The overlooked role of terrestrial groundwater in coastal wetland resilience
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Coastal wetland resilience through local, regional and global conservation
Coastal wetlands, including tidal marshes, mangrove forests and tidal flats, support the livelihoods of millions of people. Understanding the resilience of coastal wetlands to the increasing number and intensity of anthropogenic threats (such as habitat conversion, pollution, fishing and climate change) can inform what conservation actions will be effective. In this Review, we synthesize anthropogenic threats to coastal wetlands and their resilience through the lens of scale. Over decades and centuries, anthropogenic threats have unfolded across local, regional and global scales, reducing both the extent and quality of coastal wetlands. The resilience of existing coastal wetlands is driven by their quality, which is modulated by both physical conditions (such as sediment supply) and ecological conditions (such as species interactions operating from local through to global scales). Protection and restoration efforts, however, are often localized and focus on the extent of coastal wetlands. The future of coastal wetlands will depend on an improved understanding of their resilience, and on society’s actions to enhance both their extent and quality across different scales.
Earthquake-based multi-hazard resilience assessment: a case study of Istanbul, Turkey (neighborhood level)
We developed a model integrating 28 criteria spanning social, economic, community, environmental, and physical dimensions to evaluate earthquake resilience of Istanbul, a city with a population of 16 million and significant seismic risk, at both district and subdistrict/neighborhood levels. The resilience assessment uses the Bayesian Best-Worst Method, a multi-criteria decision-making framework that combines expert knowledge and statistical assessments. The results reveal that Istanbul’s overall Resilience Score (RS) is 0.48, on a 0-1 scale, suggesting a moderate capacity to endure and recover from seismic events. Catalca, Adalar, and Arnavutkoy rank among the most resilient districts, whereas Esenler and Gungoren exhibit lower resilience. On a subdistrict level, Suleymaniye (Fatih) has the highest RS at 0.59, while Yavuz Sultan Selim (Fatih) ranks the lowest with 0.22. These findings provide actionable and practical data-driven insights for policymakers and urban planners, underscoring the need for targeted interventions to improve resilience in high-risk areas in Istanbul.
The effects of COVID-19 on the resilience of urban life in China
Understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on citizens from different cities is crucial for urban resilience-building and reducing inequal resilience distribution. However, little research focuses on urban life at the individual level, particularly in second- and third-tier cities. An online survey was therefore conducted to collect data on how COVID-19 affected the cities and urban residents in mainland China. The results indicate that COVID-19 limited citizens’ access to healthcare facilities and socioeconomic activities apart from the immediate health crisis. Most citizens suffered reduced income, unemployment, and social anxiety. However, COVID-19 also raised social awareness and actions for disaster adaptation. The Chinese pandemic management has strengthened governmental leadership and credibility among most citizens in the early stage. Importantly, the results suggested that citizens in first-tier cities appeared more resilient to pandemics than those in second-tier cities. A networked resilience framework was therefore discussed for resilience-building policy implications.
Hybrid vegetation-seawall coastal systems for wave hazard reduction: analytics for cost-effective design from optimized features
Coastal areas, essential for human settlement and marine biodiversity, face persistent flood hazards. Integrating vegetation with traditional coastal defense structures, such as seawalls, offers a promising solution for robust and cost-effective flood mitigation. However, optimizing hybrid vegetation-seawall solutions to enhance coastal protection while addressing varying risk tolerances is a challenging task. This study develops a novel framework combining a non-hydrostatic wave model, a data-driven surrogate model, and a multi-objective optimization algorithm to optimize hybrid designs. Results demonstrate that vegetation integration significantly reduces wave impacts, enhancing seawall performance. Optimized designs reveal that higher vegetation area provides greater wave energy dissipation, while vegetation density plays a more nuanced role depending on available space and risk tolerance levels. For critical infrastructure with low-risk tolerance, designs emphasize seawall height and moderate vegetation density, whereas high-risk tolerance prioritizes larger vegetated areas with lower density. The developed framework equips decision-makers to design hybrid systems that balance coastal protection and cost-effectiveness based on their specific objectives and constraints.
Dispersal, habitat filtering, and eco-evolutionary dynamics as drivers of local and global wetland viral biogeography
Wetlands store 20–30% of the world’s soil carbon, and identifying the microbial controls on these carbon reserves is essential to predicting feedbacks to climate change. Although viral infections likely play important roles in wetland ecosystem dynamics, we lack a basic understanding of wetland viral ecology. Here 63 viral size-fraction metagenomes (viromes) and paired total metagenomes were generated from three time points in 2021 at seven fresh- and saltwater wetlands in the California Bodega Marine Reserve. We recovered 12,826 viral population genomic sequences (vOTUs), only 4.4% of which were detected at the same field site two years prior, indicating a small degree of population stability or recurrence. Viral communities differed most significantly among the seven wetland sites and were also structured by habitat (plant community composition and salinity). Read mapping to a new version of our reference database, PIGEONv2.0 (515,763 vOTUs), revealed 196 vOTUs present over large geographic distances, often reflecting shared habitat characteristics. Wetland vOTU microdiversity was significantly lower locally than globally and lower within than between time points, indicating greater divergence with increasing spatiotemporal distance. Viruses tended to have broad predicted host ranges via CRISPR spacer linkages to metagenome-assembled genomes, and increased SNP frequencies in CRISPR-targeted major tail protein genes suggest potential viral eco-evolutionary dynamics in response to both immune targeting and changes in host cell receptors involved in viral attachment. Together, these results highlight the importance of dispersal, environmental selection, and eco-evolutionary dynamics as drivers of local and global wetland viral biogeography.
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