The Sudd is the largest tropical wetland in the world, and its ecosystem services are fundamental to the livelihoods, well-being, and cultural systems of communities living within the region. Although human adaptation to seasonal flooding has long been a defining feature of socio-ecological interactions in the Sudd, changing flood dynamics increasingly challenge existing adaptation pathways. This study investigates the changing dynamics of human adaptation to flood risk among flood-affected populations through an empirical assessment of community experiences and responses. Using a mixed-method approach combining focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, and field observations, we conducted a thematic analysis of locally grounded evidence. The results reveal that unprecedented flooding between 2019 and 2022 produced severe disruptions to livelihoods, settlements, mobility patterns, and social systems across the Sudd. Communities reported strong perceptions of a shift in flood regimes, characterized by increased flood magnitude, expanded inundation extent, and prolonged periods of water persistence. These changes have altered established patterns of mobility, with temporary displacement increasingly evolving into longer-term migration and, in some cases, permanent relocation among pastoralist and sedentary populations. Migration occurs across multiple spatial scales, including within states, between states, and across national boundaries, resulting in the abandonment of some flood-prone settlements. The study also develops a spatio-temporal socio-hydrological framework that conceptualizes flood adaptation as a dynamic process operating across interconnected household, community, regional, and national scales over time. The framework advances understanding of how hydrological change, migration, governance, and social transformation shape adaptation pathways in the Sudd and other climate-sensitive wetland systems. These findings demonstrate that strengthening flood resilience requires adaptation strategies that integrate hydrological change with local knowledge, mobility, and social institutions. By providing rare empirical evidence from one of the world’s least-studied and most inaccessible wetland systems, this study advances understanding of human adaptation to flood risk and offers context-specific insights for resilience planning in the Sudd and other climate-vulnerable wetlands.
Extreme heat is increasing in frequency and intensity, with disproportionate risks for clinically and socially vulnerable groups. This paper estimates the association between acute heat and mortality in Aotearoa, New Zealand. To estimate same-day heat-mortality associations, we link weather-station observation data to national administrative mortality records for all deceased individuals. Both daily-summary wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) indices, constructed using daily air-temperature inputs together with same-day humidity, radiation, and wind speed measures, and air-temperature summaries were used to estimate same-day associations using time-stratified case-crossover models with month × weekday strata for four analytical samples: all-cause and non-injury mortality, each over the full-year and the warm-season. We additionally examine discrete exposure bins, distributed lag non-linear curves (lags 0–7), and heterogeneity by location, sex, and age. Across the continuous same-day models, mean-based exposure measures produced the largest associations within each metric family. In the all-cause full-year sample, the odds of mortality increased by 0.44
Climate change adaptation in Nepal’s agrarian highlands is realised primarily through everyday adaptation practices. Drawing on mixed-methods research in Bajhang District, Nepal, this paper integrates four decades of hydroclimatic trend analysis with qualitative data collected through fieldwork to examine how shifting monsoon timing, warming winters and declining snowfall disrupt crop calendars and destabilise subsistence farming. We show that hydroclimatic change is experienced less through changes in annual rainfall than through the erosion of seasonal reliability, compressing agricultural time and producing agroecological misalignment between inherited agrarian practices and emerging climatic conditions. Under these conditions, adaptation unfolds through temporally constrained responses shaped by institutional thinness and broader socioecological change. Fragmented and uneven irrigation access, limited mechanisation and the absence of locally actionable climate information constrain anticipatory planning. At the same time, male-selective migration, gendered labour norms and caste-based exclusions reconfigure agricultural labour and unevenly distribute adaptive burdens. Consequently, farmers respond through seasonal fallowing, crop switching, informal labour exchange, residue burning and seasonal migration. The paper demonstrates how lived experiences of agroecological misalignment, labour reordering and institutional thinness together shape everyday adaptation practices.
