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Shorelines and their ecosystems are endangered by sea-level rise. Nature-based coastal protection is becoming a global strategy to enhance coastal resilience through the cost-effective creation, restoration and sustainable use of coastal wetlands. However, the resilience to sea-level rise of coastal wetlands created under Nature-based Solution has been assessed largely on a regional scale. Here we assess, using a meta-analysis, the difference in accretion, elevation, and sediment deposition rates between natural and restored coastal wetlands across the world. Our results show that restored coastal wetlands can trap more sediment and that the effectiveness of these restoration projects is primarily driven by sediment availability, not by wetland elevation, tidal range, local rates of sea-level rise, and significant wave height. Our results suggest that Nature-based Solutions can mitigate coastal wetland vulnerability to sea-level rise, but are effective only in coastal locations where abundant sediment supply is available.

Planting has been widely adopted to battle the loss of salt marshes and to establish living shorelines. However, the drivers of success in salt marsh planting and their ecological effects are poorly understood at the global scale. Here, we assemble a global database, encompassing 22,074 observations reported in 210 studies, to examine the drivers and impacts of salt marsh planting. We show that, on average, 53% of plantings survived globally, and plant survival and growth can be enhanced by careful design of sites, species selection, and novel planted technologies. Planting enhances shoreline protection, primary productivity, soil carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and fishery production (effect sizes = 0.61, 1.55, 0.21, 0.10 and 1.01, respectively), compared with degraded wetlands. However, the ecosystem services of planted marshes, except for shoreline protection, have not yet fully recovered compared with natural wetlands (effect size = −0.25, 95% CI −0.29, −0.22). Fortunately, the levels of most ecological functions related to climate change mitigation and biodiversity increase with plantation age when compared with natural wetlands, and achieve equivalence to natural wetlands after 5–25 years. Overall, our results suggest that salt marsh planting could be used as a strategy to enhance shoreline protection, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Salt marsh planting strategies aim to reduce coastal degradation. Here, the authors conduct a global meta-analysis showing that planting enhances coastal wetland ecosystem services although not to the level of natural wetlands.

Anthropogenic activities are substantially changing coastal wetland ecosystems globally. In developing countries such as China, a number of anthropogenic factors associated with rapid population growth and economic development threaten coastal wetlands. In China, notably, coastal wetlands have been increasingly lost to reclamations that are widely adopted to meet the increasing demand for land under rapid economic development. Coastal wetland management requires understanding the patterns of and the mechanisms underlying such human impacts. In this special issue, we synthesize current understanding of environmental changes and human impacts on China’ coastal wetlands, focusing on reclamation. Coastal human activities in China are found to change shoreline evolution and wetland hydrology, to deteriorate soil and water quality, to alter vegetation succession, benthic animal and microbial communities, and fisheries, and to impair ecosystem functioning and services. For some of those impacts, new models and indices are developed or applied. We also outline key research areas that should be further studied for effective management of coastal wetlands and successful wetland restoration. We suggest that developing a multi-objective, multi-scenario, and multi-scale framework of integrated management will be crucial to the success of China’s coastal wetland conservation with increasing human dominance of the nation’s coasts.

Unidirectional spin Hall magnetoresistance (USMR) has emerged as a promising candidate for magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) technology. However, the realization of high signal-to-noise output signal in USMR devices has remained a challenge, primarily due to the limited USMR effect at room temperature. In this study, we report a large USMR effect in FeNi/Pt/Bi₂Se₃ trilayers through interfacial engineering with Pt to optimize the spin current transmission efficiency and electron-magnon scattering. Our devices exhibit a USMR value that is an order of magnitude higher than previously reported systems, reaching 30.6 ppm/MA/cm² at room temperature. First-principles calculations and experimental observations suggest that the Pt layer not only preserves the spin-momentum locked topological surface states in Bi₂Se₃ at the Fermi-level but also generates additional Rashba surface states within the Pt itself to enhance the effective SOT efficiency. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the two-terminal USMR-MRAM devices show robust output performance with 2 nd harmonic resistance variation around 0.11 Ω/mA. Remarkably, the performance of these devices further improves at elevated temperatures, highlighting their potential for reliable operation in a wide range of environmental conditions. Our findings pave the way for future advancements in high-performance, energy-efficient spintronic memory devices. Unidirectional spin Hall magnetoresistance refers to an asymmetric resistance response, which allows for the readout of the magnetic state from two terminal devices. Here, Zhang et al demonstrate a large unidirectional spin hall magnetoresistance FeNi/Pt/Bi₂Se₃ trilayers and present a robust random-access magnetoresistance device.

