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Amorphous ice phases are key constituents of water's complex structural landscape. This study investigates the polyamorphic nature of water, focusing on the complexities within low-density amorphous ice (LDA), high-density amorphous ice, and the recently discovered medium-density amorphous ice (MDA). We use rotationally invariant, high-dimensional order parameters to capture a wide spectrum of local symmetries for the characterization of local oxygen environments. We train a neural network to classify these local environments and investigate the distinctiveness of MDA within the structural landscape of amorphous ice. Our results highlight the difficulty in accurately differentiating MDA from LDA due to structural similarities. Beyond water, our methodology can be applied to investigate the structural properties and phases of disordered materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the transition of public libraries to administrative corporations through the lens of stakeholder theory. It positions public libraries as pivotal institutions harboring extensive collections vital for fostering educational and cultural growth. Focusing on the Kaohsiung Public Library in Taiwan as a case study, this research highlights successful tactics adopted during its shift toward administrative corporatization. Such a transformation aligns with the strategic objectives of governments, stakeholders, and communities at large. By applying stakeholder theory, the study investigates the broader societal contributions of administratively corporatized public libraries, their role in advancing public library services amidst organizational changes, and their capacity to augment the distinctiveness of urban landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past decades have seen substantial efforts devoted to observing, assessing, and documenting the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. However, the discrepant criteria of non-urban references and ambiguous distinctions between urban and rural landscapes pose great challenges in measuring UHI magnitudes and spatial extents. This study goes beyond the conventional urban-rural dichotomy and introduces a new two-step approach based on the continuous transition of thermal environments along urban-rural gradients. The approach is applied to quantify Surface UHI (SUHI) intensities and footprints across 283 Chinese cities from 2005 to 2018 using multiple satellite-derived data sources. The results include: 1) The two-step approach avoids the limitations in subjective rural reference selections and provides reliable quantification of SUHI characteristics in various cities over time. 2) The SUHI footprints extracted by our approach are more reasonable than those obtained by two existing methods, with footprint ratios generally ranging within 0 − 6 times the urban area. 3) The two-step approach provides more concentrated estimates of SUHI intensity. Typically, ignoring heat sources in non-built-up areas can cause an overestimation of SUHI effect and misidentification of remote rural areas with high temperatures. Overall, the two-step approach enables more accurate estimates of SUHI effect, thereby facilitating policy-making for SUHI mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of machine analogies and allegories can help students liberate themselves from the tried and tested normative dogmas and doctrines propagated by architectural education. Daniel K Brown, Professor of Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and co‐guest‐editor of this AD, runs an extraordinary student design studio that has much success in conceptually intertwining machine aesthetics with history, culture and international literary narratives. Here he explains his modus operandi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, open-world environments in video games have become increasingly popular and immersive. Millions of players are able to explore virtual landscapes that resemble the real world, yet significant differences exist. This study investigates the geographical accuracy of 15 open-world video games. The virtual landscapes in these games were analyzed for horizontal distance compression, increased slopes, idealized climate, simplified vegetation and water features, underpopulation, and spatial segregation of ethnic minorities. The findings show significant differences between the games in terms of their geographical accuracy, with some exhibiting a more realistic representation of the natural and cultural environment compared to others. This study sheds light on the relationship between virtual landscapes in video games and our perception of the real world, offering new insights into this rapidly growing field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the unique self-organised spatial and social structure of the Kat O coastal settlements in Hong Kong. By problematising the identity politics between built forms and landscapes, this paper analyses the village's deep-rooted history within the land‒water dichotomies, which have been shaped by government survey methods and conservation-development policies. Specifically, it presents the peri-urban condition of Kat O's coastal settlements as a departure from the traditional urban‒rural continuum perspectives. Empirically, the field documentation of the self-built additions presents critical perspectives into the static understanding of land ownership, addition and adaptation strategies and the building materialities embedded within the government survey methods and conservation-development policies. Theoretically, this study provides an understanding of these coastal settlements as cultural landscapes that are dynamically related to the environment, as well as the changing sociocultural relationships among different communities on the basis of their unique conceptions of habitation and living. By examining past and current conservation policies, this article advocates for a water-centric vision for countryside conservation in Hong Kong that transcends the commonly adopted terrecentric perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploring the poetics of three photographers, this article attempts to capture the relationship between urban denizens and the ephemeral, tumultuous city. I understand poetics as arising from their spatial affection for, and sensemaking of, the city, which in turn engenders visual landscapes. I first outline poetics as the art of inhabiting, which generates affection for the city, drawing on the writings of Gaston Bachelard, Michel de Certeau, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Next, I examine how the poetics of photography is crafted in terms of creative sensemaking, where the affected body attunes to percepts and finds resonance with the city's vital forces, thereby enabling poetical landscapes to be captured by the lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscape fragmentation is statistically correlated with both increases and decreases in wildfire burned area (BA). These different directions-of-impact are not mechanistically understood. Here, road density, a land fragmentation proxy, is implemented in a CMIP6 coupled land-fire model, to represent fragmentation edge effects on fire-relevant environmental variables. Fragmentation caused modelled BA changes of over ±10% in 16% of [0.5°] grid-cells. On average, more fragmentation decreased net BA globally (−1.5%), as estimated empirically. However, in recently-deforested tropical areas, fragmentation drove observationally-consistent BA increases of over 20%. Globally, fragmentation-driven fire BA decreased with increasing population density, but was a