African elephants (<i>Loxodonta Africana cyclotis</i>) serve a pivotal role in shaping forest ecosystems, particularly in regions like Mount Cameroon national park. Their size and behavior impact various ecological components, from canopy structure to understory dynamics. Also, elephants play a crucial role as ecosystem engineers, and their foraging and browsing behaviors induce significant disturbances that shape forest characteristics. This study explored the impact of African forest elephants’ activity on the forest ecology of Mount Cameroon national park, focusing on six key areas, forest canopy structure, tree species composition, forest tree regeneration, vine growth, forest understory dynamics, and large trees formation. Research data collection was carried out five days each month, for a period of six months. Systematic vegetation plots within selected sites were established to examine tree abundance and species diversity. Quadrats and transects were equally used to capture data on the types and numbers of trees, especially focusing on both preferred and less preferred species by elephants. The results of this study showed that African forest elephant activity recorded a significant association on forest canopy structure r=0.309 P=0.001, tree species composition X<sup>2</sup>=83.267 df=6 P=0.000, forest tree regeneration X<sup>2</sup>=45.891 df=6 P=0.000, vine growth X<sup>2</sup>=54.030 df=6 P=0.000, forest understory X<sup>2</sup>=69.696 df=6 P=0.000, and large trees structure X<sup>2</sup>=73.283 df=6 P=0.000 respectively. Furthermore, human-wildlife conflict revealed a significant link on elephant population threat X<sup>2</sup>=63.720 df=4 P=0.000, biodiversity rating X<sup>2</sup>=63.154 df=4 P=0.000, and elephants grouping behaviour X<sup>2</sup>=62.876 df=4 P=0.000 respectively. Forest elephants play a crucial role in rainforest ecosystem. Their activities, including browsing, trampling, and creating trails, modify the forest structure, which in turn affects resource availability and habitat for other species. As human populations expand into rainforest areas, elephants face habitat loss and fragmentation. This encroachment reduces the space available for elephants to roam and feed, leading to population declines. The findings indicated that elephant interactions result in increased biodiversity, altered species distributions, and varying regeneration patterns, which collectively contribute to the resilience of forest ecosystems. This research equally underscores the importance of elephants in maintaining ecological balance in Mount Cameroon national park and provides insights for effective conservation strategies aimed at protecting both elephant populations and the valuable forest habitat they help sustain.

ABSTRACT Many models describing the choice and engagement with Pro-Environmental Behaviour (PEB) lean heavily on Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and Place Attachment (PA) as essential components and are designed for adults. The few child-based models often overlook other key components. This study learns from 9 to 10 year-old children living in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, that there is place- and age-based uniqueness of LEK, PA, and PEB, and also that environmental emotions and agency to engage in experiential learning are mediators of LEK, PA, and PEB. Galápagos, an Ecuadorian National Park and UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site, is a small equatorial archipelago, where the human population is recently established and thus not Indigenous to the islands, and whose ecosystems are facing increasing climate impacts. We adopt the framework of childism to centre children’s experiences and thoughts. Children exemplified robust and locationally unique LEK, PA, and PEB, but additionally shared environmental emotions and agency to engage in abundant environmental experiences which connected and mediated LEK, PA, and PEB. This case study provides support for children’s role in local conservation to support climate action in other young global communities.

Habitat quality in China’s national parks and their surroundings by modifying the InVEST model

Experimental evidence of ciliate dispersal and successional patterns via endozoochory in temporary aquatic systems.

Foreign tourists' preferences for destination attributes in Japan's national parks: A best-worst scaling analysis

Abstract: This essay discusses the author's visit to Arlington House in the spring of 2025, a season of deepening crisis for federally funded research and public history on slavery and Black life in the United States. Arlington House (a National Park Service site also known as the Robert E. Lee Memorial) was closed for renovation in 2018 and reopened in 2021 with a new interpretive focus on slavery and freedom. Two years later, descendant groups signed an agreement with the Park Service to ensure that exhibits at the house were honest and accountable to the families of enslaved people who once lived and labored there, like Charles and Maria Syphax. These changes could still be seen at the site in March 2025. By the summer, however, the site's new features were threatened by political directives from Washington, DC, that targeted Black history. These developments make it more imperative than ever for historians to research the many complex lives that intersected at Arlington House, including twentieth-century Park Service employees like Essie Hart Lawrence, a Black park technician who worked at the site in 1975 when President Gerald Ford arrived to sign a resolution restoring Lee's citizenship.