Farmland abandonment has significantly affected biodiversity and ecosystem services in depopulating rural regions, necessitating locally adapted management strategies. However, the effects of alternative land management practices that precede complete abandonment remain underexplored. This study, therefore, evaluated the impacts of two such options—periodic mowing and afforestation—on the paddy-dominated landscapes of Fukui Prefecture, Japan. We developed three spatially explicit scenarios for 2050: (i) the reference (REF) scenario, in which farmland is either cultivated or abandoned; (ii) the extensive management (EXT) scenario, in which 10
Somalia’s food insecurity has shifted from episodic famine events separated by long recovery periods to a persistent and increasingly compressed cycle of crisis. This commentary examines the changing pattern of famine and severe food insecurity from the 1974–1975 Dabadheer drought-famine through the 1991–1992 civil-war famine, the 2011–2012 famine, the 2016–2017 drought, the prolonged 2020–2024 drought crisis, and renewed famine risk in 2025–2026. The paper argues that Somalia’s crisis pattern should not be interpreted as drought recurrence alone, nor simply as an artefact of improved monitoring. Rather, recurrent food insecurity reflects the interaction of climate change, conflict, displacement, market disruption, marginalization, weak recovery systems, contested governance, and shrinking humanitarian financing. Although modern early-warning systems have improved crisis detection, repeated excess mortality estimates, large-scale displacement, prolonged IPC Phase 3 or worse classifications, and recurring famine warnings suggest that households and institutions have progressively less time to recover before the next shock. The policy implication is clear: famine prevention in Somalia must move beyond reactive relief toward anticipatory action, livelihood protection, climate adaptation, inclusive social protection, conflict prevention, institutional preparedness, humanitarian access, and sustained financing between crises.
Himalayan glaciers are important for freshwater supply, hydropower and ecosystem services and require continuous monitoring due to climate warming. Garhwal Himalayan glaciers are experiencing mass loss, but long-term studies on mass balance remain limited for Bhilangana Valley glaciers. This valley is an important sub-basin of the Bhagirathi River that contributes meltwater to the Tehri Reservoir and supports downstream agriculture and populations. Therefore, we assess elevation changes (Δh/Δt), mass balance, frontal retreat and area changes for six Bhilangana Valley glaciers (Khatling, Phating, Dudhganga, Ratangariyan, Jogin and an unnamed glacier) using satellite imagery and digital elevation models (DEMs) from 1973 to 2025. Analyses revealed glacier separation, accelerated retreat, thinning and mass loss, with rates expanding up-glacier toward accumulation zones. The unnamed and Khatling glaciers exhibited approximately four to fivefold increases in mass loss during 2014–2025 compared with 1973–2000, while Dudhganga and Jogin could not be evaluated for 1973–2000 due to DEM voids. Khatling retreated 5.33 ± 0.04 km, separating from Phating around 2000. The unnamed glacier receded 0.76 ± 0.04 km, forming a potentially hazardous proglacial lake ( 0.36 km2 by 2024). This study provides the first comprehensive long-term geodetic mass balance assessment that reveals heterogeneous glacier responses to warming, highlighting the need for hazard monitoring and sustainable water management.
Understanding how tropical forests respond to changing climatic regimes is critical for sustaining ecological resilience. This study evaluated temporal changes in tree regeneration across eight Preservation Plots in Central India using size class distribution (SCD) slopes between 1991 and 2021. Changes in slope (ΔSCD) were used to assess regeneration trends across 101 tree species and to examine whether these trends differed among functional trait groups. Trait-based comparisons showed that light-demanding and early-successional species generally exhibited positive or less negative ΔSCD values, whereas shade-tolerant and some late-successional species maintained relatively more negative values. However, regression and mixed-effects models explained only a small proportion of the variation in ΔSCD, indicating that functional traits alone provide limited predictive power. Climatic analyses showed significant decadal variation in temperature, rainfall, and relative humidity across the preservation plots, with temporal effects stronger than site effects. These climatic results provide important environmental context for interpreting regeneration patterns, although direct trait–climate effects require cautious interpretation. The findings suggest that combining SCD-based monitoring with functional trait information can help identify species groups requiring closer monitoring and site-specific management attention under changing climatic conditions.