hump-shaped function of it in forests. In some areas, fragmentation-driven decreases in BA occurred alongside higher-intensity fires, suggesting the decoupling of fire severity traits. This mechanistic model provides a starting point for quantifying policy-relevant fragmentation-fire impacts, whose results suggest future forest degradation may shift fragmentation from net global fire inhibitor to net fire driver. Widespread global occurrence of roads break up the landscape and may be a powerful driver of increasing fire activity and intensity in less populated and less frequently burned regions, such as tropical forests, while decreasing fire on average at global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies use a unique collective foraging system, the waggle dance, to communicate and process the location of resources. Here, we present a means to quantify the effect of recruitment on colony forager allocation across the landscape by simply observing the waggle dance on the dancefloor. We show first, through a theoretical model, that recruitment leaves a characteristic imprint on the distance distribution of foraging sites that a colony visits, which varies according to the proportion of trips driven by individual search. Next, we fit this model to the real-world empirical distance distribution of forage sites visited by 20 honeybee colonies in urban and rural landscapes across South East England, obtained via dance decoding. We show that there is considerable variation in the use of dancing information in colony foraging, particularly in agri-rural landscapes. In our dataset, reliance on dancing increases as arable land gives way to built-up areas, suggesting that dancing may have the greatest impact on colony foraging in the complex and heterogeneous landscapes of forage-rich urban areas. Our model provides a tool to assess the relevance of this extraordinary behaviour across modern anthropogenic landscape types. Honeybees communicate the location of flowers through the waggle dance. A method is presented to quantify how much a colony uses the waggle dance when foraging. Waggle dance use varies considerably and is used more in complex landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the implementation of the "Rural Revitalization Strategy" in China, it is common for enterprises to go to the countryside to develop business. However, enterprises often neglect the local environmental protection in rural areas while developing the economy to pursue profits. As the end of the national administrative system and the villagers' autonomous organization, the village committee needs to participate in monitoring enterprises' environmental behavior. With this in mind, this paper builds a game model of enterprises, grass-roots governments, farmers, and village committees and analyzes the impact of village committees, grass-roots governments, and farmers on enterprise environmental behavior. The conclusions are as follows: (i) it is difficult for the village committee to promote the positive environmental behavior of enterprises, which needs the supervision of the grass-roots government; (ii) Improving the coordination ability of village committees is conducive to reducing the burden of government supervision; (iii) Farmers' awareness of environmental protection can affect the environmental behavior of enterprises through the rights protection mechanism and reputation mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address the linear eigenvalue problem associated with reaction-diffusion models for patchy linear domains with any finite number of unique patches. Interface conditions between adjacent patches may be chosen independently to accurately reflect organism behavior. We show that there exists a real principal eigenvalue with a corresponding non-negative eigenfunction that is non-zero interior to the domain. We demonstrate that our model is a generalization of several existing two-patch models. We consider simple three- and four-patch landscapes representing fragmented reserves to illustrate how our model can be used to analyze population persistence, spatial distribution, and migration dynamics. Fragmented landscapes with increased heterogeneity capture migration dynamics not found in landscapes with only two patch types, such as favorable habitat patches that experience net immigration. Conditions for the existence and non-existence of zero-flux conditions interior to three-patch systems are shown, which provide insight to the location of sources and direction(s) of migration. • Principal eigenvalues are studied for patchy domain problems, and corresponding eigenfunctions are positive on the interior. • An implicit equation is used to obtain numerical solutions to eigenvalue problems on previously intractable patchy domains. • Conditions are derived for the existence of extrema for principal eigenfunctions. • Results are used to simulate different landscapes with fragmented reserves. • Predictions are made for migration across landscapes, including when favorable patches might receive net immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potential of the Unreal Engine as a tool for creating realistic 3D visualizations of large-scale areas (1000 km2 and more) using GIS datasets. Unlike small-scale visualizations, large-scale visualizations are rare and often not public, which presents significant problems since they present different challenges and require different approaches. This article presents several relevant scientific studies and projects that have successfully used game engines for similar purposes. This case study focuses on the computational techniques used in Unreal Engine for the 3D visualization of GIS data and the potential application of Unreal Engine in large-scale geo-visualizations. It explores the potential for using GIS data within a game engine, including plug-ins that provide additional functionality for working with GIS data, such as the Vitruvio plug-in to implement procedural modeling of buildings. The case study is applied to GIS datasets of the historical Vltava Valley covering an area of 1670 km2 to demonstrate the unique challenges of using Unreal Engine to create realistic visualizations of large-scale historical landscapes. The resulting visualizations are presented. The practical application of this research provides insights into the potential of the Unreal Engine as a tool for creating realistic 3D visualizations of large-scale historical areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore how different meanings attached to social and natural landscapes in Guatemala's Western Highlands inspire a sense of cosmopolitan imagination among those who are potentially less mobile and rooted in their own environment. I show how different manifestations of rooted cosmopolitanism in Chicabal and Santa Cruz la Laguna are mediated by residents' engagements with these landscapes and how diverging human-environment relations shape cosmopolitan worldviews as they intersect with and encounter tourism dynamics. The landscapes in which these processes take form are described as dynamic realms of encounter between both local and global and human and nonhuman actors. By looking into the potentialities of rooted cosmopolitanism mediated by ideas of global connectedness, I seek to extend the notion of cosmopolitanism beyond tourists alone and, instead, examine how such interactions bring worldmaking practices of Maya inhabitants and nonhuman actors into the equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roads can impact population abundance due to mortality from collisions with vehicles, habitat degradation and loss of connectivity. Some species, however, can be unaffected or even