Journal of Environmental Management最新文献

Herein, a novel SrTiO₃/CuFeS₂ heterojunction composite was successfully prepared to integrate visible-light photocatalysis with peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation for efficient norfloxacin (NOR) degradation. The well-designed heterojunction promotes the separation and migration of photogenerated charges. The synergistic Cu-Fe bimetallic active sites and S^2- redox cycling endow the composite with outstanding PMS activation ability. Benefiting from the excellent structural stability of SrTiO₃, the composite effectively overcomes the agglomeration and deactivation defects of single-phase photocatalysts. Multiple reactive species (superoxide radical (•O₂^-), sulfate radical (•SO₄^-), singlet oxygen (¹O₂), holes (h⁺), and hydroxyl radical (•OH)) collectively dominate the oxidative degradation of NOR. The coupling of photocatalysis and PMS-based advanced oxidation efficiently compensates for the low efficiency and slow kinetics of single photocatalytic treatment. This study systematically clarifies the synergistic mechanism between photocatalytic excitation and PMS activation in the SrTiO₃/CuFeS₂ system, providing a feasible reference for the design of high-efficiency composite catalysts and the remediation of refractory antibiotic wastewater.

Electrochemical nitrate reduction (NO₃RR) to ammonia could couple nitrate removal with lower-carbon nitrogen recovery, but its eight-electron pathway makes activity and selectivity hard to control. A material-by-material view can hide how active-site structure, mass transfer and operating conditions work together. Here we assess NO₃RR through a joint structure-activity and reaction-system framework. We compare facet-controlled Pd, evolving Cu/CuO_x interfaces, Cu-Co tandem sites, isolated and symmetry-broken Fe centers, defect-rich Zr supports, metal-organic frameworks and other transition-metal systems. Across these materials, the evidence links selective ammonia formation to a matched sequence of nitrate capture, N-O bond cleavage, proton delivery, intermediate hydrogenation and product release. We also examine pulsed potentials, porous electrodes, flow cells and product recovery as ways to regulate transport and intermediate coverage beyond static catalyst design. However, reported metrics do not support a universal catalyst ranking because studies use different nitrate concentrations, electrolytes, potentials, cell designs and rate units. We therefore identify four priorities: direct tracking of active states during operation, shared testing rules, long-term tests with realistic feeds, and catalyst-reactor co-design at practical current densities. This framework connects atomic-scale catalyst design with device operation and sets clear tests for advancing nitrate-to-ammonia conversion.

Green space equality is fundamental to urban environmental justice and equal public service provision. However, existing studies have largely focused on static spatial distributions and supply, with less attention to the dynamic relationship between residents' mobility behavior and green space exposure. From a spatial-behavioral interaction perspective, this study develops an analytical framework for assessing equality in green space exposure. Taking the built-up area of Suqian, China, as a case study, we integrate mobile phone signaling data with multi-source geospatial data, apply the Gaussian two-step floating catchment area (Ga2SFCA) method to measure green space accessibility, and use origin-destination (OD) analysis to characterize long-distance (>1 km) green space visitation at the community level. Among the 319 communities identified as having low green space accessibility, 138 (43.3%) maintained relatively high levels of long-distance visitation, exhibiting a compensatory pattern in which residents accessed alternative green space services through cross-area travel. In contrast, 60 communities (18.8%) simultaneously exhibited low accessibility and low visitation, indicating a potential risk of polarization. These findings reveal marked differences among communities in their capacity to compensate for insufficient local green space provision through travel. Group comparisons showed that compensatory communities generally had higher housing prices, denser transport facilities, and more central locations. Spatial analysis further indicated that both compensatory and polarization communities exhibited spatial clustering, with a more pronounced pattern among polarization communities. Temporal analysis showed that mean hourly visitation between 09:00 and 17:00 was approximately 13.4% higher on weekends than on weekdays. Cross-period comparison further indicated that the median community-level long-distance visitation rate decreased from 0.1099 in May to 0.0676 in December, while community visitation rankings remained significantly and positively correlated across the two periods (Spearman's ρ = 0.403, permutation p = 0.0002), suggesting a degree of temporal persistence in relative visitation differences among communities. The findings demonstrate that low spatial accessibility does not necessarily result in low levels of observed green space visitation, although the capacity for behavioral compensation varies substantially across communities. This study expands the connotation of green space equality from spatial distribution equality to behavioral-based accessibility equality, and provides evidence for identifying risks of green deprivation and developing differentiated urban green space planning strategies.

