Ecological transformation is underway on Caribbean reefs, including the flattening of structural complexity and shifts in species assemblages. As marine litter accumulates faster than it can be removed, marine organisms increasingly use litter for shelter and substrate. This study used commercial litter removal dives to assess the cryptofauna most affected by such activities. Following state and federal protocols, displaced taxa were recorded from marine litter retrieved during 18 dive events. Mobile organisms, stony corals, and soft corals were classified, with polychaete worms, Scleractinia corals, and crustaceans (e.g., Mithracidae crabs) comprising over 58% of all taxa observed. Taxa exhibited various interactions with specific litter types. Dives with more diverse litter types yielded significantly higher cryptofauna richness. Biomass estimates were calculated using length- or width-weight relationships for taxa found on the four most abundant litter types (plastic, cloth, metal, processed wood). Using medians and best-fit models for 21 identified taxa, the 18 dives removed an estimated total biomass of 1.34kg. This equates to roughly 0.0014kg of fauna per kilogram of litter. When scaled to PADI AWARE Dive Against Debris® removals specific to coral reef environments within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, we estimate that over 94kg of biomass of taxa may have been removed over the past decade. These values likely underestimate the true impact especially once scaled to the many clean-up dives that occur each year. We recommend that conservation and management practices account for these largely understudied taxa. Further observations of litter-cryptofauna interactions will improve our ability to include taxon-specific impact estimates in past and future marine litter removal efforts.

The influence of water resources on population distribution: Driving paths and empirical evidence from China.

Ecological transformation and quality of surgical pathological analysis: Not such an insoluble equation

ABSTRACT In response to growing concerns over environmental sustainability and urban livability, China has launched a nationwide pocket park initiative, transforming underutilized urban spaces into small green areas. This article examines the rapid proliferation of pocket parks in Liaoning Province, with a particular focus on Shenyang and Dalian, two major cities where construction has proceeded with unusual intensity. While the initiative is officially framed as a means to enhance public space, promote ecological conservation, and revitalize declining neighborhoods, this article shows that its implementation often serves performative and political ends. Drawing on the concept of the socioecological fix, the article demonstrates how micro-scale greening operates as a visible yet temporary response to intertwined crises. Although some parks have improved neighborhood environments and public life, the broader initiative reflects the logic of performative governance, producing spectacles of care and progress without achieving substantive ecological transformation. The article thus shows how environmental politics, performative governance, and urban spectacle converge in ordinary urban space, revealing how China’s ecological civilization agenda is materially enacted and symbolically staged through everyday landscapes.

This contribution argues that a left politics should be renewed through a post-foundational and hegemonic approach. It argues that neoliberalism’s post-pandemic, techno-authoritarian turn must be confronted by a counter-hegemonic project linking social justice with ecological transformation. In doing this, it advocates for a Green Democratic Revolution that mobilizes collective affects, connects ecological, feminist, anti-racist, and labour struggles, and deepens democracy through radical reformism rather than rupture. This strategy, the essay contends, can forge a new popular majority and reassert democratic equality against neoliberal post-politics.

The aim of this study is to determine teachers’ views on integrating sustainable artificial intelligence use into classroom teaching processes. The study was conducted using a qualitative research approach and adopted a case study design. The study group consisted of 38 teachers who were selected using maximum diversity sampling, who currently use AI, and who participated in a 4-week structured “Sustainable AI Training Program.” To ensure methodological triangulation, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, researcher diaries, and participant diaries and analyzed using inductive thematic content analysis. According to the analysis results, some findings reveal that teachers considered filtering AI tools through a pedagogical filter centered around the question “Is it really necessary?” rather than using them directly and intensively. Furthermore, digital minimalism was adopted in classroom practices, along with the use of a single, optimized prompt instead of trial-and-error queries, the practice of archiving and reusing generated content, and a shift toward low-tech alternatives. It was determined that teachers would adopt digital minimalism in classroom practices, aiming to serve as role models for sustainable use by bringing the hidden environmental costs of technology into the learning process and fostering eco-digital citizenship awareness among students. Consequently, AI integration has evolved from a technical decision into a pedagogical redesign process encompassing ethical and ecological dimensions.