Sediments were collected from the upper, middle and lower reaches of both urban and rural rivers in a typical urbanization zone of the Pearl River delta. Six heavy metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) were analyzed in all sediment samples, and their spatial distribution, pollution levels, toxicity and ecological risk levels were evaluated to compare the characteristics of heavy metal pollution between the two rivers. Our results indicated that the total contents of the six metals in all samples exceeded the soil background value in Guangdong province. Based on the soil quality thresholds of the China SEPA, Cd levels at all sites exceeded class III criteria, and other metals exhibited pollution levels exceeding class II or III criteria at both river sites. According to the sediment quality guidelines of the US EPA, all samples were moderately to heavily polluted by Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn. Compared to rural river sites, urban river sites exhibited heavier pollution. Almost all sediment samples from both rivers exhibited moderate to serious toxicity to the environment, with higher contributions from Cr and Ni. A “hot area” of heavy metal pollution being observed in the upper and middle reaches of the urban river area, whereas a “hot spot” was identified at a specific site in the middle reach of the rural river. Contrary metal distribution patterns were also observed along typical sediment profiles from urban and rural rivers. However, the potential ecological risk indices of rural river sediments in this study were equal to those of urban river sediments, implying that the ecological health issues of the rivers in the undeveloped rural area should also be addressed. Sediment organic matter and grain size might be important factors influencing the distribution profiles of these heavy metals.

Little information is available on the impacts of coastal reclamation on wetland loss in large-river deltas at a regional scale. Using remote sensing data of coastal wetland and reclamation in four deltas in China from 1978 to 2014, we tracked their continuous area changes in four periods: 1978–1990, 1990–2000, 2000–2008, and 2008–2014. The areal relation between wetland loss and reclamation was quantified and used to identify coastal reclamation mode intensity coupled with another three indicators: reclamation rate, accretion rate and land-use intensity of coastal reclamation. The results showed that coastal reclamation driven by economic development reduced, or even reverse the original growth of delta which was determined by the offset between wetland acceleration rate and wetland loss rate. Generally, the area of reclamation showed a positive linear correlation with the area of wetland loss. The findings imply that human activities should control reclamation rate and intensity to alleviate total wetland loss and maintain wetland ‘net gain’. Inappropriate coastal reclamation modes can magnify total wetland loss; therefore, coastal reclamation with a slow increment rate and low impervious surface percent is of great importance for sustainable development in future coastal management.

Land cover maps with high accuracy are essential for environmental protection and climate change research. The 30-meter-resolution maps, with their better resolution and longer historical records, are extensively utilized to assess changes in land cover and their effects on carbon storage, land–atmosphere energy balance, and water cycle processes. However, current data products use different classification methods, resulting in significant classification inconsistency and triggering serious disagreements among related studies. Here, we compared four mainstream land cover products in China, namely GLC_FCS30, CLCD, Globeland30, and CNLUCC. The result shows that only 50.34% of the classification results were consistent across the four datasets. The differences between pairs of datasets ranged from 21.10% to 37.53%. Importantly, most inconsistency occurs in transitional zones among land cover types sensitive to climate change and human activities. Based on the accuracy evaluation, CLCD is the most accurate land cover product, with an overall accuracy reaching 86.98 ± 0.76%, followed by CNLUCC (81.38 ± 0.87%) and GLC_FCS30 (77.83 ± 0.80%). Globeland30 had the lowest accuracy (75.24 ± 0.91%), primarily due to misclassification between croplands and forests. Misclassification diagnoses revealed that vegetation-related spectral confusion among land cover types contributed significantly to misclassifications, followed by slope, cloud cover, and landscape fragmentation, which affected satellite observation angles, data availability, and mixed pixels. Automated classification methods using the random forest algorithm can perform better than those that depend on traditional human–machine interactive interpretation or object-based approaches. However, their classification accuracy depends more on selecting training samples and feature variables.

