due to reduced wind-erosion-prone areas. The composite ecosystem services index (CESI) improvement was positively correlated with increased precipitation, but negatively correlated with rising temperature and intensified human activities, reflecting the complex interplay between natural and anthropogenic factors. Based on ESs-climate-human dynamics, we delineated five Res-Pro priority areas (Levels I-V), covering 10.74%, 1.85%, 4.97%, 13.59%, and 14.62% of the TP's total area respectively. Considering trade-offs, synergies, and ES bundles, we propose targeted ecological management strategies to guide policymakers in enhancing the ecological barrier functions of the TP.

Antibiotics are widely used in medical and agricultural activities, which induce the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Once in aquifer, ARGs would gradually transport through groundwater flow, which calls for proper remediation technologies to control their dissemination. This paper carried out batch experiments to investigate the removal efficiency of ARGs by biochar, ZVI and their mixtures at the ratio of 1:1 (M11) and 1:6 (M16). Results showed that the mixed material achieved higher removal rate of ARGs from raw water, which was mainly attributed to larger adsorption rate from well-dispersed ZVI particles. sul1 was more recalcitrant than ermB and aadA, which was tightly correlated with its bacterial hosts that resisted degradation. Furthermore, column experiments were carried out, and these materials were packed at the middle section of column as the permeable reactive barrier (PRB). Results showed that M16 was the most effective material to reduce the ARGs abundance in the effluent especially for sul1 and ermB. As a representative type of mobile genetic elements, intI1 was also greatly removed by PRB. A numerical model was established to well simulate the experimental results, which demonstrated that the high remediation efficiency of M16 was mainly induced by large adsorption rate of ARGs on material interface. Besides, a higher groundwater flow rate and smaller particle size of porous media both reduced the removal rate of ARGs by PRB. The findings of this study could guide the application of PRB to remediate groundwater with high abundances of ARGs.

Wood processing, mining, and recreational infrastructures facilitate the transport and establishment of woodboring insects. Longhorn beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) are woodborers that typically develop in stressed or dead trees and are inadvertently transported in wood products, creating opportunities for exotic species to invade and expand their range around infrastructures. To understand how these infrastructures influence longhorn diversity, abundance, and potential invasions, we sampled longhorn beetles in 2021 and 2022 from 11 sawmills, 10 mines, 11 campgrounds, and 12 control (unmanaged) forest sites throughout northwestern Quebec (Canada) using broadly attractive blends of pheromone and host volatiles to assess infrastructure-related shifts in community composition compared to undisturbed forest stands. The most abundant species observed across all infrastructures was Monochamus scutellatus scutellatus Say, comprising over 60 % of the total individuals collected, followed by Monochamus mutator LeConte (17 %) and Tetropium cinnamopterum Kirby (7 %). We did not record any exotic species; this absence may reflect community-level resistance from diverse native longhorn assemblages. Sawmill sites had the highest diversity and evenness and showed increased abundance of several common native species. However, longhorn communities varied more with forest composition than infrastructure type. NMDS distinguished longhorns linked to balsam fir from those associated with Jack pine, like M. mutator and Rhagium inquisitor Linnaeus, and separated beetles in white spruce and pine, such as Tetropium cinnamopterum Kirby and T. schwarzianum Casey, from those in early-succession hardwoods. Increased abundance of longhorns near sawmills came from diverse forest types. We do not find evidence for increased invasion risk near infrastructures, but ongoing surveillance remains crucial.