The role of megafaunal exploitation in early human evolution remains debated. Occasional use of large carcasses by early hominins has been considered by some as opportunistic, possibly a fallback dietary strategy, and for others a more important survival strategy. At Olduvai Gorge, evidence for megafaunal butchery is scarce in the Oldowan of Bed I but becomes more frequent and widespread after 1.8 Ma in Bed II, coinciding with the emergence of Acheulean technologies, but not functionally related to the main Acheulian tool types. Here, we present the earliest direct evidence of proboscidean butchery, including a newly documented elephant butchery site (EAK). This shift in behavior is accompanied by larger, more complex occupation sites, signaling a profound ecological and technological transformation. Rather than opportunistic scavenging, these findings suggest a strategic adaptation to megafaunal resources, with implications for early human subsistence and social organization. The ability to systematically exploit large prey represents a unique evolutionary trajectory, with no direct modern analogue, since modern foragers do so only episodically.

The role of megafaunal exploitation in early human evolution remains debated. Occasional use of large carcasses by early hominins has been considered by some as opportunistic, possibly a fallback dietary strategy, and for others a more important survival strategy. At Olduvai Gorge, evidence for megafaunal butchery is scarce in the Oldowan of Bed I but becomes more frequent and widespread after 1.8 Ma in Bed II, coinciding with the emergence of Acheulean technologies, but not functionally related to the main Acheulian tool types. Here, we present the earliest direct evidence of proboscidean butchery, including a newly documented elephant butchery site (EAK). This shift in behavior is accompanied by larger, more complex occupation sites, signaling a profound ecological and technological transformation. Rather than opportunistic scavenging, these findings suggest a strategic adaptation to megafaunal resources, with implications for early human subsistence and social organization. The ability to systematically exploit large prey represents a unique evolutionary trajectory, with no direct modern analogue, since modern foragers do so only episodically.

In the 21st century, marked by rapid advancements in digital technology, numerous traditional industries face immense competitive pressures and challenges while simultaneously encountering unprecedented opportunities. The digital transformation of traditional industries represents an inevitable choice for enhancing industrial competitiveness and achieving sustainable development. This paper selects Wangfujing Group Co., Ltd., a traditional retail enterprise commonly referred to as “Wangfujing,” as its research subject. Employing a literature analysis approach, it meticulously examines Wangfujing's transformation pathways and outcomes across key areas: omnichannel deployment, supplier collaboration, customer and merchandise operations management, and organizational restructuring. Research reveals that Wangfujing, centered on data-driven strategies, has progressively advanced a value co-creation model characterized by internal-to-external, tiered, and comprehensive collaboration. This approach has enabled its ecological transformation from a single offline store to a fully integrated omnichannel digital business ecosystem. Research indicates that for traditional industries undergoing digital transformation, internal efforts must prioritize technological innovation and organizational restructuring, while externally, cross-entity collaboration fosters sustainable competitive advantages. This approach enhances core competitiveness and provides replicable theoretical and practical references for digital transformation among peer enterprises.

The circular economy paradigm offers a critical framework for addressing agricultural sustainability challenges, yet limited empirical evidence exists regarding how ecological innovations create simultaneous value across environmental, economic, and social dimensions. This study examines stakeholder value creation mechanisms through a 200-day longitudinal case study (March–October 2025) of Fuyang, China’s ecological transformation utilizing exciton-mineral technology for livestock waste valorization. The mixed-methods approach combined environmental monitoring, economic performance data, social surveys (n = 4523), and governance document analysis across operations processing 3000–4500 tons of poultry waste monthly. Results indicated significant environmental improvements including 99.4% odor reduction (NH3: 999 → 5.6 ppm), 387% soil biodiversity increase, and 42% methane emission reduction. Economic benefits included +20% farmer net profit and +57% egg price premium. Social outcomes encompassed 96.2% resident satisfaction and complete elimination of odor complaints. Governance innovation established China’s first permit-free bio-mineral production system. The findings suggest that ecological innovations embedding circularity as automatic outcomes, rather than requiring behavioral coordination, can accelerate circular agriculture transitions beyond policy mandates, pointing to a potentially scalable model for sustainable production–consumption systems in developing economies.

This paper takes Blake C. Scott’s Unpacked: A History of Caribbean Tourism as its central archive to trace the historical continuities that shape contemporary tourism in the Caribbean. It argues that leisure in the region has never been innocent but has functioned as a neocolonial system structured by infrastructures, labor hierarchies, and cultural representations. Scott’s history demonstrates how imperial projects such as the Panama Canal, mosquito eradication campaigns, and Pan American Airways transformed the Caribbean from a feared ‘white man’s graveyard’ into a consumable paradise, embedding racial and class inequalities within the very mechanics of mobility. Hotels like the Tivoli and the Havana Hilton epitomized a service economy sustained by racialized labor, where the ‘service smile’ masked exploitation. Meanwhile, travel writing, Hemingway’s dispatches, and airline advertisements naturalized the tourist gaze, erasing colonial violence and ecological transformation. By situating today’s overtourism, characterized by cruise ship congestion, environmental degradation, and service dependency, within this historical arc, the paper highlights how contemporary crises are intensifications of older colonial patterns. Bringing together historical, postcolonial, and ecocritical lenses, it calls for reimagining tourism not as extraction but as reciprocity, advocating models of slow tourism, ecological justice, and regional cooperation to resist the entitlements of neocolonial leisure economies.