The Ibex dune field of Death Valley National Park, California: Characterization and assessment for Use as a Martian analog

Abstract: The National Park Service manages thousands of monuments. Many stand as silent sentinels to commemorate people, places, or events, and seldom elicit any response. Others can stir positive or negative reactions, or, in some cases, both. Such is the case with the Freedmen's Memorial (often referred to as the Emancipation Monument) on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Some know that the monument depicts President Abraham Lincoln ending slavery by lifting an African American man—Archer Alexander–out of bondage. They may also be aware that African American people, as former slaves, donated the funding. Some might know that Frederick Douglass gave the dedicatory speech for the monument in front of President Ulysses S. Grant and members of Congress and the Supreme Court. At the same time, many understand these stories but believe that ultimately the memorial is demeaning to African American people and thus should be removed. This essay tells this story.

Pesticide use and climate-driven pest pressure in smallholder agriculture in equatorial Africa.

How does biodiversity monitoring impact those who conduct it? Reported outcomes and perspectives of a field team in Lore Lindu National Park, Indonesia

Eco-tourism plays crucial role connecting biodiversity conservation with rural livelihoods around Nepal’s protected areas, however, climate change is emerging as a threat to its ecological and socio-economic foundations. This study is concerned with the impacts of climate change on eco-tourism in Chitwan National Park (CNP) and its buffer zone, with particular emphasis on community adaptation and institutional response within eco-tourism systems. The study applies mixed-methods following explanatory sequential design combining a household (n = 385) survey with key informant interviews and focus group discussions. A majority of households observe temperature fluctuations and rainfall variability, protracted dry seasons, floods, and riverbank erosion impacting their wildlife habitats, modes of tourism and source of livelihood by slowing down tourist inflow and income stability. Although households are taking strategies like livelihood diversification and community conservation activities, institutional support is inconsistent. Applying Political Ecology, Triple-Bottom-Line Sustainability and Adaptive Capacity, the analysis underpins an analysis that detects governance deficits and recently emerging conflict sensitivities concerning participation and benefit-sharing, emphasizing the role of cogovernance with climate responsiveness to enhance eco-tourism resilience in Nepal’s lowland protected areas.

A detailed understanding of how protected species use their habitats can guide management interventions in areas of high human use. For marine turtles, different food availability and physical habitat characteristics can underpin turtle presence at anthropogenically modified compared to unmodified sites. We develop telemetry-based habitat models with boosted regression trees to identify the environmental characteristics underpinning foraging habitat suitability for green turtles in the Great Barrier Reef region. We fit models to green turtle Fastloc GPS tracks from both modified and unmodified inshore foraging sites and using pseudo-absences (simulated correlated random walks). We assess model performance by the ability to predict known foraging areas, true skill statistic, explanatory power (percent deviance explained) and predictive skill (AUC) of the models. We then predict potentially suitable foraging areas for green turtles in the Great Barrier Reef region using the model for unmodified habitats. Our model highlights shallow nearshore environments and midshelf reefs as important foraging areas for green turtles. These areas are likely affected by dynamic floods, development, and turbidity. In 2022, 46.6% of predicted suitable habitat fell within habitat protection zones, and 16.5% in Marine National Park Zones of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. A detailed foraging distribution of the species has not previously been compiled at this regional scale. Identifying biophysical drivers of habitat suitability can inform identification of possible foraging habitat in less data rich regions in Australia and overseas. Evaluating changes over time in habitat distribution provides insights into the degree to which broad-scale environmental changes and anthropogenic activities influence the condition and function of habitats, even within protected area boundaries.

