One Earth最新文献

Little is known about the impending mental health impacts of the global nature crisis. Existing evidence largely overlooks how nature sustains the economic and material dimensions of people’s lives that support their mental health. Moreover, this evidence poorly represents the context-dependent experiences of billions living in the rural Global South. Here, we offer a framework illustrating how nature’s essential contributions to people underpin multiple social determinants of mental health. We explore how the loss of those contributions (e.g., fisheries collapse) may exacerbate social determinants (e.g., poverty) of poor mental health. We examine how biodiversity conservation may affect mental health by altering the flow of nature’s contributions, regulating access to those contributions, generating direct impacts through projects, and tackling the underlying drivers of nature loss (illustrated in an empirically based scenario analysis in Uganda). A better understanding can guide policy and practice to simultaneously tackle nature loss while protecting and enhancing mental health globally.

Agricultural soils are often overlooked sources of human and animal pathogenic bacteria, which can cause a range of food-, air-, and waterborne diseases. The awareness of pathogens in soil is as old as that in modern microbiology, but we still know little about the factors driving their global distribution. Here, we compiled 342 pairs of bulk and rhizosphere soil microbiomes to identify 9,516 potential pathogenic amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), 75% of which were human-animal pathogens. The relative abundance and diversity of these pathogens in the rhizosphere were 81% and 11% higher, respectively, compared to bulk soils. Most of these pathogens are opportunistic, and 11 keystone species in the rhizosphere have been reported as human gut pathogens. Through different agricultural management practices, we revealed that increasing microbial diversity reduces pathogen prevalence. This study aligns the interest of sustainable food production and public health by providing incentives for the redesign of food production systems.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) includes a specific target for reducing businesses’ negative impacts on biodiversity and increasing their positive impacts to contribute toward the GBF mission and vision. “Nature Positive” is also emerging as a rallying call for mainstreaming the GBF. Merely tinkering with business as usual will not deliver these ambitions; transformative change is needed. However, how to operationalize transformative change toward Nature Positive and the GBF through meaningful actions and targets remains unclear, risking confusion, greenwashing, and failure to achieve global goals. This perspective draws on literature on social change to offer a practical framework for understanding and operationalizing transformative change for business toward a Nature Positive future. We define and describe the role of transformative change within a Nature Positive ambition and summarize the different types and scales of actions companies could take. This framework could help to plan mutually reinforcing actions and improve accountability for Nature Positive claims.

Soil microbes regulate various biogeochemical cycles on Earth and respond rapidly to climate change, which is accompanied by changes in soil pH. However, the long-term patterns of these changes under future climate scenarios remain unclear. We propose a core-bacteria-forecast model (CoBacFM) to model soil pH changes by shifts of core bacterial groups under future scenarios using a curated soil microbiota dataset of global grasslands. Our model estimates that soil pH will increase in 63.8%–67.0% of grassland regions and decrease in 10.1%–12.4% of regions. Approximately 32.5%–32.9% of regions will become more alkaline by 5.6%, and these areas expand in all future scenarios. These results were supported by 14 warming simulation experiments. Using bacterial responses as bioindicators of soil pH, the CoBacFM method can accurately forecast pH changes in future scenarios, and the changing global climate is likely to result in the alkalization of grasslands.

The use of gas will decline dramatically as part of the transition to net zero. Modeling at European levels shows that by 2050 about 70% less gaseous fuels will be used. Significant regulatory reform is needed to deal with the impacts of this decline on the gas grid.

Remote sensing plays a central role in monitoring wildfires throughout their life cycle, including assessing pre-fire fuel conditions, characterizing active fire locations and emissions, and evaluating post-fire effects on vegetation, air quality, and climate. This primer examines current remote sensing products used in wildfire research, focusing on their application in deriving burned area and emissions data and tracking the dynamic spread of individual fire events. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these products and address key challenges such as generating complete, continuous, and consistent long-term monitoring data. We also explore future opportunities and directions in remote sensing technology for wildfire characterization and management.

Anthropogenic climate change is driving extreme fire seasons, challenging the effectiveness of fire management practices developed over the last 50 years. New and diverse strategies are needed to achieve safe coexistence in an age of megafires. A redefinition of the wildfire management paradigm is central to the shift, placing greater emphasis on the adoption of high-tech solutions for early fire detection and rapid ignition suppression.

Climate change is profoundly changing fire-vegetation interactions and the carbon cycle across fire-adapted ecosystems. Increasingly frequent extreme fire events in combination with human activity put ever more pressure on these systems. Limited process-based understanding and data hampers effective management strategies for these fire-adapted systems under ongoing global change.

New particle formation (NPF) in fire smoke is thought to be unlikely due to large condensation and coagulation sinks that scavenge molecular clusters. We analyze aircraft measurements over the Amazon and find that fires significantly enhance NPF and ultrafine particle (UFP < 50 nm diameter) numbers compared to background conditions, contrary to previous understanding. We identify that the nucleation of dimethylamine with sulfuric acid, which is aided by the formation of extremely low volatility organics in biomass-burning smoke, can overcome the large condensation and coagulation sinks and explain aircraft observations. We show that freshly formed clusters rapidly grow to UFP sizes through biomass-burning secondary organic aerosol formation, leading to a 10-fold increase in UFP number concentrations. We find a contrasting effect of UFPs on deep convective clouds compared to the larger particles from primary emissions for the case investigated here. UFPs intensify the deep convective clouds and precipitation due to increased condensational heating, while larger particles delay and reduce precipitation.

Dr. Wayne Cascio, M.D., serves as the director of the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Prior to his current position, Dr. Cascio worked as a physician and scientist focusing on the impacts of air pollutants on heart health. At the EPA, he has spearheaded efforts to help reduce the public health risks of wildfire smoke. The views of Dr. Cascio are his only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EPA.