Spatio-temporal analysis of land use and land cover changes: assessing urban expansion and ecological transformations (2003–2023)

Managing ecosystems in an era of rapid change is inherently challenging not only because of uncertainty in future climate but also due to diverse responses of ecosystems to climate. Projections of ecological transformation alongside information about plausible vegetation trajectories can help land managers explore divergent scenarios and consider how modeled outcomes match their observations. Climate-analog impact models (AIMs) compare environmental information (e.g., vegetation types) between sets of climatically similar locations to infer change and can be used to identify multiple outcomes. We used AIMs to project changes in vegetation across the western United States under a mid-21st century climate scenario, characterize ecological transformation vulnerability based on projection divergence, and demonstrate how AIMs can inform decision-making. We projected high or very high vulnerability to ecological transformation across 29% of the western US, nearly 1 M km2. Vulnerability varied among vegetation groups; 75% of alpine vegetation had high or very high vulnerability vs. 6% of desert scrub. We estimate that 9% of the study area faces a high likelihood of transformation based on combined measures of vulnerability and projection agreement. Transformation at the vegetation type (n = 50) level is projected for 40% (1.4 M km2) of the study area, based on primary projections. As vegetation shifts towards types supported by a more arid climate, forested area is expected to contract by 9% and subalpine forests specifically by 54%. Elsewhere, vulnerability is low or trajectories are uncertain, implying opportunities for managers to intervene. Dry forests, for example, could be stabilized through vegetation management and intentional fire use. Our findings suggest likely ecological transformations with significant downstream consequences for ecosystem services and natural resources. They are best used within decision-making frameworks that draw on multiple lines of evidence including local expertise and complementary knowledge systems.

Spatio-Temporal Evolution and Driving Mechanisms of Ecological Resilience: The Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration Case

Crisis representation within the field of literary studies increasingly recognizes climate change as a defining global emergency, whose pervasive and multidimensional impact profoundly shapes both the material conditions of the contemporary world and its cultural imaginaries. Literary texts have increasingly become significant sites for examining how societies imagine, narrate, and respond to ecological catastrophes and environmental transformations. Climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” has emerged as a critical literary genre in the 21st century, addressing the ecological anxieties of the Anthropocene by merging scientific realities with imaginative storytelling. This article provides an eco-critical reading of Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019), a novel that deftly intertwines myth, migration, and human-nonhuman interactions to map the contours of a planet in flux. The research hypothesizes that Ghosh’s integration of the “Bonduki Sadagar” (Gun Merchant) myth functions as a deliberate narrative strategy to historicize the current climate crisis. By embedding modern ecological collapse within ancient folklore, Ghosh reframes climate change not merely as a scientific phenomenon but as a cultural and existential catastrophe that disrupts the boundaries between the past and present, the human and the non-human. This paper analyses how Gun Island foregrounds the agency of nature manifested through the “uncanny” and investigates the novel’s depiction of climate-induced migration, arguing that Ghosh presents a world where environmental degradation and human displacement are inextricably linked.

ABSTRACT This article introduces Eco-Acculturation Theory, which incorporates climate, natural ecosystems, and environmental challenges into existing models of migrant adjustment. Drawing from my personal migration experience, particularly my adaptation to Miami’s tropical climate and the natural disasters I encountered, I demonstrate how the environment influences psychological resilience and cultural identity. In so doing, this research proposes a fundamental shift in how adaptation is conceptualized, suggesting that migrants undergo simultaneous cultural and ecological transformations.

The concept of development is usually applied to the global South. Yet the capitalist, growth-based socioeconomic paradigm of ‘developed’ countries is both ecologically destructive and socially unjust. Can we formulate alternative – emancipatory and sustainable – visions of progress? In this article, I apply the concept of development exclusively to the global North – even if out of an explicit concern for global social–ecological justice – offering a radical reading of Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Emphasizing justice, real freedom and human flourishment, the capability approach potentially constitutes a valuable framework for theorizing emancipatory social–ecological transformations. However, dominant interpretations of this approach often consider capitalist growth positively – albeit as a means for capability-expansion. I propose a post-growth/post-capitalist interpretation of the capability approach, which – through the politicization of individual and collective aspirations – calls for the subordination of the economy to democratically defined social–ecological needs. In this understanding, the capability to care for people and planet becomes central.