positively affected by roads and roadside environments. Despite this, there is scarce information on population‐level responses to roads. To fill this knowledge gap, we sampled medium and large mammals with camera traps near two paved roads with low and high traffic volumes in agricultural landscapes in the Brazilian Cerrado. We used Royle‐Nichols' occupancy models to investigate the effects of road proximity on the local abundance of 12 mammal species with varying susceptibility to roadkill. We found that road proximity affected only three species, all of which had high roadkill rates. While two of these species exhibited lower abundance near roads, the third showed the opposite response. For most species, irrespective of their roadkill rates, variations in local abundance were strongly correlated with habitat quality and connectivity. Species' life‐history traits, individual behaviour and the impact of roads and traffic on populations over time may explain these idiosyncratic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of the subject matter is conditioned by the high-efficiency use of reconfigurable manufacturing systems during construction work and the associated need to develop and implement technological machines with replaceable working bodies. The purpose of this study is to analyze the invariance of the equipment used by types of work in landscape and landscape construction. The study used theoretical methods of analysis and synthesis of information on the principles of the practical application of a universal machine with a wide range of mounted technological working bodies. The results obtained indicate the high relevance of the issue of the rapid changeability of mounted technological working bodies. Its effective solution lies in the creation of reconfigurable production machines based on a universal wheelbase with replaceable working bodies of variable layout by type of work, for which a new design of an inter-module basing and fastening device is proposed. The possibility of its practical application in the BobCat loader system is considered. It is established that, in general, the use of the BobTach mounting frame during various technological operations ensures an increase in the efficiency of this technological equipment. In addition, it significantly increases the performance of the entire model range of equipment and testifies to the versatility of the specified mounting frame. The practical significance of the results obtained is conditioned by the possibility of their application in the development and implementation of modern technological machines with rapidly replaceable working bodies in the agricultural sector and road construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DP-MVSNet, a learning-based multi-view stereo (MVS) network utilizing deformable convolutions, addresses the challenge of weak textures in MVS reconstruction. Surpassing the baseline MVSNet architecture, DP-MVSNet introduces deformable convolution modules for enhanced feature extraction and incorporates deformable 3D convolutions into the view weighting network to optimize cross-view informative feature aggregation. DP-MVSNet achieves advanced results on the DTU (0.338 vs. PatchMatchNet's 0.352) and Tanks & Temples (55.07 vs. PatchMatchNet's 53.15) datasets, generating denser point clouds with finer details and higher scene completeness. Ablation studies confirm the effectiveness of the deformable convolution-based multiscale feature extraction (DMFE) and deformable 3D convolution-based learning-based patch matching (DLP) modules, reducing overall error by 4.0 % compared to the baseline while maintaining competitive runtime. Demonstrating remarkable robustness in reconstructing realistic landscapes without ground truth calibration, DP-MVSNet represents a significant advancement in accurate and efficient 3D reconstruction of complex environments, particularly those with weakly textured regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heavy global demand for sand in various sectors of the economy subjects the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to correspondingly high amounts of sand mining—a process that started in the early 1990s contributing significantly to the Vietnamese economy. The impacts of intensive sand mining and mining-related industries damage the integrity of the river and local communities. Much of the literature focuses on the former, exposing people to the deleterious implications of sand mining on the physical environment. This study aims to fill the gap on the less explored latter through the lenses of place and landscape per human geography tradition, using qualitative methods of thirty-five interviews with locals, video recordings, and sound measurements to highlight the impacts of sand mining and mining-related industries. This study revealed that sand mining and its associated activities are responsible for people's perceptions of notable air, land, and noise pollution, as well as substantial harm to the urban environment. Over 80 percent of interviewed locals acknowledged the disruptions to their daily lives and a substantial loss of their sense of place. These findings shed light on narratives frequently overlooked by policymakers, emphasizing the urgency of addressing these issues for a sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that geographers should rededicate themselves to developing a positive theory of justice. In the past fifty years, research has made enormous strides in theorizing injustice, but mostly geographers rely on commonsense and unexamined notions of justice as "fairness." In this article, I trace this avoidance of justice theorizing to the way geographers originally engaged with Rawls's foundation work and argue that his A Theory of Justice should be reexamined to better understand one of the central concepts: the "basic structure," especially as it has been reformulated by feminist political theorists. I argue that the landscape is a key component of the basic structure and understanding it as such offers a first step in a positive theory of justice that is deeper than the commonsense justice-as-fairness. Having established landscape as basic structure, I then argue that a second step toward a full theory of justice would be to understand justice as the "right to justification" (as theorized by the Frankfurt School's Forst). The end result—combining landscape as basic structure with justice as the right to justification—is a theory that allows for assessing both "minimally" and "maximally" just geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystems and their services to society have exhibited dramatic degradation all over the world, and landscape planning based on ecosystem service (ES) science is a promising way to mitigate ES loss and improve human well-being. However, ecosystem health, which is crucial for intrinsic ecosystem values, may be overlooked in ES-based landscape planning. Therefore, we proposed a landscape functional zoning method by combining the ES and EH using the Jinan Southern Mountainous Area as a case study. Specifically, we first quantified and mapped six ESs (including regulating, cultural, and provisioning services) and three EH properties (ecosystem vigor, organization, and resilience). Then, we used coupling coordination analysis to determine the coordination of the ES and EH, and adopted bundle analysis to reveal ES-EH compositions. Finally, landscape functional zones were delineated by spatially overlapping the maps of ES-EH bundle types and coupling coordination degrees. The results show that the different ESs and EH properties exhibited uneven spatial distributions. In terms of the ES-EH coupling coordination