Freshwater salinization syndrome is degrading streamwater quality in the National Capital Region national parks, USA

Abstract: In this essay, the author reflects on overseeing the rehabilitation of two historic buildings, one a Rosenwald school, on the campus of Elizabeth City State University (ECSU). Founded as a normal school in 1891, ECSU is a historically Black university located in rural and predominantly Black northeastern North Carolina. The completed project will include exhibit space interpreting the regional history of the African American quest for freedom through education. The challenges experienced and overcome during the eight-year project, especially following the 2024 election and subsequent cuts to federal funding from agencies like the National Park Service and the Institute of Museum and Library Services parallel the challenges the university experienced during its formative years. Understanding this institutional history and the strategies its supporters employed to ensure its survival provide perspective on how both the rehabilitation project and the university can withstand the current political moment.

Integrating biodiversity and key ecosystem services into the optimization of multi-scenario land use simulation in the Three-River-Source National Park region, China

Social-economic-natural complex ecosystem (SENCE) theory and its application: Historical contributions and future prospects.

Comparison of per- and polyfluoroalkyl levels in human matrices, surface and drinking waters in Spain and other countries.

Vegetation mapping is essential for monitoring conservation efforts in national parks and can be performed remotely using remote sensing and GIS technologies. However, the process is often complex and requires technical expertise. This study explores the use of AI, specifically ChatGPT, to simplify and support vegetation mapping workflows. We monitored monthly vegetation changes in Merapi Mountain National Park (TNGM) from 2017 to 2023 using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from Sentinel-2 satellite data. The workflow combined Google Earth Engine (GEE) for satellite image processing and Python in Jupyter Notebook for time series analysis, with ChatGPT assisting in code editing. Our results show NDVI patterns are significantly influenced by volcanic activity, particularly eruptions and pyroclastic clouds, and about one-third of images were affected by cloud cover, especially during the rainy season. ChatGPT performed well in non-coding queries with a 79% satisfaction rate, but only 53% of generated code prompts were correct without modification. We conclude that while AI tools like ChatGPT have strong potential to enhance accessibility and efficiency in remote vegetation mapping, human oversight and foundational knowledge in geospatial analysis remain essential for accurate results.

Chinese poetry is rich in cultural landscapes, and the cultural spirit in poetry imbues these landscapes with profound meaning and value. Exploring and integrating the cultural landscape resources in poetry offers a novel approach for the planning and development of national cultural parks (NCPs). In this study, the Yangtze River NCP in Hubei Province is chosen as the case study area, owing to its deep historical heritage in poetic literature and its wealth of poetic works. The temporal–spatial evolution and formation mechanisms of cultural landscapes in poetry (CLP) from the Pre-Qin period to the Republic of China period are examined by using the landscape index, ArcGIS spatial analysis methods, Geodetector, and cultural ecology theory. This study contributes to research on CLP in two key ways: (1) The landscape index is used to evaluate the cultural value of CLP and is subsequently incorporated as a weighting factor in spatial analysis. It enables more precise identification of the spatial patterns of CLP and highlight the most iconic and culturally significant landscapes. This supports the optimization and integration of Chinese poetic cultural resources. (2) Drawing on cultural ecology theory, Geodetector is applied to examine the influencing factors and underlying mechanisms shaping the temporal–spatial evolution of CLP. It offers theoretical insights into the formation mechanisms of spatial distribution in other forms of cultural heritage. Overall, this study broadens the perspective on cultural landscapes in Chinese poetry and provides practical guidance for the planning and construction of the Yangtze River NCP in Hubei Province.

The Act of July 7, 2023, amending the Act on Spatial Planning and Development and certain other acts (Journal of Laws 2023, item 1688) introduced the general municipal plan into the Polish spatial planning system. Pursuant to Article 13a(7) of the Act of March 27, 2003, on Spatial Planning and Development (Journal of Laws 2024, item 1130, as amended), these plans constitute acts of local law. Consequently, the solutions they establish will determine the entire spatial management process within a municipality. They will also be of significant importance for environmental protection, which cannot be effectively implemented in isolation from the spatial context in which the protected environmental components are located. An important role in this regard is played by the provisions of protection plans developed for national parks, landscape parks, and nature reserves – forms of nature protection referred to in Article 6 of the Act of April 16, 2004, on Nature Protection (Journal of Laws 2024, item 1478, as amended). Against this background, this article discusses the role of protection plans in the environmental protection system, their legal nature, and the manner in which the restrictions they impose should be incorporated into the development of general plans.