Adaptation Practices Research Articles

Reshaping curriculum adaptation in the age of artificial intelligence: Mapping teachers' AI‐driven curriculum adaptation patterns

AbstractA national curriculum cannot be uniformly applied in all classrooms. Educators frequently adapt the official curriculum to suit their particular circumstances. In exploring the interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and curriculum adaptation in education, this study bridges a significant gap in the literature by exploring how AI tools influence teachers' strategies for adapting curricula. Employing an explanatory sequential design, the research analyses both qualitative and quantitative data from 440 teachers, using the Curriculum Adaptation Patterns Scale and focus group semi‐structured interviews. Results indicate a balanced approach among teachers towards extending and revising the curriculum, with less emphasis on omission. Notably, curriculum adaptation practices evolve positively with increased professional experience, differ across disciplines, but remain constant across school levels and educational levels. Qualitatively, teachers reported positive experiences using AI, particularly ChatGPT, to make their lessons better fit students' needs. They've used it to omit parts that aren't needed, add more relevant and personalised content, and revise or replace the content. The findings highlight AI's transformative potential in curriculum adaptation, making education more engaging, relevant and personalised. The study contributes to understanding how AI can support effective curriculum implementation and enhance learning experiences in the digital age.

Climate changes at mine closure: a systematic review

This systematic review addresses the implications of climate change on mine closure processes, aiming to identify, analyze, and synthesize recent literature on how climate change influences the rehabilitation of mined areas, environmental risks, the safety of remaining structures, and the long-term sustainability of closure projects. Through a methodology of selecting scientific articles, articles published between 2020 and 2024 found in the Capes/CAfe database were analyzed. The analysis covered the climatic impacts on increasing temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns in relation to soil erosion, water management, and revegetation in mine closure processes. The results highlight challenges and opportunities arising from extreme weather events, which compromise the stability of mine structures, and the noted absence of Emergency Action Plans for dealing with extreme events, which hinders decision-making and the implementation of control measures. Recommendations include the development of adaptive practices and the incorporation of advanced environmental monitoring to mitigate risks and promote sustainability in mine closure, as well as being essential to increase environmental resilience.

Socio-economic advantages and climate adaptation in sustainable vs. conventional cotton: evidence from Pakistan

Two groups of cotton growers participated in this study; the first, referred as “conventional cotton producers” (CCPs), continues to use traditional techniques. The second group, known as sustainable cotton producers (SCPs), adheres to practices that are socially acceptable, economically feasible, and environment friendly. This study was designed to undertake a thorough socio-economic analysis of CCP and SCP in terms of cost of production, yield, and adaptations for climate change. The data were collected from a total of 275 farming households (138 SCPs and 137 CCPs) from two districts, namely, Bahawalpur and Rajanpur, Punjab, Pakistan. The data were analyzed using the benefit–cost ratio (BCR), paired sampled t-test, and log–log regression model in SPSS. The results of the study revealed that the cost of production for SCP was significantly less than CCP and the value of BCR for SCP is higher than CCP. The results of the study also revealed that the land preparation costs, irrigation costs, and fertilizer and pesticide costs decrease the cotton yield of CCP, while land area owned and picking costs showed no significant influence on the yield of CCP. On the other hand, all cost items except fertilizer cost have a positive impact on CCP’s cotton yield. The results also indicated that SCP farmers adopted more of adaptation practices for climate change than CCP. This study concluded that SCP has significant advantages over CCP. Therefore, it is recommended that the government should prioritize incentives for SCP adoption to enhance yield and environmental sustainability in cotton farming.

Milk Lipid Regulation in Dairy Goats: A Comprehensive Review.

The growth, development, and milk production traits of dairy goats, which are important sources of high-quality animal protein, are significantly influenced by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. It is imperative to identify key genetic loci that govern economically valuable traits in order to enhance breeding programs. Despite advancements in genomic technologies, there are still gaps in knowledge regarding the interplay between genetic factors and environmental influences, particularly in relation to the regulation of milk production and quality. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to synthesize advancements in the genetic and environmental factors affecting milk production and quality in dairy goats and identify key regulatory mechanisms. This review summarizes the recent progress on the identification of genes associated with milk production traits using whole-genome resequencing, the use of transcriptomic profiling to identify genes linked to milk production, the exploration of regulatory mechanisms of lipid metabolism in goat mammary epithelial cells, and the evaluation of the influence of nutritional factors on milk quality. A comprehensive understanding of these interactions is essential for enhancing breeding strategies and ensuring the sustainability of dairy goat farming. Future research should incorporate multi-omics approaches to unravel the intricate regulatory processes governing milk production and adapt practices to meet global demand while upholding economic and environmental sustainability.