degree, high values were located along the mountains and aggregated in the eastern part of the study area, and the Caishi town had the highest coupling coordination degree on the town scale. Furthermore, five ES-EH bundle types were identified, i.e., bundles of multifunctionality, subordinate multifunctionality, the highest crop production, ESs and EH properties of medium levels, and ESs and EH properties of low levels. Finally, nine landscape functional zones based on the ES-EH bundle and coupling coordination were identified, and the grids within one zone were homogeneous in terms of their ES-EH compositions and coupling coordination. This study can contribute to the integration of ES and EH into landscape planning and provides a zoning method as a spatial instrument to achieve synergic ES-EH management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses tourism landscapes in a remote region of Finland where tourism, nature conservation and industrial land-use coexist in tension. It illustrates deep problems with the language of sustainability but suggests that applying the dwelling perspective (Ingold) to analysing tourism landscapes is an illuminating route to appreciating the unsustainable features of modern life generally, like technical infrastructures and the unsustainable practices they support. Through an analysis of how modern roads have shaped landscapes and livelihoods, the paper makes a case for the strengths of the dwelling perspective as long as sufficient emphasis is put on the wider economic and political conditions within which local life can be reproduced and (ecological) sustainability negotiated. It shows that nature tourism involves different ways of being unsustainable but that it also contributes, as policy makers over decades have hoped, to sustaining local livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the notion of post-working landscape to describe how labour, largely no longer performed, continues to shape how local communities understand their landscape in two Alpine valleys in Italy's Trentino Province. Following the abandonment of mountain agriculture, the landscape here is undergoing a process of rewilding, as part of which human traces (terrace fields, mountain pastures, etc.) are being erased. Post-working landscapes thus evoke a sense of loss, but also an intimate and embodied tie with the land. I mobilise this framework to discuss why tourism – a crucial economic activity in this part of northern Italy, but strikingly absent from the case study I analyse – is locally perceived in ambiguous terms, and often openly resisted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Wildland fires that occur near communities, in the wildland–urban interface (WUI), can inflict significant damage to urban structures. Although computational models are vital in wildfires, they often focus solely on wildland landscapes. Aim: We conducted a computational study to investigate WUI fire spread, encompassing both urban and wildland landscapes. Methods: We developed a 1D landscape-scale semi-physical model by integrating a semi-physical urban fire spread model into an Eulerian level set model of wildfire. The model includes ignition and spread through radiation, direct flame contact and ember deposition. Key results: Through a parametric study, we compare the relative change of spread rate from various structural properties and landscape layouts represented by model parameters, highlighting the significant impact of fire-resistant structure materials over surface treatments. Layout configurations play a pivotal role in fire spread, with isolated islands of combustibles effective in reducing spread rate, aligning with existing mitigation strategies. Conclusion: Despite using a 1D domain and limitations on spatial and temporal variability, our model provides insights into underlying phenomena observed in WUI fires and their mitigation. It offers early-stage development of strategies for managing structure materials and landscape layouts. Implications: Our model and findings provide insights into WUI fire dynamics, paving the way for advanced mitigation strategies. This paper introduces a 1D semi-physical model for WUI fires, integrating urban and wildland fire dynamics. It accounts for fire spread via direct flame contact, radiation and embers. Despite limited spatial and temporal variability, the model demonstrates the relative impact of structure properties and landscape layout on WUI fire spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reservoir projects often have significant impacts on ecosystems. The resulting environmental problems hinder the ecologically sustainable development of project areas. Research focusing on landscape pattern vulnerability could shed light on ecological restoration in disturbed sites. However, few studies have specifically examined reservoir areas in this context. This study investigates the spatial distribution characteristics, change rules, spatial autocorrelation, and driving forces of landscape pattern vulnerability in the Qianping Reservoir area (3859.16 hm2) from 2000 to 2020 using land use data. The findings reveal several key points: (1) Over the study period, cultivated land, grassland, and forest land are the key landscape types, covering more than 90% of the area. Cultivated land decreased by 481.57 hm2 as other land use types expanded. (2) Vulnerability remained stable in the first decade but sharply increased from 2010 to 2020, showing a trend of spatial aggregation. Reservoir construction and simultaneous ecological restoration efforts led to shifts in vulnerability zones across the landscape. (3) Spatial distribution of landscape pattern vulnerability shows a positive correlation, which strengthened by 2020 compared to earlier years. (4) Man-made factors, particularly land use changes, significantly influence landscape pattern vulnerability, with their impact growing over time. These findings not only provide a scientific basis for ecological restoration and landscape reconstruction in the Qianping Reservoir area but also offer insights applicable to similar environments. Overall, this study enhances theoretical understanding of reservoir landscape pattern vulnerability and contributes valuable perspectives on ecological restoration strategies for reservoir areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Funaria hygrometrica, a cosmopolitan moss species known for its remarkable dispersal capacity, was selected as the focal organism to investigate the relationship between landscape features and genetic diversity. Our study encompassed samples collected from two distinct regions: the Spanish Sierra Nevada Mountains (SN), characterized by a diverse landscape with an altitudinal difference of nearly 3500 m within a short distance, and the Murcia Region (MU) in Southeast Spain, characterized by a uniform landscape akin to the lowlands of Sierra Nevada. Genotyping analysis targeted three genetic regions: the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (nrITS), the chloroplast rps3-rpl16 region, and the mitochondrial rpl5-rpl16 spacer. Through this analysis, we aimed to assess genetic variability and population structure across these environmentally contrasting regions. The Sierra Nevada populations exhibited significantly higher haplotype diversity (Hd = 0.78 in the highlands and 0.67 overall) and nucleotide diversity (π% = 0.51 for ITS1) compared to the Murcia populations (Hd = 0.35, π% = 0.14). Further investigation unveiled that samples from the lowlands of Sierra Nevada showed a closer genetic affinity to Murcia than to the highlands of Sierra Nevada. Furthermore, the genetic differentiation between highland and lowland populations