Coastal landscape transformation can degrade ecosystem-service functions and constrain the capacity of coastal systems to sustain resource provision, environmental regulation, habitat support, and recreational use. Existing studies have advanced coastal carrying capacity assessment, but many rely on aggregate indices or individual landscape metrics, making it difficult to identify which landscape dimensions drive specific functional changes and how such evidence can support targeted environmental management. To address this gap, this study develops an environmental-management-oriented diagnostic framework linking landscape patterns to coastal carrying capacity. Using the Bohai Rim of China as an empirical case, we construct a four-dimensional carrying capacity framework from an ecosystem service supply-demand perspective and integrate SHAP-XGBoost, bivariate spatial autocorrelation, and geographically and temporally weighted regression to identify key landscape drivers, spatial coupling patterns, and spatiotemporal non-stationarity. The results show that landscape morphology mainly constrains resource supply capacity by reducing the continuity of production landscapes; landscape composition has context-dependent effects on environmental regulation and habitat support, depending on whether diversity results from natural habitat enrichment or artificial land-cover intrusion; and fragmentation was predominantly associated with lower travel and leisure carrying capacity by weakening visual continuity and ecological integrity. Spatial coupling and GTWR results reveal increasing polarization between development-intensive coastlines and conservation-dominated ecological patches. Based on these findings, we propose a zoning-dimension-carrying capacity framework to help guide decisions for managing carrying capacity degradation in multifunctional coastal environmental systems.

Topographic position modulates soil moisture distribution and seasonal dynamics in alpine ecosystems, thereby shaping vegetation water-use patterns. However, whether dominant woody species occupying different hillslope habitats differ in the stability of their water-use strategies remains poorly understood at the hillslope scale. We investigated two dominant conifers, Picea crassifolia and Juniperus przewalskii, and a widespread alpine shrub, Dasiphora fruticosa across upslope, midslope, and footslope positions during the pre-rainy, rainy, and late-rainy seasons in an alpine catchment of the upper Heihe River Basin. By integrating δ²H and δ¹⁸O of soil and xylem water with a MixSIAR Bayesian mixing model, together with leaf δ¹³C, we quantified water sources for each species and evaluated water-use stability across hillslope positions and seasonal stages. Despite differences in dominant uptake depth, both conifers maintained relatively stable water-use strategies across slope positions and seasons. J. przewalskii persistently relied on deep soil water, which contributed 47% to 53% of total uptake, whereas P. crassifolia predominantly used shallow soil water, accounting for 44% to 65%. In contrast, D. fruticosa showed strong plasticity, with deep water uptake increasing from 16.2% to 41.0%, although this flexibility was constrained at upslope positions where available water was largely confined to shallow soil layers. Variability in leaf δ¹³C further indicated stronger physiological stability in the two conifer species within their respective hillslope habitats than in the shrub species, particularly at upper slope positions under greater evaporative demand. These findings suggest that water-use stability was associated with the sustained dominance of reliable soil water sources.

Nitrate nitrogen (NO₃^--N) and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) are key forms of soil nitrogen leaching. Developing green technologies to mitigate both is crucial for reducing agricultural pollution, yet research on bioregulation methods remains limited. This study developed a nitrogen-transforming bio-organic fertilizer (BF) using a nitrogen-fixing bacterium and a putative nitrifying bacterium. A greenhouse pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of BF on tomato growth, nitrogen leaching, soil microbial communities, and nitrogen-cycling functional genes. The effects of BF, organic fertilizer, urea, and microbial-urea combinations on tomato growth and nitrogen leaching were comprehensively quantitative analyzed. BF obtained the highest integrated score, increasing tomato biomass by 41.71-130.56% and reducing NO₃^--N and DON leaching by 38.38-88.16% and 7.42-51.14%, respectively. BF enriched beneficial microorganisms associated with nitrogen transformation (e.g., Galbibacter, Salinimicrobium), decreased the abundances of denitrification- and nitrification-associated genes (nirK, amoA, nxrB), and increased the abundances of genes associated with nitrogen fixation, nitrate reduction, and the glutamate cycle (nifH, narG, nrfA, glnA, gltB, gdhA). It also showed gene-abundance changes consistent with increased genetic potential for dissimilatory nitrate reduction (DNRA) and microbial ammonia assimilation. These findings suggest that BF may promote temporary microbial N immobilization in soil, as reflected by increased microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN), and improves crop nitrogen use efficiency. This strategy provides a promising approach for agricultural nitrogen management by simultaneously mitigating nitrogen leaching and improving crop nitrogen utilization.

Urban rivers (UR) and urban wetland rivers (WR) are increasingly recognized as CH₄ sources, yet the processes underlying differences between these aquatic habitats remain poorly resolved. We investigated excess CH₄ concentration (ΔCH₄), estimated diffusive flux, environmental conditions, stable carbon isotopes, and sediment microbial functional potential in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), China. CH₄ dynamics exhibited a clear seasonal shift between contrasting spatial patterns. UR showed an amplified CH₄ state during the first two seasons, the wetland outlet (WO) in wet season 1 and than both WR and WO in dry season 1. In UR, ΔCH₄ decreased with dissolved oxygen (β = -0.194, p = 0.020) and increased with total nitrogen (β = 0.272, p = 0.003), indicating strong nutrient-redox control on CH₄ accumulation. Stable-isotope signatures overlapped broadly among potential production and oxidation processes, while WR displayed more ¹³C-depleted CH₄ than UR during wet season 1 despite lower ΔCH₄, indicating that source signatures did not translate directly into net CH₄ accumulation. Consistently, mcr and CO₂-reducing methanogenesis genes and methanogenic taxa were relatively enriched in early UR seasons, whereas pmo-family genes and methane-oxidizing taxa were distributed more broadly across WR and WO. Together, these complementary lines of evidence reveal a seasonally reversible transition from nutrient-redox-driven CH₄ amplification in urban rivers to more complex wetland-associated regulation involving carbon supply, redox heterogeneity, and methane-oxidation potential.

