Mangroves are vital components of coastal blue carbon ecosystems due to their high carbon sequestration capacity, offering a nature-based strategy for climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, their photosynthetic carbon assimilation is highly susceptible to increased salinity. Previous studies have shown that the net photosynthesis rate (Anet) in mangrove plants under salt stress was limited by stomatal conductance (gs) and biochemical factors, but the role of mesophyll conductance to CO2 (gm)-a diffusion component increasingly highlighted as a significant constrain on photosynthesis in various plant species-has not been explicitly considered. In this study, we revisit the physiological mechanisms underlying photosynthetic response of mangrove plants to salt stress. We experimentally examined variations in a comprehensive set of photosynthetic parameters (i.e., with gm included) and leaf structural components in two common coastal woody species of southern China, Kandelia obovata Sheue, H.Y. Liu & J. Yong and Aegiceras corniculatum (L.), across different salinity gradients. Our results demonstrate that both species exhibited optimal photosynthetic performance at 10‰ salinity; however, A, gs and gm significantly declined with increasing salinity level. However, maximum carboxylation rate (Vcmax) did not decrease significantly in K. obovata, while it showed a significant decline in A. corniculatum. Photosynthetic limitation analysis showed that gm was the dominant limiting factor across salinity treatments, except in Kandelia obovata at 20‰ salinity. In K. obovata, the decline in gm correlated with reductions in chloroplast surface area exposed to intercellular airspace per unit leaf area (Sc/S), whereas no such structural relationship was observed in A. corniculatum. Overall, our results demonstrate that increased mesophyll resistance to CO2 diffusion was a primary cause of photosynthetic decline under salt stress, with species-specific structural regulation of gm. These findings enhance our understanding of mangrove responses to salinity and providing guidance for species selection and management strategies to maintain productivity and carbon sequestration in coastal blue carbon ecosystems under future climate change.

Assessing the environmental sustainability of the billion trees afforestation project through life cycle assessment.

High-throughput phytoplankton monitoring and screening of harmful and bloom-forming algae in coastal waters with updated functional screening database.

An overview of climate change adaptation and mitigation research in architecture heritage

Agroecological interventions increase biodiversity and the potential for climate change mitigation in Europe

A review on CO2 mineralization in saline aquifers: Advances, challenges, and future prospects for sustainable carbon sequestration.

Practical implementation of artificial intelligence for climate change mitigation in cities – priorities, collaborations and challenges

The pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass yields biochar consisting of high-carbon scaffolds bearing a variety of functional groups. As produced, the biochar is mechanically fragile and lacks the structural cohesion needed for making structural materials. To enhance both its chemical stability and mechanical strength, elemental sulfur is here introduced to induce a vulcanization reaction with biochar. Heating a biochar-sulfur (BS) mixture up to 185 °C under pressure induces effective crosslinking within the carbon network of biochar, a reaction attributed to free-radical sulfur polymerization and addition to functional groups attached to the carbon network of biochar. The synthesis method yields a crosslinked biochar with markedly enhanced mechanical strength. Depending on the synthesis conditions, the compressive strength and Young's modulus can reach values between 22-382.5 MPa and 6-165 GPa, respectively. With the density of only 1.4 g cm-3, the mechanical properties of the best synthesized materials closely match that of structural steel. The BS materials can potentially be used as sustainable materials in parts and products for human infrastructure and transport. Alternatively, this method may also provide an alternative pathway for biomass-derived carbon storage contributing to climate change mitigation.

Limited site-specific blue carbon recovery following tropical seagrass restoration in Thailand.

Greenhouse gas emissions and control measures for constructed wetland: A systematic review.

The role of co-benefits in motivating climate change mitigation – Experimental evidence

Agronomic constraints limit the climate change mitigation potential of winter cover crops in Europe

A bibliometric analysis of global seagrass blue carbon research: Informing coastal management and policy for climate change mitigation

Integrating the Food-Energy-Water Nexus: Strategies for climate change mitigation with SDG alignment

Sinking into standing forests or timber for climate change mitigation: Instrument constituencies and policy preferences

The control, supervision and monitoring of trees, both in terms of their location and height, is of vital importance in teak plantations (Tectona grandis L.f.). This allows planning silvicultural work related to thinning, replanting, irrigation and phytosanitary treatments, estimating production and harvesting. Knowing the number of plants, their spatial location, and estimating their height is crucial for managing large tree plantations and determining their carbon sequestration capacity to contribute to climate change mitigation. In this work, three different size versions of the anchor-free and single-stage detector YOLOX deep learning network, pre-trained on the COCO dataset, were specifically trained for automatic localization of teak trees in large and dense plantations from UAV imagery. This study used two teak plantations located in Ecuador. "La Marina" plantation (456 ha) served as the training and validation area, while "La Selena" (195 ha), was reserved for testing and accuracy evaluation, constituting a true holdout dataset to assess the generalization capabilities of the developed model. Very high-resolution RGB images were taken in both plantations using a Phantom 4 drone at a flight altitud of 120 m above ground. Regarding the results obtained, they showed that the "small" version of the YOLOX deep learning network performed significantly better than the other two versions tested ("medium" and "large" size YOLOX), presenting notably good average metrics of Precision (94.74%), Recall (82.40%) and F1-score (87.91%). In this sense, the trained model proved to be a suitable solution to address complex visual recognition challenges in very high-resolution UAV images. Keywords: UAV Images, YOLOX, Tree Detection, Teak Plantations, Deep Learning

Abstract China has been vigorously developing the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry to address climate change and air pollution. While aerosols constitute a significant air pollutant that impairs PV generation efficiency, few studies have examined how China's clean air action (CAA) plan has influenced solar PV performance. To address this gap, we employ the PVLIB-Python model to quantify PV capacity factors (CF) and power generation changes across China, due to the CAA plan in China from 2013 to 2020. We find that improved air quality has substantially enhanced PV generation, particularly in eastern China, generating up to 41.3 TWh additional electricity per year, estimated with current PV capacity. The largest increases are in provinces such as Shandong and Henan, with heavier air pollution and higher PV installation. By employing multiple CMIP6 models, we also estimate potential future PV power generation changes in China. We find that with sustainable development and strong climate change mitigation policies, the reduced air pollution and increased solar radiation can potentially increase the PV power generation by 37.4 TWh-52.6 TWh per year by the 2050s, without even considering the newly installed PV facilities.

Semi-natural grasslands as a nature-based solution for climate change mitigation: An assessment of carbon and plant communities across age gradients

Estimating current and future urban biocide emissions from building facades at the city scale.

Increasing concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra) from Wales suggest remobilisation from sediment sinks.