Olive cultivation systems across the Mediterranean region are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, threatening the long-term economic and environmental sustainability of these agroecosystems. This study evaluates alternative soil management adaptation measures in traditional olive orchards, with the dual objective of mitigating climate-related impacts—particularly by reducing runoff—while maintaining olive oil production. To this end, we developed AdaptaOlive-WABOL, a new olive crop simulation model designed to estimate water balance components and olive oil yield under diverse climatic conditions. The model was applied to assess contrasting soil management strategies using an ensemble of climate projections from the ISIMIP repository. Results show that the effectiveness of soil management practices is highly dependent on water availability, underscoring the importance of strategy selection in water-limited environments. Under relatively wet conditions (around 600 mm annually), the use of a cover crop, such as Bromus rubens, reduced runoff by approximately 28
Climate warming exacerbates extreme compound droughts, making reliable fine-resolution projections essential for regional adaptation. This study provides a fine-scale, multivariable assessment of future compound drought evolution in the Central China Triangle under CMIP6 scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5). In a novel application, the recently proposed state-space gradient drought index (SSGDI) is applied to future projections. By integrating precipitation, soil moisture, and runoff via trend-preserving quantile delta mapping (QDM), this framework captures the full drought propagation chain. Based on an 11-model CMIP6 ensemble, projections show robust inter-model agreement on drying trends despite individual model spread. By 2081–2100, regional mean precipitation increases by 10.0–12.8
Vegetation greening regulates evapotranspiration and atmospheric moisture transport, thereby modulating regional drought conditions. However, its impacts on the drought development and recovery phases remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we quantified the effects of forest and grassland greening on the drought lifecycle based on the daily-scale Standardized Water Availability Index (SWAI) by controlled scenario simulations. The results showed that (1) the leaf area index (LAI) increased by 0.14/10 year for forests and 0.02/10 year for grasslands, corresponding to increases in actual evapotranspiration of 3.91 mm/year and 1.42 mm/year, respectively. (2) Vegetation greening generally intensified drought characteristics throughout the drought lifecycle. The drought duration, severity, intensity, and peak increased by 0.27 days (0.72
Extractive industries are powerful drivers of regional environmental change, actively remaking waterscapes and reconfiguring human-water relations. However, prevailing analyses often homogenise “extraction”, overlooking how different regimes create different socio-ecological trajectories by organising land, labour, and water under different institutions and infrastructures. This study fills this knowledge gap via a hydrosocial comparison of three types of extraction regimes—coal mining, stone quarrying, and dam construction—in southwestern West Bengal, India. It asks how different extractive regimes produce distinct hydrosocial territories and why these differences matter for displacement, dependency, and water justice. Bringing together qualitative evidence from focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, field notes, documentary materials, and descriptive field records, this paper shows that in resource frontiers, water governance is the main strategy through which corporations and the state territorialise space, generating divergent geographies of displacement and dependency. The study advances three key contributions. Firstly, compensatory water provision can intensify conflict when access is selective, conditional and mediated through local power relations. Secondly, the research theorises a fundamental spatial dichotomy. State-aligned, formal extraction (coal, dams) systematically displaces communities, pushing outmigration, while informal quarrying precariously incorporates labour, fostering dependency and eroding resilience. Thirdly, the analysis reinterprets compensatory water infrastructure, from tankers to dam releases, not as neutral technical fixes but as active instruments of corporate sovereignty, directly governing bodies, health, and social relations. Thereby, the article argues that just transition must begin with hydrosocial repair: restoring water commons, rebuilding livelihood security, and reducing communities’ dependence on extractive regimes.