Urban lakes are of particular concern in urban landscapes, as they provide ecological, social and economic benefits, but are under strong human pressure. The current study examined eleven urban lakes that differ in their morphometric and hydrological characteristics and were located across various macroregions of Poland. The aim was to examine potential relationships among landscape structure, water quality, and phytoplankton communities across three buffer zones (10 m, 100 m, and 1000 m), selected to reflect different spatial scales of land use/land cover (LU/LC). The urban lakes were characterised by different phytoplankton biomass, with a maximum of 181.3 mg/l. Most of them were dominated by toxic or potentially toxic cyanobacteria. Land use/cover explained the greatest percentage of variability (24.3%) in phytoplankton composition in the 100 m buffer zone. However, this relationship was only suggestive and did not reach the conventional level of statistical significance. In contrast, LU/LC explained little of the variation in physicochemical parameters across three spatial scales, accounting for up to 0.6% in the 10 m buffer zone, but with no statistically significant relationships. Phytoplankton play a more important role than other water quality parameters and can serve as a more sensitive indicator, providing complementary information for assessing the impact of landscape structure. Despite the large proportion of forest and seminatural areas, the urban lakes were classified as highly degraded, exhibiting poor or bad water quality, which can be more related to historical pollution than to current landscape structure. Our results indicate that a 100 m wide buffer zone may be a useful study-specific spatial scale for considering shoreline and surrounding LU/LC management. They can be prioritised for protection and restoration activities, as well as for planning future spatial development. Restoring natural vegetation within this zone may reduce the nutrient inflows and slow the process of cultural eutrophication. However, further studies with a larger number of lakes are needed to confirm these relationships.

Data science (DS) methods have attracted growing attention in ecosystem-services (ES) research, yet their bibliographic visibility across service categories and the implications of this pattern for environmental management remain insufficiently understood. This study combines bibliometric analysis, CICES-based classification, association-rule analysis, and decision-oriented synthesis to examine how DS methods are represented across ES domains. Bibliographic records were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection for 2015-2025. After LLM-assisted relevance screening, CICES-based classification, and manual validation, 53,227 ES publications were retained. We analyze temporal publication trends, geographical and institutional patterns, collaboration networks, service-domain distributions, and the bibliographic visibility of DS terms in titles, abstracts, author keywords, and Keywords Plus. Association-rule analysis was used to identify recurring ES theme-DS method associations using appearance, lift, and confidence. The results show sustained growth in ES publications and geographically uneven research output. DS-related terms were identified in 9.56% of publications under the broad bibliographic-field indicator and in 3.17% under the keyword-field indicator. Their visibility increased over time but remained concentrated in established methods. Random forest and principal component analysis were prominent among the highest-scoring theme-method associations, whereas deep learning, generative models, and explainable artificial intelligence appeared less prominently. The results suggest that established DS can support prediction, classification, and dimensionality reduction, but effective decision support requires validation, uncertainty characterization, interpretability, representativeness assessment, and accountability safeguards. The findings highlight the need to align ES questions, analytical tasks, data structures, validation strategies, management scales, and intended uses when designing DS applications for environmental management.

Biochar (BC) has generally been employed to mitigate the nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions from agricultural soils, but its response is soil-dependent. Thereby, in soil with proficient nitrification tendency, Zn-modified BC coupled with biological nitrification inhibitors (BNIs) could be more effective in mitigating N₂O emissions. The effects of coupled application of Zn-modified biochar and BNIs on N₂O emission and its underlying microbial mechanism remain largely unknown. In our study, a 24-day incubation experiment was established representing nine treatments; with three biochars amendments using three settings of BNIs, referred to as: 1) control (without amendment/inhibitor, 2) control with methyl 3-(4-hydroxyphenyl) acrylate -MHPA, 3) control with methyl 3-(4-hydroxyphenyl) Propionate-MHPP, 4) pristine BC without inhibitor, 5) pristine BC with MHPA, 6) pristine BC with MHPP, 7) Zn-modified BC without inhibitor, 8) Zn-modified BC with MHPA, 9) Zn-modified BC with MHPP, all at agronomically recommended dosage. N dynamics were evaluated following the addition of urea. The inclusion of Zn-modified BC in combination with MHPA and MHPP substantially reduced N₂O emissions by 94.52% and 96.85% relative to control. Quantification of N-cycling genes indicated that the treatment without BC amendment stimulated the growth of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) across the entire incubation period. The input of Zn-BC with MHPA and MHPP substantially inhibited the population of AOA and AOB. LEfSe cladogram elucidated the distinct shift in bacterial assemblage across the treatments. Overall, our results demonstrated that Zn-modified BC + MHPP played a key role in the dynamics of ammonia-oxidizing functional microbiome and N turnover, potentially considerably mitigating N₂O emissions.