Ecological transformation is the key to improve ecosystem health for resource-exhausted cities: A case study in China based on future development scenarios.

Numerous cities are currently grappling with the challenge of ecological transformation, especially those categorized as resource-exhausted cities. In these urban areas, land use change is a highly scrutinized issue, as different land use strategies can lead to varied outcomes, impacting the ecological environment in multiple dimensions. Assessing ecosystem health reflects the quality of the regional ecological environment and serves as a comprehensive indicator for evaluating the sustainability and stability of urban ecosystems.

Coupling heat wave and wildfire occurrence across multiple ecoregions within a Eurasia longitudinal gradient.

Understanding the relationship between heat wave occurrence and wildfire spread represents a key priority in global change studies due to the significant threats posed on natural ecosystems and society. Previous studies have not explored the spatial and temporal mechanism underlying the relationship between heat waves and wildfires occurrence, especially over large geographical regions. This study seeks to investigate such a relationship with a focus on 37 ecoregions within a Eurasia longitudinal gradient.

The unrelenting global expansion of the urban heat island over the last century.

The past century has seen dramatic increases in global temperatures and mounting urbanization. As a result of these events, the urban heat island (UHI) effect has received growing attention in scientific research worldwide. A global search was initially conducted using a scientific literature database to collect all available relevant publications to understand how the UHI has been expanding worldwide and affecting more cities across different latitudes and altitudes.

Pandemic urban development is leading us away from nature.

Recovery plans in Europe in the COVID-19 pandemic era have stimulated construction-led development, which has eclipsed nature-based agendas in terms of scale, size, and policy. One estimate is that only 0.3% of spending on urban infrastructure globally is directed towards various nature-based solutions and other ecosystem efforts supporting human well-being.

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) detects wildfire occurrence in the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe.

The impacts and threats posed by wildfires are dramatically increasing due to climate change. In recent years, the wildfire community has attempted to estimate wildfire occurrence with machine learning models. However, to fully exploit the potential of these models, it is of paramount importance to make their predictions interpretable and intelligible.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of and attitudes towards urban forests and green spaces: Exploring the instigators of change in Belgium.

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted our society, producing drastic changes in people's routines and daily mobility, and putting public spaces under a new light. This paper starts with the premise that the use of urban forests and green spaces - where and for who they were available and accessible - increased, when social restrictions were most stringent. It takes an explorative approach to examine changes in attitude towards urban forests and urban green spaces in terms of attraction (i.

Estimating ecological sustainability in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, China: Retrospective analysis and prospective trajectories.

In recent decades, rapid urbanization and intensified global climate change have resulted in a significant difference of environment and resources distribution on space, which would cause trouble for accurate assessment of regional ecological sustainable development, especially in the large urban agglomerations. The parameters used in previous assessment methods have normally ignored spatial heterogeneity, leading to deviations in the evaluation accuracies against the context above. By incorporating remote sensing technology, this study proposed an improved emergy ecological footprint (EEF) method and a novel ecological sustainability index to comprehensively analyze the variability of ecological security states (ESS) from 1994 to 2018 in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and to predict its sustainable growth potential based on a combined factorial decomposition and scenario analysis.

The wildland-urban interface map of Italy: A nationwide dataset for wildfire risk management.

A wildland-urban interface (WUI) raster map was created for the Italian peninsula with a resolution of 30 m per pixel. The map creation process consisted of three fundamental steps: (1) selection of buildings within the wildland-urban interface areas and subsequent classification of these into isolated, scattered, and clustered buildings; (2) creation of the tree canopy cover layer; (3) generation of WUI map by the intersection of two previous products. According to the WUI map, more than half of the total area of Italy is occupied by interface areas.

Is Experience the Best Teacher? Knowledge, Perceptions, and Awareness of Wildfire Risk.

Wildfires represent a natural phenomenon with detrimental effects on natural resources and human health. A better knowledge, perception, and awareness of wildfire risk may help communities at risk of exposure to prevent future events and safeguard their own lives. The aim of this study is to explore differences between individuals with and without previous wildfire experience, in terms of (1) subjective and advanced wildfire knowledge, (2) self-reported perceptions, (3) level of information, (4) self-protection measures, and (5) importance of community involvement.

Association between indoor-outdoor green features and psychological health during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: A cross-sectional nationwide study.

Exposure to public green spaces was shown to be associated with psychological health. Nonetheless, evidence is lacking on the role of different green features within and/or surrounding the home environment when public green spaces are inaccessible or not usable. The overarching goal of this study is to shed light on the associations between the presence of greenness within the home and in the surrounding environment and the detrimental effects of quarantine on psychological health during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Italy.

Bringing the vertical dimension into a planar multilevel autoregressive model: A city-level hedonic analysis of homebuyers' utilities and urban river attributes.

Throughout history, urban rivers have been regarded as valuable natural elements that satisfy various human needs and affect where people reside. With the increasing expansion of modern cities along the vertical dimension, how urban rivers affect housing values and homebuyers' purchasing decisions in a 3-D context has attracted a significant amount of attention from researchers, environmental practitioners, urban planners, and policymakers. In this paper, we attempt to estimate how homebuyers' utilities are affected by various river attributes and their interactions using the vibrant high-rise apartment housing market in Guangzhou (south China) as a case study.

Green spaces, quality of life, and citizen perception in European cities.

Urban green spaces generate a number of perceived benefits toward human health and well-being, including an overall improvement in the quality of life. To date, processes underlying these benefits are mostly investigated at city level, while very little research has been conducted at a larger scale, such as the European level. Evidence is lacking on the association between green spaces and citizens' perceived benefits based on variations among cities with different socio-economic conditions.