was significant (ΦST = 0.55), with partial Mantel tests and ResistanceGA analysis revealing a strong correlation between ITS1-based genetic diversity and landscape features, including altitude and bioclimatic variables. Our study elucidated potential explanations for the observed genetic structuring within F. hygrometrica samples' populations. These included factors such as a high selfing rate within restricted habitats, a limited average dispersal distance of spores, hybrid depression affecting partially incompatible genetic lineages, and recent migration facilitated via human activities into formerly unoccupied areas of the dry zones of Southeast Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through artistic explorations of salt marshes in Scotland, England and the Netherlands, Linde Ex developed the concepts "Land-shapes" and "Sooth-scapes" as ways of observing and approaching these often considered underwhelming landscapes. "Land-shapes" and "Sooth-scapes" informed a series of artistic methods that engage with the challenges of these important but undervalued landscapes. The methods in their turn enriched the concepts. This process attempts to bring forth valuable and caring relations with actors and processes in these landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most children grow up in urbanised settings with a low possibility to experience biodiversity and nature. However, experiencing nature and other species increases children's wellbeing, health, learning abilities and their understanding of nature values. Play biotopes is one solution for supporting a co-existence between children and different species in nature-based play settings. Play biotopes are based on ecological theories, where structures in the morphology of landscapes at different scales and the content of flora and fauna can support children's interplay with a part of the landscape. However, traditional landscape management is not adapted to support the dynamic nature of play biotopes, especially when considering multiple scales. This makes it interesting to explore more dynamic management concepts arching over multiple scales. Accordingly, we here explore creative management as a scale-based framework for design by management to further develop the concept of play biotopes. Using examples from a landscape laboratory in southern Sweden, we propose that a creative management framework combining the scales of landscape, biotope, place, and object together with play connectivity can support the creation and management of multifunctional play biotopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many landscapes are on the edge literally, particularly here on the Atlantic Coast of Canada. But landscapes everywhere are on the edge metaphorically: on the edge of change. Tackling the collective challenges we face, and redefining a “good life” in these new circumstances, will likely transform the places and landscapes that we care about. Yet change is hard and it is felt unevenly across space and social strata. We often instinctively feel that the landscapes of the present should dominate the future—an idea I've been calling “climax thinking”—but in many cases, those current landscape settings solve old problems and cause new ones. Drawing on recent empirical Atlantic research about renewable energy and coastal adaptation, this lecture explores some of the cultural shifts required to reimagine our landscapes and to meet the challenges ahead, identifying key roles for geographers along the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) could revolutionize our ability to understand and address climate change. Studies to date have focused on specific AI applications to climate science, technologies, and policy. Yet despite the vast demonstrated potential for AI to change the way in which climate research is conducted, no study has presented a systematic and comprehensive understanding of the way in which AI is intersecting with climate research around the world. Using a novel merged corpus of scholarly literature which contains millions of unique scholarly documents in multiple languages, we review the community of knowledge at the intersection of climate change and AI to understand how AI methods are being applied to climate-related research and which countries are leading in this area. We find that Chinese research institutions lead the world in publishing and funding research at the intersection of climate and AI, followed by the United States. In mapping the specific AI tasks or methods being applied to specific climate research fields, we highlight gaps and identify opportunities to expand the use of AI in climate research. This paper can therefore greatly improve our understanding of both the current use and the potential use of AI for climate research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of Honey Badger Mellivora capensis (Schreber, 1776) is widely distributed but in-depth of ecological understanding this species is still lacking from Asian portion of its global range. The species is listed in Scheduled-I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 providing it with the highest level of protection as this is very rare. The current note presents, the first known camera-trap records of this species in Tarai East Forest Division (TEFD), Uttarakhand, India. During the survey exercise, a total 35 camera traps were randomly installed in different habitats (e.g. Natural Sal forest patch, Mixed forests, Sharda River-Canal) in Surai range of the division. As resulted, two images of Honey Badger were captured from the Sharda River bank-Canal habitat of Bagha-I beat, of Surai range. The camera trap study suggests that Honey Badger is rarely sighted in Tarai east sal forest. For protection and management of this species, further need to generate more information and in-depth understanding of their ecological and of population status in around forest habitat of the division. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denudation is the opposite process of mountain uplift and plays a major role in the Earth system. Despite the research to constrain its environmental control, uncertainties remain about which are the dominant physicochemical processes at play. Here, the 10Be-derived denudation rate, encompassing time windows from 102 to 105 yr, was modelled in over a thousand basins across the Earth. The results suggest that water and associated life have a positive effect across their whole range, which is regulated by topography due to processes such as the energy expended by rivers on their beds, the feedback between erosion and weathering, and the transport and production rate of soils. Consequently, bioclimatic influence is weak in flat landscapes, but it could vary denudation forty times in mountain settings. It was also observed that other things being equal, water availability steepens basins, so climate also has an indirect effect acting on geological timeframes. The results can be useful for the landscape's numerical modelling and highlight the importance of climate on denudation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research of this subject is fully responding to the strategic orientation of the country’s rural revitalization since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), guiding the construction of China’ s beautiful countryside in the new era with the thought of all-round tourism, and involving the participation of higher vocational education, to work closely with relevant government departments to identify the potential and problems of rural tourism development through the evaluation of rural tourism resources. On this basis, in line with Dezhou’s overall tourism development