Cropland net primary productivity (NPP) is a key indicator for evaluating food-production capacity and black-soil ecosystem stability. Northeast China is the core black-soil region and a major commodity-grain base of China, but the long-term evolution of cropland NPP and its locally heterogeneous driving mechanisms remain insufficiently clarified under coupled climatic variability and human disturbance. Using multi-source remote-sensing and ancillary datasets, we quantified cropland NPP dynamics from 2001 to 2021 within a unified 10 km × 10 km analysis grid. Theil-Sen slope estimation, Mann-Kendall tests, and the Hurst exponent were used to identify trend magnitude, significance, and persistence, while a geographically weighted random forest (GWRF) model was applied to examine nonlinear and spatially non-stationary driver effects. Cropland NPP increased overall but fluctuated between years, ranging from 303.94 to 400.91 g C m−2 a−1. Positive trends accounted for 87.73
Forest ecosystems play key roles in carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystems. Clarifying the variations and dominant drivers of forest net primary productivity (NPP) is essential for research on global carbon cycle. In this research, we employed the partial least squares regression method to quantify changes in forest NPP and the influence of vegetation phenology, seasonal snow cover, and climatic factors on forest NPP in Changbai Mountains. We found the forest NPP mainly ranged from 0.45 to 0.85 kgC•m−2•year−1 over the mountain regions for 2001–2022. The spatial heterogeneity of forest NPP is attributed to hydrothermal conditions caused by differences in latitude, elevation, and topography. We found that temperature in the growing season mainly showed negative effect, whereas precipitation in the growing season (PGS) mainly played positive influence on forest NPP. Snow cover duration primarily played a positive influence, while snow cover end date (SCED) primarily played a negative influence on forest NPP. An earlier start of the growing season (SOS) and increased annual maximum enhanced vegetation index (EVImax) would cause an enhanced forest NPP. In contrast, a longer growing season reduces NPP in 65.2
Throughout the Southern Rockies, widespread high-severity fires and climate change have precipitated shifts in local vegetation, affecting reforestation, species migration, ecosystem adaptation, and carbon fluxes. When managing burn scar recovery, some ecologists and silviculturists advocate for the use of forest assisted migration (FAM) (i.e., the intentional relocation of individuals or genetic material from native seed sources to areas either within or beyond their existing ranges). To understand perceptions and barriers to FAM, we interviewed scientists, land managers, and community organizers working on post-fire landscapes after two of Colorado’s largest fires in history, both occurring in 2020. We found divergent perceptions: some highlighted FAM as the only feasible way to maintain the long-term health of forests, while others contended that, without scientific verification, FAM may further compromise the regenerative capacity of these areas. Using a framework that explores institutional innovation in environmental governance, we analyzed our findings to identify the variables that affect the adoption or rejection of innovative management strategies. Variables include the lack of leadership guidance on implementing FAM, the absence of institutionalized policies that address its use as a reforestation strategy, and seed zone guidelines that restrict planting to localized species and elevation gradients. We emphasize the need for more research on the political and institutional considerations of positioning FAM as both a reforestation tool and an adaptation option, and within our discussion, we connect it to broader climate change adaptation literature.
Water conservation (WC) within mountain-oasis-desert ecosystems is critical for sustaining water security and mitigating desertification in arid regions, yet capturing the nonlinear responses of eco-hydrological functions to dual climate and anthropogenic pressures remains challenging. This study establishes an integrated modeling framework to evaluate historical trends and estimate future dynamics of regional WC on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains (NSTM) from 2000 to 2030. The framework relies exclusively on the single SSP2–4.5 climate scenario modeled across four divergent land-use development pathways, utilizing GeoDetector analysis to determine underlying environmental drivers. Temporally, regional WC exhibited an overall downward trend from 2000 to 2020, decreasing from 6.06 × 108 to 5.17 × 108 m3, shifting from central-western improvement (2000–2010) to subsequent localized degradation (2010–2020). Future projections for 2030 estimate that the sustainable development pathway (SDS) could maximize ecological matrices, whereas the cropland protection (CPS) and economic development (EDS) pathways may accelerate agricultural and urban expansion, respectively. Crucially, a distinct spatial misalignment emerges between structural landscape expansion and functional WC efficiencies across these development pathways. GeoDetector analysis demonstrates that climatic factors (precipitation, temperature, and evapotranspiration) and topography (elevation) serve as notable influencing factors contributing to the spatial heterogeneity of simulated WC, with precipitation exhibiting strong interactive effects. These insights provide scenario-based adaptive management strategies to support regional ecological stability and mitigate systemic ecological risks in arid environments.
