279 results match your criteria: "Research Institute for Humanity and Nature[Affiliation]"

The risk reduction effect of sediment production rate by understory coverage rate in granite area mountain forest.

Sci Rep

July 2021

Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan.

Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) is an important concept to the adaption of climate change for a sustainable life. In Japan, it is anticipated that damages caused by sediment production will be increased as the intensity and amount of rainfall are increased by climate change. Thus, we need to know the Eco-DRR effect of the forest for planning sustainable land use by evidence-based data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study clarifies the association between postpartum depression (PPD) and satisfaction with social support after childbirth through an anonymous survey of 427 postpartum mothers. Mothers' PPD was found to be significantly associated with satisfaction levels regarding formal-instrumental support (OR: 0.32, 95% CI: 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

COVID-19 related restrictions lowered particulate matter and trace gas concentrations across cities around the world, providing a natural opportunity to study effects of anthropogenic activities on emissions of air pollutants. In this paper, the impact of sudden suspension of human activities on air pollution was analyzed by studying the change in satellite retrieved NO concentrations and top-down NOx emission over the urban and rural areas around Delhi. NO was chosen for being the most indicative of emission intensity due to its short lifetime of the order of a few hours in the planetary boundary layer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most green orchids form mycorrhizal associations with rhizoctonia fungi, a polyphyletic group including Serendipitaceae, Ceratobasidiaceae, and Tulasnellaceae. Although accumulating evidence indicated that partial mycoheterotrophy occurs in such so-called rhizoctonia-associated orchids, it remains unclear how much nutrition rhizoctonia-associated orchids obtain via mycoheterotrophic relationships. We investigated the physiological ecology of green and albino individuals of a rhizoctonia-associated orchid Cypripedium debile, by using molecular barcoding of the mycobionts and stable isotope (C and  N) analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • There is currently no strong evidence suggesting that green plants exploit saprotrophic non-rhizoctonia fungi, although some orchids do.
  • The study focused on two orchid species, Cremastra aphylla (fully mycoheterotrophic) and its photosynthetic relative Cremastra appendiculata, to explore their nutritional sources and relationships with fungi.
  • Results showed that both orchids are linked to wood-decaying fungi and exhibit isotopic data indicating they obtain carbon from deadwood, suggesting a potential evolutionary step towards complete mycoheterotrophy in orchids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Deforestation, a significant threat to biodiversity, is accelerated by global demand for commodities. Although prior literature has linked deforestation to global supply chains, here we provide a fine-scale representation of spatial patterns of deforestation associated with international trade. Using remote sensing data and a multi-region input-output model, we quantify and map the spatiotemporal changes in global deforestation footprints over 15 years (2001-2015) at a 30-m resolution.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This commentary places the Coronavirus Disease pandemic in the context of research approaches such as 'Ecohealth,' 'One Health,' and 'Planetary Health.' It argues that systemic analysis of the underlying drivers of the pandemic is called for and that this is a time when transdisciplinarity is needed more than ever.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sustainable management of ecosystems can provide various socio-ecological benefits, including disaster risk reduction. Through their regulating services and by providing natural protection, ecosystems can reduce physical exposure to common natural hazards. Ecosystems can also minimize disaster risk by reducing social and economic vulnerability and enhancing livelihood resilience.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Desiccation stress causes mesic-adapted arthropods to lose their body water content. However, mesic-adapted Paederus beetles can survive over prolonged periods under dry field conditions, suggesting that these beetles adopt an array of water conservation mechanisms. We investigated the water balance mechanisms of field-collected Paederus adults over a 14-month sampling period.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Resource recovery toward sustainability through nutrient removal from landfill leachate.

J Environ Manage

June 2021

Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam; Faculty of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam; Laboratory of Computational Modeling of Drugs, South Ural State University, 76 Lenin prospekt, Chelyabinsk 454080, Russia.

This study investigated the feasibility of integrated ammonium stripping and/or coconut shell waste-based activated carbon (CSWAC) adsorption in treating leachate samples. To valorize unused biomass for water treatment application, the adsorbent originated from coconut shell waste. To enhance its performance for target pollutants, the adsorbent was pretreated with ozone and NaOH.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Today, developing and maintaining sustainable societies is becoming a notable social concern, and studies on altruism and prosociality toward future generations are increasing in importance. Although altruistic behaviors toward future generations have previously been observed in some experimental situations, it remains unknown whether prosocial preferences toward future others are based on equality or joint outcome orientations. In the present research, we exploratorily investigated preferences regarding resource distribution by manipulating the time points (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Peri-urban water, sanitation and hygiene in Lusaka, Zambia: photovoice empowering local assessment via ecological theory.