Perspectives of integrated climate change and water policies in Hungary

The paper aims to outline the climate impacts induced and transferred by water and the socio-economic factors that exacerbate them. It also seeks to provide a common and integrated policy framework for climate change adaptation and water management. The climatic and non-climate drivers, the risk chains and options for policy integration are assessed in four complex thematic areas: (i) ecosystem services, (ii) food supply chain: agriculture, food processing industry, food safety; (iii) industrial and service activities, energy and water supply, infrastructure, built environment, and (iv) human health and well-being, social justice. In these complex thematic areas, we examine the risk cascade chain, the current state of impacts and expected future challenges within a coherent framework and then make concrete proposals for possible specific areas of policy integration. Finally, in the conclusions, we present municipal-level good practices in water-resilient climate adaptation and formulate the horizontal actions needed to implement integrated climate-water policy.

Exploring maladaptive patterns of small-scale green roofs through evaluation in a capacity of heat mitigation: A case study in seoul

Climate change leads to more frequent and intense heat waves, exposing urban populations to extreme heat conditions and significant health risks. Many cities are adopting Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to mitigate urban heat, with green roofs emerging as a widely recognized NbS. Although numerous green roof projects are implemented on a small scale, research on the effectiveness of small-scale green roofs on an urban scale is limited, making it challenging to identify the critical factors for both maladaptation and success. Therefore, we assessed the cooling potential of 18 small-scale green roofs in Seoul, Republic of Korea. This comparative study that adopted a multi-site approach examined the cooling capacity of green roofs to reduce surface temperature and identified characteristics of effective and ineffective green roofs. We utilized a developed difference-in-differences method to improve causal inference, effectively isolating the effects of individual green roofs from background climate change. The multi-site comparative approach and more robust causal inference methods improved our understanding of the effects of small-scale green roofs. The findings of this study indicate that three out of 18 green roofs were statistically significant maladaptation cases with an increase in LST. This evidence can help an urban planner reduce ineffectiveness and enhance effective adaptation practices. Our proposed method is expected to support government projects, especially those with limited budgets, in efficiently managing urban heat and reducing trial and error.

Escalating Global Threat of Heatwaves and Policy Options for Adaptation and Mitigation

This study evaluates the effects of intense and frequent heatwaves on human health, food security and infrastructure all having a direct bearing on sustainable development. It emphasizes that health issues such as cardiac and respiratory disorders, strokes, and mental health diseases are aggravated in harsh climates. This study focuses on the adverse implications of hot weather and the impact of said phenomenon on various fields of life. The aftermath of the excessive burning of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases have severely impacted the world by disrupting the economic stability of many countries around the globe. The heat waves are also responsible for low crop yield, fertilizer shortage and adverse impact on livestock. The intense and hot weather has not only caused power outages but also challenged infrastructure sustainability. The continuous usage of cooling systems is leading to urban heat islands adding more heat in the environment. This study highlights the challenges of climate change and brings attention to the need for sustainable development and practices to ensure proper heat management. After a deep insight into information and responses collected for the research, the study suggests some recommendations requiring all stakeholders including policymakers, implementing agencies, organizations and civil society to play their crucial role in devising and implementing suitable policy options and practices for adaptation and mitigation of climate change factors.

Impact of GHG emission, temperature, and precipitation on rice production in Nepal

Climate variables mainly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, temperature, precipitation, and rainfall are affecting crop production across the world. Nepal as a vulnerable country in terms of climate change, has raised the attention of researchers and policymakers in recent years. In this scenario, this study has attempted to find the impact of GHG emissions, temperature, and precipitation on rice production in Nepal. The study is based on time serried data from 1990 to 2019. The findings show that GHG emission has a significant positive impact on rice production. However, the annual average mean temperature has a significant negative impact on rice production. Besides having a negative coefficient, precipitation did not affect rice production significantly. The study recommends concrete climate change adaptation practices in the major rice production areas of Nepal, mainly in the Terai and Hilly belts.