With heatwaves set to increase in frequency, intensity and duration, a policy shift is needed to build climate resilience on national and local levels. In London, a new strategy has been introduced to build urban heat resilience with the ‘Cool Spaces’ scheme. Cool spaces are free, public, indoor areas where people can escape hot weather and reduce heat-related health risks. Despite the scheme’s potential, it is unclear what type of resilience is built, by whom and how. Drawing on interviews (n = 16) with practitioners and policy officials responsible for extreme heat management, our research identified original and significant findings on the limits of how heat resilience is conceptualised. We found that the cool spaces scheme: (1) prioritised reactive resilience over addressing why housing in London continues to exacerbate heat-related problems now and in the future; (2) no universal understanding of what heat resilience is existed nor agreement on how it should be managed, which led to (3) a misalignment between how cool spaces were supposed to be used and how they were actually used. Such findings highlight a concern that heat management solutions have become depoliticised as individuals are made responsible for reducing their own risk. We argue that transformational resilience is urgently needed for housing in London to resolve justice and equity implications of urban heat risk.
Coastal vulnerability is a critical determinant of risk in littoral systems, particularly in regions where seasonal environmental forcing intersects with persistent socioeconomic fragility. This study assesses the integrated socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability (SEVI) of 18 microzones along the Urabá coast in the Colombian Caribbean. Grounded in the exposure-sensitivity-adaptive capacity framework, the methodology utilizes a seasonally explicit approach to differentiate vulnerability patterns between dry and wet periods over a 30-year climatological baseline. The Environmental Vulnerability Sub-Index (EVI) incorporates variables such as significant wave height and precipitation, while the Socioeconomic Vulnerability Sub-Index (SVI) employs census-derived proxies for demographic pressure and structural precarity. The results reveal a clear alongshore gradient, with the northern sector exhibiting consistently high vulnerability due to direct open-sea exposure and urban settlements with precarious conditions. Analysis shows that while environmental stressors alternate in dominance, wave energy in the dry season and precipitation in the wet season, the overall spatial configuration of vulnerability remains remarkably stable. This persistence underscores the structuring role of socioeconomic conditions, such as high population density and limited adaptive capacity (socioeconomic stratum 1), in governing coastal risk. Sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of the SEVI rankings across different weighting schemes. These findings highlight that effective climate change adaptation in the Greater Caribbean must transcend hazard mitigation to address the underlying social determinants of vulnerability. The proposed microzone-based framework provides a transferable and parsimonious decision-support tool for spatially targeted coastal management and risk-informed land-use planning in data-limited regions.
Agricultural landscapes in Catalonia (northeastern Spain) have undergone profound transformations since 1945, driven by major social, economic, and environmental changes, ranging from the post-Civil War period and Francoist developmental policies to market liberalization and integration into the European common market. To assess these long-term changes, we analyzed five time periods (1945, 1956, 1970s, 2004, and 2023) in two counties with contrasting socio-environmental contexts: the rural Banyoles Lake region and the highly urbanized Vallès Plain. Using black-and-white and red-green-blue high-resolution airborne imagery, we implemented a deep learning workflow to classify land uses and delineate agricultural fields, adapting the Segment Anything Model for field boundary detection. Our results reveal divergent regional trajectories. Agricultural land in the Vallès Plain declined threefold between 1945 and 2023, whereas the Banyoles Lake region experienced a more moderate reduction of approximately 30
Urban pluvial flooding increasingly threatens sustainable urban development, yet its century-scale evolution under multiple interacting drivers remains poorly understood. This study reconstructs land-use and land subsidence in Shanghai’s central urban area (1921–2021) and combines hydrodynamic simulations with factor separation analysis under a 100-year design storm to quantify how urbanization and subsidence have reshaped inundation patterns. Our results show (1) total inundated area more than doubled, reaching 132.6 km2, and spatial heterogeneity in flood depth increased fourfold. (2) Land-use change dominated flood expansion, accounting for > 86