Glob Health Promot

September 2022

Laboratory of Human Ecology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Japan.

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) factors are responsible for 11.4% of deaths in Zambia, making WASH a key public health concern. Despite annual waterborne disease outbreaks in the nation's peri-urban (slum) settlements being linked to poor WASH, few studies have proactively analysed and conceptualised peri-urban WASH and its maintaining factors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An increase in nutrient levels due to eutrophication has considerable effects on lake ecosystems. Cladocerans are intermediate consumers in lake ecosystems; thus, they are influenced by both the bottom-up and top-down effects that occur as eutrophication progresses. The long-term community succession of cladocerans and the effects cladocerans experience through the various eutrophication stages have rarely been investigated from the perspective of the early-stage cladoceran community assemblage during lake formation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Kaolin deposits in the Seto-Tono district, central Japan, were formed by intense kaolinization of lacustrine arkose sediments deposited in small and shallow inland lakes in the late Miocene. Based on mineralogical and stable isotopic (Fe, C, N) studies of Motoyama kaolin deposit in the Seto area, we concluded that it was formed by microbial nitrification and acidification of lacustrine sediments underneath an inland lake. Small amounts of Fe-Ti oxides and Fe-hydroxide in the kaolin clay indicated that iron was oxidized and leached during the kaolinization.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The intergenerational sustainability dilemma (ISD) involves individuals deciding whether to sacrifice their own benefit for the sake of future sustainability.
  • A one-person ISD game (ISDG) is used to analyze individual choices between sustainable and unsustainable options, where the choices have significant costs or benefits for future generations.
  • The Future Ahead and Back (FAB) mechanism encourages individuals to consider the perspective of future generations, leading to more sustainable choices, especially when sustainability is at risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chimpanzee societies generally show male philopatry and female dispersal. However, demographic data on wild chimpanzee societies from long-term study sites have revealed that some females give birth in their natal group (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

During the dry period of August-October 2015, a C-band Doppler weather radar of the BMKG station in a fire-prone peatland area, Palangka Raya, detected echoes with reflectivity values between - 19 and + 34 dBZ at a height below 2-3 km and a slant range of 100 km. The MERRA-2/NASA atmospheric reanalysis database is used to obtain the vertical profiles of refractive index and equivalent potential temperature of the air. The temporal variation of the radar image is due to the tropical diurnal cycle of planetary boundary layer formation, which is consistent with the results of the database analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The biomass ratio of herbivores to primary producers reflects the structure of a community. Four primary factors have been proposed to affect this ratio, including production rate, defense traits and nutrient contents of producers, and predation by carnivores. However, identifying the joint effects of these factors across natural communities has been elusive, in part because of the lack of a framework for examining their effects simultaneously.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Integration of scientific knowledge into negotiations of the Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs) is crucial to effective implementation of those MEAs by ensuring uniformity in their terminology. Recent innovations in the field of biotechnology provoked a discussion over "Digital Sequence Information" (DSI) in fora of several MEAs. In the context of this discussion, the term DSI remains ambiguous and encompasses a wide range of concepts, including, at least, DNA/RNA base sequence data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Estimating possible bumblebee range shifts in response to climate and land cover changes.

Sci Rep

November 2020

Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba, Aramaki-aza, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8578, Japan.

Wild bee decline has been reported worldwide. Some bumblebee species (Bombus spp.) have declined in Europe and North America, and their ranges have shrunk due to climate and land cover changes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The evolution of full mycoheterotrophy in orchids likely occurs through intermediate stages (i.e., partial mycoheterotrophy or mixotrophy), in which adult plants obtain nutrition through both autotrophy and mycoheterotrophy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how the impacts of climate change are beginning to converge with other developing challenges with a likely peak with global population, requiring more integrated responses locally, regionally and globally.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

COVID-19 with Stigma: Theory and Evidence from Mobility Data.

Econ Disaster Clim Chang

September 2020

Urban Institute and Department of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka, 819-0395 Japan.

This study conducts both theoretical and empirical analyses of how non-legally-binding COVID-19 policies affect people's going-out behavior. The theoretical analysis assumes that under a declared state of emergency, the individual going out suffers psychological costs arising from both the risk of infection and the stigma of going out. Our hypothesis states that under a declared state of emergency people refrain from going out because it entails a strong psychological cost.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Increasing artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in developing countries has raised health concerns in mining communities. A preliminary health survey was conducted in Thabeikkyin Township, Mandalay Region, Myanmar, in February 2020 to assess the health conditions of an ASGM community. Respiratory function and other clinical assessments were evaluated in miners and non-miners, and participants' hair was analyzed for heavy metals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF