Topic Review
Lactic Acid Bacteria as an Emerging Group
Increasing awareness of the problems caused by synthetic agrochemicals, such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, makes it crucial to discover substitute approaches that can guarantee competitive plant production and protect the environment while maintaining the natural balance in agroecosystems. One of the leading alternatives is utilizing rhizobacterial strains named plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR).
  • 74
  • 04 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Decision Support Systems in Forestry and Tree-Planting Practices
Using deep neural networks (DNNs), a decision support system (DSS) can be trained to learn from a large dataset of tree data, including information about tree species, climate, soil conditions, and other factors that influence tree growth and survival. This is because the use of neural networks was proposed three decades ago to solve forest management problems by integrating forest knowledge with artificial intelligence (AI). AI greatly benefits sustainability and the preservation of ecosystem values, as increasing disruptions in a changing world can only be managed beyond human intelligence. Furthermore, despite the various DSSs and AI systems used, the appointment of appropriate project managers is crucial to the execution and subsequent success of a project.
  • 145
  • 04 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Approach to Existing Management Perspectives in Scuba Diving
There are a considerable number of studies reporting the negative impacts of recreational diving and their causes, yet there is a gap in the information regarding the aspects of activity management. A large part of the measures identified address stakeholders’ awareness, data on the activity, and implementing adapted management measures. Stakeholders need to be integrated into the entire process of managing the activity because they are the target for correcting actions.
  • 84
  • 04 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Cracking of Gem Opals
The value of gem opals is compromised by their potential susceptibility to “crazing”, a phenomenon observed either in the form of whitening or cracking.
  • 148
  • 04 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Westerlies and Asian Monsoons in Middle of China
The westerly circulation and the monsoon circulation are the two major atmospheric circulation systems affecting the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (NH), which have significant impacts on climate and environmental changes in the middle latitudes. However, until now, people’s understanding of the long-term paleoenvironmental changes in the westerly- and monsoon-controlled areas in China’s middle latitudes is not uniform, and the phase relationship between the two at different time scales is also controversial, especially the exception to the “dry gets drier, wet gets wetter” paradigm in global warming between the two. 
  • 70
  • 01 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Halophytes/Saline Water/Deserts/Wastelands Nexus
Climate change is rapidly exacerbating and adding to major-to-existential issues associated with freshwater availability and utilization. The massive, thus far untapped saline/salt water/ocean—wastelands/deserts—Halophytes resources nexus can, at scale and profitably, provide major climate change mitigation and greatly alleviate most extant freshwater issues. Approaches include ocean fertilization and saline/seawater agriculture on deserts and wastelands to sequester massive amounts of CO2 and methane and for food, freeing up some 70% of the freshwater now utilized by current agriculture for direct human use. This also enables the production of huge amounts of biofuels and biomass-based chemical feedstock employing the massive capacity of cheap saline/seawater and cheap deserts and wastelands.
  • 86
  • 29 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Salt Lake Aerosols' Chemical Composition and Health Effects
Salt Lakes, having a salt concentration higher than that of seawater and hosting unique extremophiles, are predominantly located in drought-prone zones worldwide, accumulating diverse salts and continuously emitting salt dust or aerosols. Salt Lake aerosols are produced through various processes, including lake-water spray, evaporation-induced salt crystallization, wind-driven dust emissions, microbial activities, chemical reactions, and anthropogenic influences. The primary mechanism involves the breaking of wind-driven waves at the lake surface. As the wind blows across the water, it generates waves. When these waves reach a critical size, they break and release tiny droplets into the air, which become airborne particles and form aerosols.
  • 154
  • 29 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Artificial Intelligence in Phytopathology
Plant diseases annually cause 10–16% yield losses in major crops, prompting urgent innovations. Artificial intelligence (AI) shows an aptitude for automated disease detection and diagnosis utilizing image recognition techniques, with reported accuracies exceeding 95% and surpassing human visual assessment. Forecasting models integrating weather, soil, and crop data enable preemptive interventions by predicting spatial-temporal outbreak risks weeks in advance at 81–95% precision, minimizing pesticide usage. Precision agriculture powered by AI optimizes data-driven, tailored crop protection strategies boosting resilience. Real-time monitoring leveraging AI discerns pre-symptomatic anomalies from plant and environmental data for early alerts. These applications highlight AI’s proficiency in illuminating opaque disease patterns within increasingly complex agricultural data. 
  • 431
  • 28 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Biochar Utilization
Carbon (C) in gaseous form is a component of several greenhouse gases emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels. C movement between the atmosphere, land (biosphere and lithosphere), and ocean (hydrosphere) alters the total amount in each pool. Human activities accelerate C movement into the atmosphere, causing increases in temperature.
  • 72
  • 28 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Ramsar Site Labudovo Okno for Sustainable Tourism
The Ramsar Site Labudovo Okno (LO) is located in Serbia, AP Vojvodina, on the left bank of the Danube. It covers an area of 3733 ha. This wet habitat is valuable for different ecosystems, among which the most important are those inhabited by rare bird species.
  • 75
  • 28 Feb 2024
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