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Ocean knowledge is crucial for shaping policies that enable sustainable development, adaptation, and well-being at all levels, as everyone—either directly or indirectly—depends on the ocean, which today faces escalating threats from climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, pushing us beyond critical planetary boundaries. Ocean indicators are crucial for translating ocean science and data into practical metrics, guidance, and tools informing on the state and health of the ocean that can be directly applied by policymakers, practitioners, and the public. Despite their critical importance, ocean indicators trail behind those for continental areas, limiting effective monitoring and policy integration. Developing reliable, comparable, and regularly updated ocean indicators, backed by a unified international framework, is essential for delivering coherent, actionable insights that can guide global goals and protect the ocean's future. This paper establishes a scientific foundation for ocean indicators through international and multidisciplinary collaboration, presenting defined criteria and a set of pilot indicators for the ocean’s physical, biogeochemical, biodiversity, and ecosystem aspects. The proposed framework offers a solid foundation for generating indicators that not only track the ocean state but also provide outputs for application in informing policy and decision-making.
Sharks and rays are sentinels of the state of the ocean. Since the mid-twentieth century, overall abundance has declined by nearly 65
Streamflow prediction is essential for sustainable water resource management, supporting ecosystems, human livelihoods, and disaster resilience. However, characterizing rainfall-runoff predictability remains a critical challenge in hydrology, particularly under intensifying human interventions. This study aims to characterize rainfall-runoff predictability under the influence of human interventions by a novel integration of chaos theory and information entropy. The methodology employs phase space reconstruction and Largest Lyapunov Exponent (LLE) to quantify chaotic dynamics and predictability in rainfall and streamflow, alongside transfer entropy (TE) to evaluate directional information transfer between these variables. Key results reveal distinct spatial patterns: streamflow predictability deteriorates systematically from upstream to downstream, whereas rainfall predictability exhibits uniformly chaotic across the basin (LLE: 0.33 0.67). Information entropy analysis demonstrates stronger dynamical connectivity in upstream regions (TE: 0.45 0.74), highlighting tighter rainfall-runoff coupling. Conversely, downstream areas experience disrupted information transfer due to reservoir operations, with Reservoir Index (RI) values exceeding the critical threshold (e.g., Daheiting: RI = 0.653), leading to a 60 to 78
The *OH-mediated oxidative C(O)-C bond breaking is an effective approach for biomass valorization but is often hampered by inefficient/competitive adsorption of the substrate and active species. Herein, a nickel doping-enabled strain engineering strategy is presented to modulate the binding ability of interfacial sites to better reduce the kinetic barriers of the reaction process. The Ni-doped CdS photoanode with an optimal strain degree of 4.85 % could realize the photoelectrochemical conversion of bio-based acetophenone to benzoic acid in an ultrahigh yield of 97.6 %, outperforming the state-of-the-art catalytic systems. Mechanistic investigations corroborate that the doping of Ni species into CdS nanosheets renders the electron transfer toward Cd sites and induces lattice distortion, which can facilitate the formation of *OH (on Ni with compressible strain) and adsorption of acetophenone (on Cd with tensile strain), significantly alleviating intrinsic competitive adsorption in single sites. Moreover, the strain effect enables the moving down of d orbitals of Ni sites toward the Fermi level to promote the desorption of generated *OH for subsequent nucleophilic attack of acetophenone preactivated by Cd sites, contributing to the enhanced C(O)-C bond cleavage to afford benzoic acid. The developed photoanode was applicable to the oxidative C-C bond cleavage of various aromatic alcohols and carbonyls containing C(O)-C motifs in lignin derivatives to benzoic acids (85 %-99 % yields). The two-site lattice strain engineering offers a viable route to activate both substrate and catalytic species for enhanced biomass conversion and organic transformations. (c) 2025 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
In the past decade, communities have detected volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in their water distribution systems following wildfire impacts (e.g. system damage and depressurization). This study outlines a comprehensive experimental framework developed to quantify the effects of localized water system depressurization (e.g. loss of pressure at a house) as a mechanism for VOC contamination in water systems following wildfire events. The methodology employs a modular, instrumented vacuum test setup connected to a compartment with a consistent, well-characterized fuel load. The modular design facilitates targeted experimentation, enabling researchers to assess specific parameters influencing VOC contamination during local depressurization. The integration of sensors and video imagery enables researchers to quantify results within specific fire exposures and depressurization conditions. The integrated sensors and imagery allows for conditions—such as temperature, airflow rate, and material deformations—to be continuously monitored. Proposed sampling protocols provide methods for post-test sampling to quantify total system exposure to VOCs from the burning compartment and the response of the system components to that exposure, such as the levels of VOCs leached from pipes post-exposure and how system recovery techniques may influence concentrations of VOCs leached. Though these methods are presented in the context of VOC contamination from localized depressurization, the framework can be adapted to investigate other water system concerns following pressure loss, such as pathogens, turbidity, and heavy metals. The presented methodology provides a preliminary framework for assessing depressurization-induced contamination and the effectiveness of recovery strategies in fire-affected water systems.
