Tea plantations are an important source of income across Asia and Africa, yet their land requirements may create trade-offs with food security and biodiversity conservation. Using satellite observations and cloud computing, we developed GlobalTea10m and assessed a composite score integrating yield and quality to represent potential economic benefits (SEconomic), food security, and ecological security across nine tea-producing countries. Here we show that five countries achieved relatively high performance in at least two dimensions. China showed the strongest overall balance, whereas India combined favorable food- and ecological-security profiles with weaker SEconomic. Sri Lanka had the highest SEconomic but lower food- and ecological-security scores. Rwanda and Tanzania showed contrasting imbalances, and Kenya underperformed in all three dimensions. Spatial overlaps with productive cropland and conservation-priority areas indicate potential land-use trade-offs but do not by themselves demonstrate reduced food production or ecological degradation. These results support spatial planning, improved plantation management, and value-chain development tailored to national conditions. Tea production shows uneven trade-offs among economic returns, food security, and biodiversity across major producing countries, with China achieving the strongest balance and Kenya underperforming in all three, based on 10-m satellite mapping and cross-country sustainability assessments.
The origin of the olivine-bearing unit in Nili Fossae has been debated for over two decades, with leading hypotheses ranging from pyroclastic falls to aeolian deposits. However, recent in situ data from the Perseverance rover at Jezero crater favor an igneous cumulate origin for intra-crater olivine-rich outcrops, creating a paradox with orbital observations of ‘draping’ morphologies. Here, we present orbital evidence that the regional olivine-bearing unit was emplaced as an extension-controlled intrusion. We identify ‘Large Linear Features’ that exhibit triple junctions, raised bounding ridges, and tapering geometries consistent with feeder dikes aligned with the fracturing of the Nili Fossae. Their characteristics indicate that extensional fracturing of the Noachian crust due to the mass loading of the Isidis basin assisted the ascent of magma in the Nili Fossae region. We resolve the morphological conflict by reinterpreting the unit’s ‘draping’ nature as eroded saucer-shaped sills. This geologic framework implies that the olivine unit formed after Jezero crater and requires extensive erosion in the region, revising the geological timeline of the Perseverance landing site. Nili Fossae’s olivine-rich unit is part of a giant dike-and-sill complex, reconciling orbital and rover observations, according to new mapping of geological features in the Nili Fossae region on Mars.
Whether extreme climate events reflect intrinsic threshold behaviour of the climate system remains uncertain, in part because most terrestrial archives integrate multiple climatic signals and lack simultaneous constraints on temperature and hydroclimate. Here we present high-resolution ( ~ 900 years) quantitative reconstructions of land temperature and monsoon precipitation from the Chinese Loess Plateau spanning the past ~250,000 years, based on molecular fossil proxies. Using branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (brGDGT) proxies for temperature and precipitation, together with complementary GDGT-based aridity indicators, our records reveal repeated extreme cold–dry events during glacial inceptions, in addition to pronounced droughts during glacial terminations. Although previous studies have provided key insights into past monsoon variability, these cold–dry extremes are not clearly expressed in widely used terrestrial proxies such as speleothem δ¹⁸O records, indicating that key aspects of continental climate variability have remained under-recognized. Transient climate simulations reproduce the timing of the extreme cooling events, providing model-based support for threshold-like climate responses to declining boreal summer insolation. Our findings suggest that such threshold-like behaviour may represent an important mode of continental climate responses to orbital forcing, providing a long-term perspective for assessing how regional climate extremes may emerge when background conditions approach critical thresholds. “Proxy records providing simultaneous constraints on temperature and hydroclimate from the Chinese Loess Plateau reveal repeated extreme cold–dry events during glacial inceptions and pronounced droughts during glacial terminations, suggesting that threshold-like behavior may represent an important mode of continental climate response to orbital forcing”
Interactions with iron (oxyhydr)oxides govern the mobility and fate of nanoplastics in freshwater systems, yet the mechanisms underlying mineral-phase-dependent binding remain unclear. Here, we investigated the binding processes and mechanisms of representative iron oxides (ferrihydrite, lepidocrocite, and goethite) toward nanoplastics with varied sizes, surface functionalities, and aging states. Binding rates and capacities differ by up to 15.9- and 43.6-fold, respectively. Ferrihydrite achieves the fastest kinetics through surface attachment facilitated by its rough, heterogeneous interface and binding-induced interfacial restructuring. In contrast, goethite maintains higher, less condition-sensitive binding capacities because its macropores promote pore entrapment. Nanoplastic aging involving size reduction and surface functionalization inhibits mineral-nanoplastic interactions by enhancing post-binding charge reversal, thereby weakening subsequent electrostatic attraction. These findings highlight interfacial interactions and pore entrapment as key mechanisms driving divergent nanoplastic binding by iron oxides, providing a mechanistic framework for predicting nanoplastic immobilization and transport in freshwater sediments. Ferrihydrite bound nanoplastics fastest while goethite retained the highest, most robust capacity; nanoplastic aging reduced binding, with surface attachment and pore entrapment driving differences, according to kinetic and mechanistic comparisons of iron oxides and nanoplastics.