“Akili zetu ziwe moja / Let our minds be one”: Emergent strategy for adapting to seafood insecurity in coastal Kenyan fishing communities

Small-scale fisheries provide food sovereignty and capital for millions globally. However, coastal Kenyan communities who harvest reef fishery resources are often still food insecure, especially due to the detrimental effects of climate change and overfishing in their communities. This study aims to understand the environmental perceptions and priorities of fishing families in Kilifi County, Kenya, and how these relate to both food security and sustainable development policy. We rely on qualitative methods including interviews with household caregivers from 42 fishing families to provide insights not only on fishery sustainability but also on the additional aspects of reproductive labor related to fish food security, including the food securing aspects of availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability. Our findings highlight the complex challenges that environmental change places on families in this situation: lack of fish availability, seasonal food inaccessibility, shifting baselines, and experiences of loss in the food system are markedly a prevalent result. Despite these struggles, we see emergent strategies to address food needs unfold in a variety of resilient and opportunistic ways, including adaptation, trust, and multimodal networks of support. Further policy support must be given to communities to practice food sovereignty in their own contexts, especially as climate changes continue and these strategies become salient adaptive practices elsewhere.

Perception of and adaptation practices to climate change: a case study of smallholder paddy farmers in Dai Loc district of Vietnam

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the smallholder paddy farmers’ perceptions of climate change and identify factors that affect their perceptions of it in Vietnam. A sample size of 260 was chosen from a total of 745 smallholder paddy farmers and a structured questionnaire was constructed to gather data. Descriptive, chi-square (χ2) and logistic regression analyses were used. The research results revealed that the socio-economic characteristics of smallholder paddy farmers vary, reflecting diverse paddy-farming systems in the study area. A large number of smallholder paddy farmers noticed temperature, drought and pest/disease increased, whereas rainfall and flood decreased over the past 20 years. A high proportion of smallholders reported that more irrigation for paddy rice (82.7%), followed by growing short duration rice (65.0%) and changing paddy rice planting and harvesting date (63.1%) are the main adaptation practices. A majority of smallholders indicated that lack of information about potential climate change (67.7%), followed by lack of knowledge concerning appropriate adaptation (66.2%) and lack of market access and storage facility (64.2%) are the key barriers to adaptation practices. The success of the regression model’s overall prediction is reported by model χ2 = 81.5, p < 0.000, indicating that the explanatory variables significantly explained the dependent variable. Among the explanatory variables, agricultural practice, information and communication technology possessed, participation in rural credit programmes, participation in technical training programmes, participation in community-based organisations, gender, age, level of education, size of farm and farming experiences are significantly important determinants of smallholders’ perception of climate change.

Creating "a Safe Place to Go": Yarning With Health Workers About Stroke Recovery Care for Aboriginal Stroke Survivors-A Qualitative Study.

Stroke affects Aboriginal people at disproportionate rates compared to other populations in Australia. Aboriginal peoples are less likely to receive a timely stroke diagnosis, or timely culturally responsive treatment, as there are very few stroke resources and recovery plans that have been developed by Aboriginal peoples for Aboriginal peoples. Understanding how to develop and implement culturally responsive stroke care requires research approaches that are informed by and with Aboriginal people. A qualitative Indigenous research methodology including "yarning" was undertaken to understand the experiences of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health workers from nine health services providing stroke rehabilitation and recovery support to Aboriginal people living within the participating communities. Data were analyzed using an inductive approach driven by an Indigenous research approach. Yarns revealed three themes: (i) the role of culturally safe health environments to support stroke survivors, their family, and health workers; and how (ii) complicated, under-resourced systems impede the capacity to support stroke survivors; and (iii) collaborative and adaptive practices prevent people "falling through the cracks." This study highlights the need to scrutinize the cultural safety of health care, current health systems, workforce, and culture and how these influence the capacity of health workers to provide care that is responsive to the individual needs of Aboriginal stroke survivors and their families. These learnings will inform the co-design of a culturally responsive stroke recovery care strategy to improve the recovery experience and health and well-being of Aboriginal people and their families living with stroke.

Re-conceptualizing climate maladaptation: Complementing social-ecological interactions with relational socionatures

Cases of climate maladaptation are increasingly documented. Its identification and redressal has become a priority for researchers and policymakers concerned with climate vulnerability reduction. The ability to address climate maladaptation hinges on being open to its diverse causes, manifestations, and impacts. This study argues that climate maladaptation analyses are dominated by an “interactional ontology”—the understanding that it can be explained as an observable outcome from how separate social, economic, and political systems interact in moments of time. Consequently, efforts to curb climate maladaptation often target the institutional contexts (e.g., rules, regulations) understood as enabling adaptation practices to aggravate climate risks. But this only captures a partial aspect of climate maladaptation, neglecting underlying causes and processes. We argue a “relational ontology” can complement the “why and how” of maladaptation. A relational ontology understands climate maladaptation as an evolving process constituted through dynamic material and discursive relations, versus an observable outcome from separately interacting systems. By analyzing how adaptation initiatives are related to, framed, and politicized, assembly processes are rendered visible. To demonstrate this, we study the Government of Maharashtra’s (India) Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, a program aimed at increasing water conservation to “free” 20,000 villages from drought impacts. From our theorization and empirical case, we discuss how a relational ontology contributes to debates in the climate maladaptation literature and invites approaches for mitigating this phenomenon.