goals, based on the “5245” model, this paper puts forward the construction of beautiful countryside and its planning and implementation path, and carries out the construction of the whole tourism demonstration area, makes the whole tourism development model, forms the model that can be used for reference and can be copied, and sets up the new development standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse forest landscapes contribute to reaching various forest policy goals. Understanding how the diversity of forests in a landscape is distributed among forest properties and how it is related to biogeographical and ownership factors can be helpful for effective policy implementation. We created a forest characteristics-based typology of non-industrial private forest properties aiming to capture the between-property forest diversity in a municipality in southern Sweden, and studied how it was related to owner age and gender, landscape position, and storm damage. Using public data of forests and latent profile analysis, we detected five clusters of properties. Four clusters differed mainly by age structure and species composition. One of them was clearly marked by a high proportion of young mixed forest following severe storm damage >15 years prior. The fifth cluster was marked by a greater occurrence of nature conservation agreements and conservation value forests. Conifer-dominated properties were larger than broadleaf-dominated properties. Owner age only slightly differed between clusters, being higher for properties characterized by a prevalence of older coniferous or by noble broadleaved forests and nature conservation. Properties in the latter cluster were more often owned by women and located close to lakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possibilities for nature in contemporary times through a ground‐up investigation of nature practices in Chennai, India. It navigates dissonant strands of scholarship on the promise of urban regions as sites of exemplary social natures with an analytical framework that examines how autonomous nonhuman life in Chennai is variously enabled and inhibited. By studying a breadth of natures and nature practices within this urban site (instead of focusing on a particular species or habitat), the paper illuminates the socio‐material processes that undermine some natures even while supporting others, highlighting paradoxical responses to nonhuman agencies and resilience within the domain of ecological concern. The simultaneous analysis of Chennai's abundant and diminishing natures explains dissonances in urban natures scholarship, while offering fresh insights on more equitable approaches to nonhuman nature in human‐dominated landscapes. Specifically, it points to the value of reconfiguring concepts and practices of nature, both within and beyond conservation, in ways that are attentive to the plural forms of nonhuman flourishing and experiential vulnerability. Any meaningful prospect for more‐than‐human futures in urbanising worlds, the paper argues, rests not on biopolitical conservation that seeks to reproduce the past or build future ecologies of ‘legitimate’ natures, but on desisting from the displacement of, and re‐allowing room – conceptual, material and ethical – for already existing natures, whether scientifically valued or unintentional, whether imperilled or flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecologists have long investigated how demographic and movement parameters determine the spatial distribution and critical habitat size of a population. However, most models oversimplify movement behaviour, neglecting how landscape heterogeneity influences individual movement. We relax this assumption and introduce a reaction–advection–diffusion equation that describes population dynamics when individuals exhibit space-dependent movement bias toward preferred regions. Our model incorporates two types of these preferred regions: a high-quality habitat patch, termed 'habitat', which is included to model avoidance of degraded habitats like deforested regions; and a preferred location, such as a chemoattractant source or a watering hole, that we allow to be asymmetrically located with respect to habitat edges. In this scenario, the critical habitat size depends on both the relative position of the preferred location and the movement bias intensities. When preferred locations are near habitat edges, the critical habitat size can decrease when diffusion increases, a phenomenon called the drift paradox. Also, ecological traps arise when the habitat overcrowds due to excessive attractiveness or the preferred location is near a low-quality region. Our results highlight the importance of species-specific movement behaviour and habitat preference as drivers of population dynamics in fragmented landscapes and, therefore, in the design of protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the proposition put forward by James Fenton in his book Landscape Change in the Scottish Highlands that the landscape is natural. The scientific basis is lacking from his arguments. He relies on his own observations and those of travellers and others without any scientific material being presented to back up his argument. This review quotes from the scientific evidence by internationally respected palaeo-ecologists that demonstrate that there is factual evidence of tree and woodland removal by humans on many occasions over the millennia since human settlement. The book and this review should hopefully stimulate further scientific analysis and result in a more objective debate on whether the landscape of the highlands is natural or most likely the result of human activity or a combination of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has emerged as a pivotal tool for exploring cellular landscapes across diverse species and tissues. Precise annotation of cell types is essential for understanding these landscapes, relying heavily on empirical knowledge and curated cell marker databases. In this study, we introduce MarkerGeneBERT, a natural language processing (NLP) system designed to extract critical information from the literature regarding species, tissues, cell types, and cell marker genes in the context of single-cell sequencing studies. Leveraging MarkerGeneBERT, we systematically parsed full-text articles from 3702 single-cell sequencing-related studies, yielding a comprehensive collection of 7901 cell markers representing 1606 cell types across 425 human tissues/subtissues, and 8223 cell markers representing 1674 cell types across 482 mouse tissues/subtissues. Comparative analysis against manually curated databases demonstrated that our approach achieved 76% completeness and 75% accuracy, while also unveiling 89 cell types and 183 marker genes absent from existing databases. Furthermore, we successfully applied the compiled brain tissue marker gene list from MarkerGeneBERT to annotate scRNA-seq data, yielding results consistent with original studies. Conclusions: Our findings underscore the efficacy of NLP-based methods in expediting and augmenting the annotation and interpretation of scRNA-seq data, providing a systematic demonstration of the transformative potential of this approach. The 27323 manual reviewed sentences for training MarkerGeneBERT and the source code are hosted at https://github.com/chengpeng1116/MarkerGeneBERT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many conservation actions must be implemented with limited data. This is especially true when planning recovery efforts for extirpated populations, such as grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) within the Bitterroot Ecosystem (BE), where strategies for reestablishing a