Rapid invasion of Spartina alterniflora in coastal wetlands throughout the world has attracted much attention. Some field and imagery evidence has shown that the landward invasion of S. alterniflora follows the tidal channel networks as the main pathway. However, the specific patterns and processes of its invasion in salt marshes in relation to tidal channel networks are still unclear. Based on yearly satellite images from 2010 to 2018, we studied the patterning relationship between tidal channel networks and the invasion of S. alterniflora at the south bank of the Yellow River Estuary (SBYRE). At the landscape (watershed and cross-watershed) scale, we analyzed the correlation between proxies of tidal channel network drainage efficiency (unchanneled flow lengths (UFL), overmarsh path length (OPL), and tidal channels density (TCD)) and spatial distribution of S. alterniflora. At the local (channel) scale, we examined the area and number of patches of S. alterniflora in different distance buffer zones outward from the tidal channels. Our results showed that, overall, the invasion of S. alterniflora had a strong association with tidal channel networks. Watershed with higher drainage efficiency (smaller OPL) attained larger S. alterniflora area, and higher-order (third-order and above) channels tended to be the main pathway of S. alterniflora invasion. At the local scale, the total area of S. alterniflora in each distance buffer zones increased with distance within 15 m from the tidal channels, whereas the number of patches decreased with distance as expansion stabilized. Overall, the S. alterniflora area within 30 m from the tidal channels remained approximately 14% of its entire distribution throughout the invasion. The results implicated that early control of S. alterniflora invasion should pay close attention to higher-order tidal channels as the main pathway

Various surface water bodies, such as rivers, lakes and reservoirs, provide water and essential services to human society. However, the long-term spatiotemporal dynamics of different types of surface water bodies and their possible driving factors over large areas remain very limited. Here, we used unprecedented surface water data layers derived from all available Landsat images and further developed two databases on China’s lakes and reservoirs larger than 1 km2 to document and understand the characteristics of changes in different water body types during 2000 to 2019 in China. Our results show that China is dominated by permanent water bodies. The areas of permanent and seasonal water bodies in China increased by 16,631.02 km2 (16.72%) and 16,994.95 km2 (25.14%), respectively, between 2000 and 2019, with permanent and seasonal water bodies exhibiting divergent spatial variations. Lakes and artificial reservoirs larger than 1 km2, which collectively represent a significant proportion of the permanent water bodies in China, displayed net increases of 6884.52 km2 (10.71%) and 4075.13 km2 (36.10%), respectively, from 2000 to 2019; these increases accounted for 41.40% and 24.50%, respectively, of the total permanent water body increment. The expanding lakes were mainly distributed on the Tibetan Plateau, whereas the rapidly growing reservoirs were mainly located on the Northeast Plain and Eastern Plain. Statistical analyses indicated that artificial reservoirs were an important factor controlling both permanent and seasonal water body changes in most of provinces. Climate factors, such as precipitation and temperature, were the main influencing factors affecting the changes in different water bodies in the sparsely populated Tibetan Plateau.

Estimating the biomass of Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud., i.e., a common wetland macrophyte, and the associated carbon sequestration capacity has attracted increasing attention. Hanshiqiao Wetland Nature Reserve (HWNR) is a large P. australis wetland in Beijing, China, and provides an ideal case study site for such purpose in an urban setting. In this study, an existing P. australis growth dynamics model was adapted to estimate the plant biomass, which was in turn converted to the associated carbon sequestration capacity in the HWNR throughout a typical year. To account for local differences, the modeling parameters were calibrated against the above-ground biomass (AGB) of P. australis retrieved from hyperspectral images of the study site. We also analyzed the sensitivity of the modeling parameters and the influence of environmental factors, particularly the nutrient availability, on the growth dynamics and carbon sequestration capacity of P. australis. Our results show that the maximum AGB and below-ground biomass (BGB) of P. australis in the HWNR are 2.93 × 103 and 2.49 × 103 g m−2, respectively, which are higher than the reported level from nearby sites with similar latitudes, presumably due to the relatively high nutrient availability and more suitable inundation conditions in the HWNR. The annual carbon sequestration capacity of P. australis in the HWNR was estimated to be 2040.73 gC m−2 yr−1, which was also found to be highly dependent on nutrient availability, with a 50% increase (decrease) in the constant of the nutrient availability KNP, resulting in a 12% increase (23% decrease) in the annual carbon sequestration capacity. This implies that a comprehensive management of urban wetlands that often encounter eutrophication problems to synergize the effects of nutrient control and carbon sequestration is worth considering in future practices.