Climate Perceptions and Adaptation Practices of Traditional Marine Fishermen in Coastal Bengal, India: Toward Participatory Policy Recommendations

Climate Perceptions and Adaptation Practices of Traditional Marine Fishermen in Coastal Bengal, India: Toward Participatory Policy Recommendations

Gender-inclusive urban planning: European frameworks as a potential methodology for Arabian Gulf urban parks

PurposeThis trigger article explores established European gender-mainstreaming urban planning frameworks of urban parks to analyze and identify ways that could be applied or adapted for Arabian Gulf cities. It aims to accelerate the mainstreaming process, increasing women’s participation and inclusion in urban spaces, paving the way for future research.Design/methodology/approachAnalytical frameworks are created by reviewing legal and policy evolution, city-issued guidelines and European cities’ case studies (Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and Vienna) engaged in gender mainstreaming in urban planning. These analytical tools are then applied to assess two Arabian Gulf parks (Al Azaiba Wadi Park, Muscat, Oman, and Dahl Al-Hamam Park, Doha, Qatar), suggesting a possible future research methodology.FindingsSuccess factors in European cities include integrating female perspectives, detailed user analysis, specific planning solutions and political will. Despite differing social and cultural contexts, commonalities exist for female park users in Europe and the Arabian Gulf. This trigger article proposes a methodology for assessing the potential effective application or adaptation of European established frameworks in the Gulf context to accelerate gender mainstreaming.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper proposes a methodology for future research, noting limitations such as limited input on design preparation processes in Gulf City park case studies, a lack of feedback from park users and only a brief overview of sociocultural differences. Future research should explore nuanced cultural contexts, including historical processes and gender dynamics, thorough literature review, expanded case study analysis and participatory approaches. The proposed methodology aims to demonstrate how European frameworks can guide gender-mainstreaming efforts in diverse contexts, facilitating collaborative solutions for inclusive urban planning.Practical implicationsDrawing from decades of European gender-mainstreaming activities, the paper distills urban planning principles and best practices for application or adaptation in the Arab Gulf.Social implicationsEnhancing the park experience for women through planning and design boosts gender equality in cities, benefiting their physical and social well-being.Originality/valueAn original methodology is suggested for adapting well-developed European gender-mainstreaming frameworks to Arabian Gulf parks. Authored by a male, this paper aims to advance gender issues in planning while exploring the role men can play in contributing to such.

Gendered implications for climate change adaptation among farmers in Madagascar

ABSTRACT Climate change is impacting farmers worldwide; none more so than the millions of smallholder farmers who rely entirely on rain-fed agriculture. Adapting agricultural practices is an important strategy to mitigate climate change’s harmful impacts to food security and livelihoods. Researchers have increasingly sought to understand the factors influencing farmer decision-making on adaptation practices but application of important theories in low-income country contexts is lacking. Therefore, we apply the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) to examine farmer intention to adopt agricultural practices in response to climate change based on a survey of 328 smallholder farmers in rural Madagascar. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) to describe the relationship between social connectedness (e.g., interactions with others about farming-related issues), PMT constructs (threat and coping appraisal), and intention to adapt agricultural practices to climate change, we find that coping appraisal is a stronger predictor of intention to adapt than threat appraisal. Further, SEM results show a significant negative relationship between social connectedness and threat appraisal – farmers with greater social connectedness perceive climate change to be less of a threat. Additionally, as female farmers are significantly less socially connected than male farmers, this study provides further evidence of the gendered vulnerabilities to climate change among smallholders. This research has implications for the design of policies and interventions that consider farmer social networks, critical for reducing threat and building coping capacity, in supporting adaptation to climate change among vulnerable farmer populations.