Is a View of Green Spaces from Home Associated with a Lower Risk of Anxiety and Depression?

Although a large body of research supports the theory that exposure to nature results in mental health benefits, research evidence on the effects of having a view of green space from home is still scarce. The aim of the present study is to assess the impact that access to a green space view from home has on anxiety and depression. This is a cross-sectional study extracting data from the "2018 Green Spaces, Daily Habits and Urban Health Survey" conducted in Carmona (Spain).

Are Community Gardening and Horticultural Interventions Beneficial for Psychosocial Well-Being? A Meta-Analysis.

Recent literature has revealed the positive effect of gardening on human health; however, empirical evidence on the effects of gardening-based programs on psychosocial well-being is scant. This meta-analysis aims to examine the scientific literature on the effect of community gardening or horticultural interventions on a variety of outcomes related to psychosocial well-being, such as social cohesion, networking, social support, and trust. From 383 bibliographic records retrieved (from 1975 to 2019), seven studies with a total of 22 effect sizes were selected on the basis of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.

Human Health-Environment Interaction Science: An emerging research paradigm.

During recent decades, the growing interactions between human well-being and the environment have led to the development of new research paradigms. A number of disciplines have recognized the importance of the human-environment relationship in all aspects of human life from an economic, ecological, social and political perspective. In conformity with this trend, we conducted a bibliometric review of scientific publications on the interactions between two main research domains: human-centered and environmental-centered sciences.

Quantifying the biophysical effects of forests on local air temperature using a novel three-layered land surface energy balance model.

The well-documented energy balance dynamics within forest ecosystems are poorly implemented in studies of the biophysical effects of forests. This results in limitations to the accurate quantification of forest cooling/warming on local air temperature. Taking into consideration the forest air space, this study proposes a three-layered (canopy, forest air space and soil [CAS]) land surface energy balance model to simulate air temperature within forest spaces (T) and subsequently to evaluate its biophysical effects on forest cooling/warming, i.

Nature-based solutions: Settling the issue of sustainable urbanization.

Rapid urbanization presents one of the most urgent challenges of our times. Cities must cope with poor air quality, heat island effects, increased flood risk and the frequency/severity of extreme events (e.g.

Co-creating urban green infrastructure connecting people and nature: A guiding framework and approach.

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) and nature-based solutions are increasingly recognized as instruments to address urban sustainability challenges, yet rely on a good understanding of complex social-ecological system (SES) to function adequately. Adaptive co-management (ACM), engaging a broad variety of stakeholders in collaborative learning, is an effective strategy to improve the resilience of a SES. However, ACM studies have been criticized for neglecting the urban context, while also offering little clarity on process objectives and outcomes.

Nature-based solutions for resilient landscapes and cities.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly applied to guide the design of resilient landscapes and cities to enable them to reach economic development goals with beneficial outcomes for the environment and society. The NBS concept is closely related to other concepts including sustainability, resilience, ecosystem services, coupled human and environment, and green (blue) infrastructure; however, NBS represent a more efficient and cost-effective approach to development than traditional approaches. The European Commission is actively engaged in investing in NBS as a driver in developing ecosystem services-based approaches throughout Europe and the world.

Cumulative effects of wildfires on forest dynamics in the eastern Cascade Mountains, USA.

Wildfires pose a unique challenge to conservation in fire-prone regions, yet few studies quantify the cumulative effects of wildfires on forest dynamics (i.e., changes in structural conditions) across landscape and regional scales.

Using local knowledge and sustainable transport to promote a greener city: The case of Bucharest, Romania.

Cities undergoing climate change and rapid urbanization are faced with significant transformational processes that affect the environment and society, challenging them to become more sustainable and resilient. The promotion of nature-based solutions represents an efficient approach to meet sustainability targets in cities and improve the quality of life of citizens. The association of large components of green infrastructure, such as urban parks, with physical activity can counteract the sedentary lifestyle endemic to cities and improve the overall health and well-being of individuals (Carrus et al.

A Streamlined Approach by a Combination of Bioindication and Geostatistical Methods for Assessing Air Contaminants and Their Effects on Human Health in Industrialized Areas: A Case Study in Southern Brazil.

Industrialization in developing countries associated with urban growth results in a number of economic benefits, especially in small or medium-sized cities, but leads to a number of environmental and public health consequences. This problem is further aggravated when adequate infrastructure is lacking to monitor the environmental impacts left by industries and refineries. In this study, a new protocol was designed combining biomonitoring and geostatistics to evaluate the possible effects of shale industry emissions on human health and wellbeing.

The health benefits of nature-based solutions to urbanization challenges for children and the elderly - A systematic review.

Urban green and blue spaces promote health by offering areas for physical activity, stress relief, and social interaction, which may be considered as cultural ecosystem services. They also provide a number of regulating ecosystem services that can be regarded as nature-based solutions to mitigate impacts from urbanization-induced challenges. Urban trees and other vegetation provide cooling through shade and evapotranspiration, which reduce the impact of the urban heat island on hot summer days.

Nature-based solutions to promote human resilience and wellbeing in cities during increasingly hot summers.

Air temperatures are increasing because of global climate change. A warming phenomenon strongly related to global climate change is the urban heat island. It has been shown that the hotter temperatures occurring in cities during the summer negatively affect human wellbeing, but little is known about the potential mechanisms underlying the relationships between hotter temperatures, cognitive psychological resources and wellbeing.