Rising extreme climate events threaten agricultural production and food security. Climate adaptation strategies that enhance soil health are key to strengthening the stability and resilience of agricultural systems. This study reveals how crop diversification influences soil health functions and yield stability, by combining soil, yield, and climate data from thirteen farmer-led experiments in southern Brazil, a region highly exposed to climate variability. Twelve soil health indicators were integrated into four latent functions via factor analysis (79% of total variance explained) and linked to crop diversification, soil texture, and crop yield through structural equation modeling (~76% of variance explained in crop yield). Crop diversification, particularly combined crop rotation and cover crop mixtures, were positively associated with soil water storage independently of soil texture (β = 0.41). Among the four soil health functions, biochemical regulation of soil processes was the most significantly linked to crop yield (R²m = 0.31). Yield instability was the strongest direct predictor of crop yield (β = −0.61). On average, systems integrating crop rotation with multispecies cover crops achieved yields 1.76 times higher than the state average, and with markedly lower instability (24%) than conventional or single-practice systems (1.08 times the average; 33–39% instability, respectively). These findings identify yield stability as a key component of climate adaptation, and support integrated crop diversification as a promising strategy for regenerative agriculture and climate policy in Brazil.
Abstract During voluntary and involuntary spill events, total dissolved gas (TDG) levels may increase, potentially causing gas bubble disease (GBD) in fish. At hydropower plants (HPPs), one approach to mitigate TDG supersaturation is the use of deflectors in spillway design. Ideally, deflector design integrates physical modeling with mathematical or computational approaches; however, such simulations typically require substantial computational resources. This study presents a cellular automata model to estimate TDG levels using hydrodynamic velocity fields simulated in OpenFOAM as input data. The main advantage of this approach is its low computational cost because it can be executed on a personal computer, making it suitable for preliminary studies. In contrast, the simulations conducted for the design of the Colíder HPP spillway deflector required high-performance computing resources, utilizing a cluster with 96 processors.
Objectives This double-blind randomized clinical trial aimed to evaluate the objective color match and clinical performance of a one-shade flowable composite (Vittra APS Unique Flow, FGM) compared with a multi-shade flowable composite (Opallis Flow, FGM) in the restoration of non-carious cervical lesions (NCCLs). Methods A total of 124 NCCLs were restored in 62 participants (n = 62 restorations per material) in a randomized, split-mouth, multicenter design. Objective color parameters (ΔEab and ΔE00) were assessed using a spectrophotometer by comparing the cervical third before and after restoration and the cervical and middle thirds after restoration at 7 days. Clinical performance was assessed using FDI criteria at baseline and after 6, 12, and 18 months. Data were analyzed using paired Student’s t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests (α = 0.05). Results No significant differences between the one-shade and multi-shade composites were detected for ΔEab or ΔE00 in either objective color comparison (p > 0.05). At 18 months, retention rates were 98.4% for the one-shade composite and 100% for the multi-shade composite, with no significant difference between materials. No significant differences were observed for the remaining functional, biological, or esthetic FDI criteria, except for color match (A3), for which the multi-shade composite showed a higher frequency of clinically excellent/very good scores (p = 0.008). All restorations evaluated for color match remained clinically acceptable. Conclusions The one-shade flowable composite showed favorable 18-month clinical performance, with no significant differences in objective color measurements compared with the multi-shade composite. However, visual color matching favored the multi-shade material at 18 months, although all restorations evaluated for color match remained clinically acceptable. Clinical significance One-shade flowable composites may simplify NCCL restorations by eliminating shade selection while maintaining favorable clinical performance and clinically acceptable color match.
The background methodology is a two-level mixed finite element approach for modeling flow in heterogeneous porous media. In the context of domain decomposition of the flow region Ω , composite divergence-compatible finite element pairs in H(div,Ω)×L2(Ω) are utilized for discretizing flux and pressure fields. The two-level characteristic of the method is expressed in terms of refined discretizations inside the subdomains versus coarser flux components interacting with interfaces of the subdomains, with respect to mesh size, polynomial degree, or both. The principle is to accurately resolve the small-scale features of local variables inside the subregions (pressure and fluxes with vanishing normal traces), whilst keeping the dimension of trace flux components as low as possible. In the current research, we demonstrate that approximations to local Steklov problems associated with the subdomains can be used to a better a priori adjustment of the boundary fluxes to the phenomena under analysis. These are eigenvalue problems enforcing the spectral constraint over the boundary of the subdomains. The approach follows the logic of spectral analysis. For each subdomain, a Steklov problem is solved by a mixed finite element method, and the first significant modes, which are accurately approximated, are used to select refined components to enrich a given initial coarse guess of the trace space (and the associated flux fields of trace type as well). The technique is designed for piecewise regular permeability tensors, and its effectiveness is demonstrated for cases of intricate maze-type porous structures.
The Fundão tailings dam marks its 10th year of disaster in 2025, underscoring the need for a critical assessment of the studies related to the impacts on aquatic ecosystems caused by the largest disaster in mining history. In this context, the present study aimed to review articles that, throughout the years, have investigated changes in the Doce River basin, as well as in coastal and marine areas affected by this collapse. We applied a systematic analysis of the published literature, identifying the main results in relation to the methodologies applied. Therefore, the studies were characterized according to their methodological approaches, spatiotemporal efforts, environmental compartments, and topics of study evaluated. In total, 182 articles published between 2016 and July 2025 were considered. Considerable heterogeneity was observed regarding spatial and temporal coverage, ranging from point‐in‐time assessments to large-scale analyses. Most of the reviewed studies revealed both acute and chronic effects on water and sediment quality across all monitored environments, which in turn resulted in significant impacts on biodiversity. Some studies investigated all environments in an integrated manner, which made possible a deeper understanding of the connections between these systems, showing the importance of this type of approach. Together, the studies revealed the challenge of learning from disasters, especially regarding environmental issues. Furthermore, they encouraged a critical perspective for long-term monitoring planning and the next steps needed to address aquatic biota recovery. This synthesis underscores the critical need for long-term, integrated monitoring to effectively guide the recovery of these interconnected ecosystems.