Gender vulnerability and coping strategies to changing provisioning ecosystem services in Bongo and Kassena-Nankana West districts in the Upper East Region of Ghana

ABSTRACT Ecosystems provide a wide variety of life-sustaining services but are currently facing severe degradation due to changing land use and cover. Women are presumed to be more affected by declines in provisioning ecosystem services (PES). These claims have not been empirically proven across all contexts and have been contested by recent studies. Few studies in Ghana have attempted to examine this gendered environmental change phenomenon. Underpinned by the vulnerability theory, this paper employed an eclectic methodological approach to examine gender differences in vulnerability and coping with changing PES in Ghana. The findings reveal that both males and females depend highly on agricultural and woodland ecosystems for their livelihood needs. The deterioration in the total areas of the major ecosystems has resulted in significant declines in vital PES such as wild edible fruits and vegetables, medicinal plants and building materials for both men and women over the past decade. The study further reveals that the decreases in fuelwood supply affect women more than men because the former group mostly cooks food in their households, using fuelwood. As adaptation mechanisms, male farmers mostly planted trees on their farms to reclaim unfertile land and conserve forests, while female farmers engage in fruits and vegetable trade in the markets, as well as used non-indigenous spices to enhance the taste of food. Both males and females have also resorted to relying on orthodox medicines contrary to the past. To increase ecosystem resilience, the mainstreaming of ecosystem integrity adaptation practices into national adaptation plans is paramount.

Deformation depth decoupling network for point cloud domain adaptation

Recently, point cloud domain adaptation (DA) practices have been implemented to improve the generalization ability of deep learning models on point cloud data. However, variations across domains often result in decreased performance of models trained on different distributed data sources. Previous studies have focused on output-level domain alignment to address this challenge. But this approach may increase the amount of errors experienced when aligning different domains, particularly for targets that would otherwise be predicted incorrectly. Therefore, in this study, we propose an input-level discretization-based matching to enhance the generalization ability of DA. Specifically, an efficient geometric deformation depth decoupling network (3DeNet) is implemented to learn the knowledge from the source domain and embed it into an implicit feature space, which facilitates the effective constraint of unsupervised predictions for downstream tasks. Secondly, we demonstrate that the sparsity within the implicit feature space varies between domains, rendering domain differences difficult to support. Consequently, we match sets of neighboring points with different densities and biases by differentiating the adaptive densities. Finally, inter-domain differences are aligned by constraining the loss originating from and between the target domains. We conduct experiments on point cloud DA datasets PointDA-10 and PointSegDA, achieving advanced results (over 1.2% and 1% on average).

Comparative Study of Climate Change Adaptation Practices in Conflict-Affected Mountain Areas of Africa

Comparative Study of Climate Change Adaptation Practices in Conflict-Affected Mountain Areas of Africa

The Factors Affecting the Adoption of Ecological-Based Adaptation (EbA) Practices Among Smallholder Farmers Adjacent to Lake Nakivale Isingiro District, Southwestern Uganda.

The Factors Affecting the Adoption of Ecological-Based Adaptation (EbA) Practices Among Smallholder Farmers Adjacent to Lake Nakivale Isingiro District, Southwestern Uganda.

Talking water: interplay of gender, trust and expertise in agricultural extension groups in Mendoza, Argentina

Abstract Stakeholder adaptation is a critical strategy to overcome changing climate patterns worldwide. Still it relies on the speed and effectiveness of information flow to end-users. Research shows that the loss of information in several stages of its spread and learning from peers is more important than the knowledge circulated by extension services. Women’s participation and contribution are supportive and strategic, depending on the level of agreement and the interplay of trust variables within the network. In the arid Andes, agriculture is central and dependent on water management and macroeconomic conditions that shape market prospects, irrigation practices, and stakeholder behavior. Data were collected using the platform of a capacity-building program for organisations of water users in the Diamante and Atuel River basins in Mendoza, Argentina. Social Network Analysis (SNA) contributes to unveiling the cornerstones of information flow by identifying group structures, strong bonds, and bottlenecks in water management systems. In the first step, we evaluated the characteristics (density, centrality, average shortest path, and degree) of the pre-existing relationships and five sub-topic networks. Second, we compare networks containing pre-existing links only with those formed during the lecture. Emphasizing adaptation practices to cope with climate change impacts, the results provide valuable insights into the intricate interplay of gender dynamics, trust, expertise recognition, and discussion patterns within water and agricultural extension groups in Argentina. These insights highlight the ongoing need to promote gender equity, address biases in expertise recognition, and leverage trust for meaningful knowledge exchanges within evolving social contexts. It also reveals the alignment of Argentina’s gender performance with similar production setups in Southern America or the Global North, highlighting the universality of challenges and opportunities in fostering inclusive and equitable participation. Our findings indicate that each group within the two river basins exhibits numerous pre-existing links and tends to be less accessible to newcomers, resulting in a shorter average path. Thus, information can spread faster. Trust is an underlying facilitator for sensible topics and a catalyzer for communication.