Automated negotiation in environmental resource management: Review and assessment.

Negotiation is an integral part of our daily life and plays an important role in resolving conflicts and facilitating human interactions. Automated negotiation, which aims at capturing the human negotiation process using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, is well-established in e-commerce, but its application in environmental resource management remains limited. This is due to the inherent uncertainties and complexity of environmental issues, along with the diversity of stakeholders' perspectives when dealing with these issues. The objective of this paper is to describe the main components of automated negotiation, review and compare machine learning techniques in automated negotiation, and provide a guideline for the selection of suitable methods in the particular context of stakeholders' negotiation over environmental resource issues. We advocate that automated negotiation can facilitate the involvement of stakeholders in the exploration of a plurality of solutions in order to reach a mutually satisfying agreement and contribute to informed decisions in environmental management along with the need for further studies to consolidate the potential of this modeling approach.

The global contribution of vultures towards ecosystem services and sustainability: An experts' perspective.

The ecosystem services framework is essential for biodiversity conservation, emphasizing the role of nature in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study offers a global view on vulture-associated ecosystem services and their SDG contributions, based on insights from 206 experts. The findings reveal global consensus on the importance of vultures in regulation and maintenance services, such as waste recycling and disease control. Cultural services attributed to vultures are moderate and vary regionally. Provisioning services are consistently rated low across all regions. Experts' views on vultures' key ecosystem roles are often biased toward well-known services and may not align with all scientific evidence. The study emphasizes vultures' role in achieving SDGs, particularly impacting life on land and health, and calls for reevaluating their contribution to sustainable practices. It stresses the need to customize conservation to regional values and perceptions, recognizing vultures' critical role in ecological balance, public health, and sustainable development.

Water transfer contributes to water resources management: Crisis mitigation for future water allocation in the Yellow River basin.

Optimizing water allocation is a crucial strategy for water planning in large basins, such as the Yellow River basin. The transforming water supply pattern, triggered by inter-basin water transfer, urges the optimization and refinement of water allocation. Here, we predict the future water demand for different sectors at the provincial level and carry out future water allocation based on a multi-objective allocation model. The results imply that "demand increases in midstream and water deficits in downstream" would persist by 2050, and the demand structure highlights potential sectoral rivalry for water resources in each province. Water transfer will be the "antidote" to water disputes and will account for 19.8% and 34.5% of the water demand in 2030 and 2050, respectively. This study provides a basis for the policymaking of water management and establishes the future allocation pattern from water resources to sectors in each province in the Yellow River basin.

Vulnerability of mangrove ecosystems to anthropogenic marine litter along the southeast coast of India.

Human-caused marine pollution poses a constant threat to marine ecosystems, particularly tropical mangrove forests, which are vulnerable to litter from both inland and marine sources due to inadequate waste management. Despite well-documented effects of marine litter on various maritime habitats, its impact on mangrove forests remains underexplored. This study investigates the abundance, composition, sources, and impacts of human-caused marine litter on mangroves along the Thoothukudi coast in the Gulf of Mannar, southeast India. The study recorded an average litter abundance of 6.7 ±â€¯1.2 items/m2 on the mangrove ground and 8.6 ±â€¯0.3 items/tree, with plastic litter comprising over 81 % of all collected litter. Single-use plastic items were the most common across all sites. Several indices, including the General Index, Clean Coast Index, Pollution Load Index (PLI), and Hazardous Items Index (HII), were used to evaluate mangrove floor cleanliness, all indicating poor conditions. The PLI revealed "Hazard Level I" plastic debris concerns, with litter levels varying significantly by location. Areas with high population density and poor solid waste management had significantly more stranded litter. Litter sources were identified as both local (land-based) and external (marine fishing). Trapped plastic was found to impair mangrove pneumatophores and branches. To mitigate the negative impacts on mangrove ecosystems and ensure their conservation, the study emphasizes the need for strict law enforcement, a unified solid waste management strategy, and a widespread behavioural shift among citizens.

Incorporating carbon sequestration toward a water-energy-food-carbon planning with uncertainties.

Water-energy-food nexus (WEFN) is the core content in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, the value of soil and crops' carbon sink function has not yet been fully considered in the managment practices of WEFN system. Here, we developed a water-energy-food-carbon nexus (WEFCN) planning framework that incorporates carbon sequestration and multiple mathematical optimization methods into the practical WEFN management for Henan Province, which is one of major grain-producing areas in China. Uncertainties from multiple objectives, scenarios, and different stakeholder interests are captured. We found that wheat has the largest carbon sequestration, followed by corn and oil-bearing crops, while other crops have implicit carbon sequestration. Since chemical fertilizer produces the most carbon emissions, the usage of chemical fertilizer needs to be reasonably controlled. Overall, the proposed framework supports optimal decision-making for regional-scale WEFCN management and further unlocks the hidden value of agricultural carbon mitigation.

Reimagining the relationship between Gondwanan forests and Aboriginal land management in Australia's "Wet Tropics".

The "Wet Tropics" of Australia host a unique variety of plant lineages that trace their origins to the super-continent of Gondwanaland. While these "ancient" evolutionary records are rightly emphasized in current management of the region, multidisciplinary research and lobbying by Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples have also demonstrated the significance of the cultural heritage of the "Wet Tropics." Here, we evaluate the existing archeological, paleoenvironmental, and historical evidence to demonstrate the diverse ways in which these forests are globally significant, not only for their ecological heritage but also for their preservation of traces of millennia of anthropogenic activities, including active burning and food tree manipulation. We argue that detailed paleoecological, ethnobotanical, and archeological studies, working within the framework of growing national and world heritage initiatives and active application of traditional knowledge, offer the best opportunities for sustainable management of these unique environments in the face of increasingly catastrophic climate change and bushfires.

[Dependence of farmers' livelihoods on environmental resource in key ecological function area: A case study of Gannan Plateau, China]. / 重点生态功能区农户生计对环境资源的依赖性­­ä»¥ç”˜å—高原为例.

The key ecological function area plays an important role in providing ecosystem service. As the main players of economic activities in this area, the excessive dependence of local farmers on environmental resource will seriously influence ecological environment quality, and thus impair the ecosystem service. At present, it is urgent to explore the dependence of farmers' livelihoods on environmental resource and its influencing factors in key ecological function areas, which would provide reference for the formulation of environmental friendly regional development policies. We selected the Gannan Plateau as study area. Based on 581 survey data, we analyzed the dependence of farmers' livelihood on environmental resource, and used the ordinal multi-class Logistic regression model to identify its key impact factors. The results showed that local farmers were highly dependent on environmental resource in Gannan Plateau, which was mainly reflected in three aspects of food self-sufficiency, daily energy consumption and income source, with the dependence of 57.3%, 56.9% and 37.4%, respectively. There were significant differences in the dependence of different types of farmers' livelihoods on environmental resource, in that farmers with higher levels of education and higher non-agricultural levels had lower dependence and the farmers with high dependency ratio were more dependent on environmental resources. The factors including family dependency ratio, labor education level, proportion of migrant workers in labor force, family member leadership, ecological policy, and altitude had significant impact on farmers' environmental resource dependence. Among them, family dependency ratio and altitude had positive impact on it, while the proportion of migrant workers in labor force, labor education level, family member leadership, ecological policy had negative impact.