ABSTRACT Amidst the deepening ecological crisis of capitalism, Western eco-Marxism has delivered a profound and pathological diagnosis yet remains trapped in a “practical vacuum,” unable to offer curative solutions. In stark contrast, the “Two Mountains Theory,” born of China's practical experience and at the core of Xi Jinping's Ecological Civilisation thought, has spearheaded a sweeping socialist ecological practice over the past two decades. This paper aims to establish a critical dialogue between the two, arguing that the “Two Mountains Theory” not only resonates with the former in its critique of the logic of capital but also answers the historical question of “how to achieve” through its “socialist dialectics of praxis.” This approach leverages state capacity to master rather than submit to capital. We contend that the “Two Mountains Theory” signifies an emerging socialist ecological pathway. Transcending utopian visions, it offers tangible insights into struggle and institutional references for the global left contemplating ecological transformation.

Abstract Anthropogenic land‐use changes represent a significant but poorly understood threat to global biodiversity, particularly among invertebrates. Dung beetles, a diverse and widely distributed group, play key roles in ecosystem functioning and are highly sensitive to environmental changes, making them valuable bioindicators for assessing human impacts. One approach to understanding these impacts involves identifying ecological thresholds, which indicate nonlinear shifts in biodiversity along land‐use and land‐cover gradients. Identifying ecological thresholds offers critical insights into how species and ecosystems respond to human‐induced environmental changes. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot, is well suited for studies exploring ecological thresholds as it faces ongoing ecological transformations driven by deforestation, agricultural expansion and urbanization. In this study, we aimed to (i) identify key environmental drivers of shifts in dung beetle communities, (ii) determine critical thresholds for compositional turnover in these communities and (iii) explore patterns across taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dimensions within this taxon. We found that even minor land‐use changes trigger abrupt biodiversity shifts across all diversity dimensions, consistently benefiting generalist species while excluding sensitive specialists. The observed shifts occurred at lower levels of environmental change rates than previously recognized, with significant changes evident after just 25% of habitat loss. Our results challenge existing conservation thresholds and provide an evidence‐based framework to update environmental laws, guide protected area expansion and direct targeted restoration efforts. We recommend conducting more comprehensive studies to assess ecological thresholds across a broader range of taxa and geographic regions within the Atlantic Forest biome. Advancing conservation strategies with improved threshold knowledge will be critical to maintain the forest's ecological resilience and functional integrity.

Abstract. Eddy S, Setiawan AA, Milantara N, Rahmawati, Billardi A, Sundoko A. 2026. Accelerated invasion of Nypa fruticans during 2000-2024 in degraded mangrove ecosystem in Sumatra analysed using Google Earth Engine. Biodiversitas 27 (1): d270110. https://doi.org/10.13057/biodiv/d270110. This study analyzes the invasion patterns of nipah (Nypa fruticans) and their implications for the degradation of the Air Telang Protected Forest (ATPF) ecosystem from 2000 to 2024. Using a unique methodological combination of large-scale, time-series analysis from Google Earth Engine (GEE) with high-resolution drone-based validation, we mapped land cover changes and quantified nipah expansion under intensifying anthropogenic pressures. Land cover classification from 2000, 2012, and 2024 revealed a sharp decline in native primary and secondary mangrove forests, concurrent with rapid increases in nipah-dominated areas, open lands, and plantations. This methodology allowed for a more comprehensive tracking and understanding of the invasion dynamics throughout the 2000-2024 timeframe. The Maximum Entropy algorithm was utilized to model the species' potential spread based on key environmental variables, including soil type, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, elevation, slope, temperature, and rainfall. The results show a significant decline in native mangrove cover, directly corresponding to an increase in nipah colonies and open areas, driven by anthropogenic activities such as illegal logging and land clearing. Between 2000 and 2024, the total area of primary and secondary mangroves decreased significantly, while the invasive nipah population experienced a nearly fivefold increase. Specifically, measurements show the loss of primary mangrove forest exceeded 50% during this period. This expansion was particularly dramatic during the 2012-2024 period, marking an acceleration of the invasion. These ecological transformations not only threaten biodiversity but also substantially diminish the forest’s carbon sequestration capacity, undermining regional climate mitigation efforts. Integrated management-combining policy enforcement, restoration of native mangroves, and community-based control of nipah-is urgently needed to restore ecological function and prevent further ecosystem collapse, which provides an urgent warning for conservation policy.