resident population are being evaluated. Here, we applied individual-based movement models developed for a nearby grizzly bear population to predict habitat use in and near the BE, under scenarios of natural recolonization, reintroduction, and a combination. All simulations predicted that habitat use by grizzly bears would be higher in the northern half of the study area. Under the natural recolonization scenario, use was concentrated in Montana, but became more uniform across the northern BE in Idaho over time. Use was more concentrated in east-central Idaho under the reintroduction scenario. Assuming that natural recolonization continues even if bears are reintroduced, use remained widespread across the northern half of the BE and surrounding areas. Predicted habitat maps for the natural recolonization scenario aligned well with outlier and GPS collar data available for grizzly bears in the study area, with Spearman rank correlations of ≥0.93 and mean class values of ≥9.1 (where class 10 was the highest relative predicted use; each class 1–10 represented 10% of the landscape). In total, 52.4% of outlier locations and 79% of GPS collar locations were in class 10 in our predicted habitat maps for natural recolonization. Simulated grizzly bears selected habitats over a much larger landscape than the BE itself under all scenarios, including multiple-use and private lands, similar to existing populations that have expanded beyond recovery zones. This highlights the importance of recognizing and planning for the role of private lands in recovery efforts, including understanding resources needed to prevent and respond to human-grizzly bear conflict and maintain public acceptance of grizzly bears over a large landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscapes are the integrated product of external forcings (e.g. tectonics and climate) and intrinsic characteristics (e.g. bedrock erodibility). In principle, hard bedrock with low erodibility can steepen rivers in a similar way to tectonic uplift. A key challenge in geomorphic analysis is thus separating the tectonic and lithological effects on landscapes. To address this, we focus on multiple rivers that are transiently incising through contrasting lithologies in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece, where tectonic history is broadly well constrained. We first exploit topographic metrics and river long profiles to demonstrate that landscapes are responding to both tectonics and lithology. In particular, the long profiles are divided into knickpoint‐bounded segments, and at this scale, channel steepness is shown to be more sensitive to lithology than the entire catchment, possibly due to relatively uniform erosion rate at the segment scale. We then use segment‐scale steepness variations between different lithologies to constrain their relative erodibilities (Klime:Kcong.:Ksand‐silt:Kp‐con sed. = 1:2:3:4), which are further converted into actual lithology‐dependent erodibilities by modelling a well‐constrained, ca. 700 ka knickpoint in the Vouraikos catchment. The effectiveness of lithology‐dependent erodibilities is supported by the observation that if lithology‐dependent erodibilities are used to calibrate studied river long profiles in χ distance, we obtain long profile concavities that fall within the theoretical range. Finally, we use lithology‐calibrated metrics to provide new geomorphic constraints on the timing and magnitude of tectonic perturbations in these catchments. These geomorphic results are interpreted in conjunction with previous onshore and offshore studies to shed new light on fault growth and linkage history in the Gulf of Corinth. Our study therefore provides a topographic analysis‐based approach to quantify lithological effects on transient catchments, with important implications for tectonic interpretations of topographic metrics in lithologically heterogenous landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A geographical perspective can help to overcome the current lack of structure in approaching the levels of aggregation of biocultural phenomena and how they relate to spatial scales. For this, a conceptual framework to address the scalability of biocultural phenomena is needed. Since the emergence of the concept of biocultural diversity, important questions have been asked regarding patterns of spatial distribution of biodiversity, culture, and language, with a new interdisciplinary academic field emerging in the late twentieth century. In the past decade, the landscape has become the appropriate scale for assessing nature-culture relations. However, there has been little discussion about the integration of biocultural heritage at different levels, and which basic elements should be incorporated at higher levels such as the landscape and region, and how this relates to geographical scales. Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity about what can be called a biocultural landscape. Here we propose an initial framework to describe the different levels of integration of biocultural heritage. It relates biocultural phenomena with geographical space at six levels: resources, entities, places, territories, landscapes, and regions. These elements are all the result of culture-nature interdependencies and represent different levels of expression of biocultural phenomena. It represents their relationships to socio-spatial organization, biological, and linguistic dimensions, and proposes a set of geographical scales as relevant for approaching each level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature and landscapes are increasingly recognized as integral to human health, well-being, and sense of belonging. As such, nature and landscapes offer potential benefits for nature-based integration (NBI) efforts aimed at fostering a sense of inclusion among new residents. Although such linkages are recognized, NBI research remains limited with fruitful potential for place-based and immigrant-oriented community organizations or governments interested in fostering a sense of inclusion, belonging, identity, and even environmental responsibility among new residents. In this article, we demonstrate the application of a collaborative NBI study among Oregon's growing Slavic immigrant community. This study, through a community geography and community-based participatory research approach, sought to gauge community interactions with and sense of place to Oregon's natural environment, notably mountain landscapes. Although with limitations, this study demonstrates the potential of NBI to enrich nature-based programs, immigrant advocacy organizations, government engagement efforts, and landscape planning with opportunities to better understand and tools to potentially engage diverse populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cartographic landscape analysis of Lake Doshne employs geographic landscape methods, GIS cartographic modeling, and geo-ecological analysis. This study includes hydrochemical analysis of the lake's water mass, focusing on saline blocks, tropho-saprobiological indicators, and specific toxic action indicators. Three geological sections of anthropogenic and pre-Quaternary complexes, along with a geological–lithological transverse profile of the lake basin, were developed. Additionally, a geographical landscape model of the lake's natural aquatic complex was presented, distinguishing littoral–sublittoral and profundal aquatic sub-tracts and five types of aquafacies with landscape metric assessments. This approach enables a comprehensive analysis and the creation of cartographic models that can serve as a basis for lake cadastre and optimization of the ecological and landscape conditions in local territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clarifying the issues related to the supply, demand, and flow of ecosystem services is crucial for regional landscape management. This study employs the equivalence factor method and demand index quantification to analyze the supply and demand of ecosystem services in the Zheng-Bian-Luo region in 2000 and 2020. We used hotspot analysis tools and the minimum cumulative resistance model to establish the ecological corridors, identifying the spatial flow paths of ecosystem services in our site. By calculating the flow volume of the key corridor value through the breakpoint formula and field strength theory and combining this with the ratio of the regulating service value, we computed the ecological compensation amount, thereby realizing the value of the ecosystem service. The results indicate that the area of balance between ecosystem service supply and demand gradually decreased and the deficit area in the Zheng-Bian-Luo region increased 43.62% from 2000 to 2020 along with rapid urbanization. The total value flow of ecosystem services by the important ecological corridors in 2000 and 2020 was USD 242.40 million and USD 365.92 million, respectively. In 2020, it was predicted that Luanchuan County would receive ecological compensation totals of USD 237.76 million from each ecological demand area, and mainly from Jinshui District. Our findings support enhancing the quality of the ecological environment and optimizing the landscape management of the Yellow River's Henan section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composed of diptych photographs stitched together in a poetic travelogue through nuclear-infused (Indigenous) lands, annie ross's Pots and Other Living Beings reenvisions social and ecological relations, value structures, and knowledge frameworks in its encounter with violated landscapes of the American Southwest. In its embrace of the blighted remainders of nuclear testing, industry, and consumerism, Pots and Other Living Beings is not a typical "environmental" text. Like ross's weaving and visual installations, this work is alive to relations of reciprocity and kinship with more-than-human worlds in what one could best describe as a spiritual engagement with the abandoned, unremarked leavings of nuclearization, industrial capitalism, and waste cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abrasion acts to smooth glacial terrains and leaves behind linear scratch-like features (striations) on bedrock landscapes. Striations are often used as measures of glacier flow directions, but their morphology can also provide information about the subglacial stress conditions that produced the features. While striations are often abundant in the field, the processes that create them can be opaque and hard to examine in situ because they occur under thick layers of flowing ice. To alleviate that difficulty and provide information for interpretation of the populations of striations that are observed in the field, we conducted a set of laboratory experiments in which a ring of temperate debris-laden ice was slid atop a planar marble bed under various contact force conditions that led to the creation of hundreds of striations. During the experiment, numerous glaciological properties were continuously measured, including the resistive drag. Following the completion of the experiments, the marble beds were extracted, and the striations were measured for length and categorized by morphological type, and a subset was measured using a highresolution white-light profilometer. These experiments showed that, similar to field observations, type 2 striations were initially the most abundant; however, we found that type 3 striations became the most abundant at large displacements. We found good correlation between the abundance of striations as a function of displacement and measured drag as a function of displacement. When taken together, these results suggest that, in natural settings, ice flow around small roughness elements in glacier beds can “reset” the basal debris field, causing striations to become more abundant in their wake. As roughness is linked to quarrying, abrasion rates may increase in areas of increased quarrying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how to research complex infrastructure networks using critical cartography. Maps, infographics, and datascapes are employed to study how contemporary flows of goods, people, and money are redefining a specific location. This topic has been widely investigated in science and technology studies; however, it has seldom been addressed by applying visual methods. Cartography, in particular, is generally regarded as a subject of analysis, rather than an investigative tool. Conversely, this contribution discusses the theory and explores critical cartography as a speculative and artistic practice for problematizing the spatialization of policies, financial interests, and trade flows. It adds another level of understanding to the field of inquiry, and can help in developing counternarratives. This method is adopted to investigate the Port of Trieste, Italy, where radical transformations have been driven by international investment and infrastructural programs. Critical cartography can help to unravel this tangle by unveiling the cross-scalar dimension of contemporary global trade and the complex landscape of infrastructural networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the 2022 Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework both signal the urgent need to upscale restoration efforts worldwide. Facilitative policy and governance frameworks are critical to these efforts. However, the legal barriers to restoration have been historically understudied. This paper assesses the legal issues affecting the implementation of ecological restoration, synthesized across four broad themes: recognizing the role of law in supporting ecological restoration, the incompatibility of some existing laws with the purposes of ecological restoration, the need to clarify terminology, and the legal challenges for restoration at the landscape scale. It concludes by summarizing the key considerations from the literature to inform effective legal frameworks for ecological restoration and identifying areas for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life changes that impelled Saint-John Perse and Lorand Gaspar into the desert are well known: Perse's 1920 expedition into the Gobi Desert during his diplomatic assignment in China, and Gaspar's residence in Jerusalem near the Judaean Desert, 1954 to 1970. More interesting is the poetic stratification that barren ecologies instill in Anabase (1924) and Sol absolu (1972). Perse's adventurer prince encounters several climates during his inland journey yet binds particularly with the desert, which infiltrates his discourse and the texture of his self-image. Human geography becomes a means to master the habitat as a stepping-stone for personal assertion. Climate on the frontier inspires his encomiastic language of jubilation for quest and companions. Gaspar's topography suggests a less rhetorical contact with environment, yet his desert's materiality penetrates its inhabitants, nomads like the Beduin or the poet, who treks this desert via language. Gaspar's poetics of barren environment is not as epic as Anabase (1924), yet the jubilation that tectonic challenge incites in his idiom is founded on interpenetration of psyche and ecosystem rather than the poetics of dominion deployed in Anabase. Omnipresent conceits of "living matter" and "material psyche" are critical to the understanding of these two desert poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]