Combining Marine Ecology and Economy to Roadmap the Integrated Coastal Management: A Systematic Literature Review

Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) application for coping with salinity and drought: a bibliometric network multi-analysis

Rhizobacteria play a crucial role in plant growth and yield, stimulating primary production and improving stress resistance. Climate change has several consequences worldwide that affect arable land and agriculture. Studies on plant-soil-microorganism interactions to enhance plant productivity and/or resistance to abiotic stress may open new perspectives. This strategy aims to make agricultural-relevant plant species able to complete their biological cycle in extreme soils with the help of inoculated or primed plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). We provide an overview of the evolution of interest in PGPR research in the last 30 years through: (i) a quantitative search on the Scopus database; (ii) keyword frequencies and clustering analysis, and (iii) a keyword network and time-gradient analysis. The review of scientific literature on PGPR highlighted an increase in publications in the last 15 years, and a specific time gradient on subtopics, such as abiotic stresses. The rise in PGPR as a keyword co-occurring with salinity and drought stresses aligns with the growing number of papers from countries directly or partly affected by climate change. The study of PGPR, its features, and related applications will be a key challenge in the next decades, considering climate change effects on agriculture. The increased interest in PGPR leads to deeper knowledge focused specifically on researching agriculturally sustainable solutions for soils affected by salinity and drought.

Drivers in the fisheries domain: A bibliometric and text mining analysis

Fisheries have garnered attention from researchers throughout the last several decades. This sector's contribution has been recognised globally, leading to exponential growth in the number of research studies published in this area. Among all the dimensions from which this field has been explored, a critical theme under focus has been the drivers in the fisheries domain. Therefore, this study aims to provide a wholesome view of such studies that have explored drivers in the context of fisheries using bibliometric analysis and text-mining tools. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, 322 studies on the theme were extracted from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The studies extracted were analysed using VOSviewer and Orange software. The analysis uncovered the top journals and publishers in this domain and revealed the hidden patterns in the existing literature. The researchers posit that rather than judging the growth solely based on the number of citations and publications over the period, focus should be concentrated towards identifying themes that have gained immense attention from researchers over the years. The results indicate a shifting trend in recent times, centered on topics related to sustainability and climate change, among many more. The findings have important implications for researchers to make valuable contributions in this domain.

Effect of marine ecological compensation policy on coastal water pollution: Evidence from China based on a multiple period difference-in-differences approach

With the development and utilization of marine resources, coastal water pollution has become increasingly prominent. The marine ecological compensation (MEC) is a key measure to balance the utilization of marine resources and the protection of marine environment. This paper attempts to explore the governance effect of MEC policy on coastal water pollution. Based on panel data of coastal cities in China from 2006 to 2020, a multiple period difference-in-differences (DID) model is used to estimate the impact of MEC policy on coastal water pollution. The research results show that the coastal water pollution has decreased significantly in the polit cities after implementing the MEC policy. The governance effect of MEC policy on coastal water pollution will last for three year and cover areas within a geographical distance of 200 km. The transmission mechanisms of MEC policy on coastal water pollution are the reduction of land-based sewage, marine technological progress and optimization of industrial structure. Further, this paper provides operational suggestions for strengthening the governance effect of MEC policy on coastal water pollution.

Public perception of an important urban estuary: Values, attitudes, and policy support in the Biscayne Bay-Miami Social Ecological System

Understanding public perceptions, values, and preferences can be fundamental to effective conservation governance, management, and outreach. This is particularly true in socially and ecologically complex marine and coastal spaces, where many relevant questions remain. The social-ecological system of Biscayne Bay and Miami-Dade are on the frontier of problems that will soon engulf many coastal-urban systems. Despite the economic, ecological, and cultural importance of Biscayne Bay, research into the social components of this social-ecological system is distinctly lacking. In order to effectively address urgent coastal management issues, practitioners and policy-makers need a clear understanding of public perceptions, values, and priorities. In this paper I present the results of a large online survey (n = 1146) exploring public attitudes toward Biscayne Bay as a case study of management and opportunity in a complex coastal social-ecological system. Results describe a public that interacts with and utilizes Biscayne Bay in a variety of ways, from leisure and recreation, to subsistence. This public believes the Bay to be moderately healthy, though somewhat in decline, and has experienced a range of local environmental threats, about which they feel considerable concern. These interactions and concerns are in turn reflected in overwhelming endorsement of value statements regarding the ecological, material, cultural and economic importance of the ecosystem to the city, as well as high levels of support for policy actions to protect and restore that ecosystem. Together these findings indicate that additional policy steps to preserve and restore Biscayne Bay would enjoy support from the local public and demonstrate the power of public perceptions research to identify gaps and opportunities for management and outreach.

MoNA: A Forensic Analysis Platform for Mobile Communication

Mobile communication devices are a popular means of planning, commissioning and carrying out criminal offenses. In particular, data from messengers such as WhatsApp or Telegram often contain conclusive information. Organized crime also usually involves many devices, but not all of them contain the full history of communication. Rather, it is heavily fragmented due to individual deletions of messages or different joining times to groups. A singular evaluation of individual devices is therefore often not expedient, since important relationships cannot be recognized. Furthermore, communication is often distributed across different channels and modalities and can only be fully and correctly understood through a joint semantic analysis. The linking of related communications of different devices enables an almost complete reconstruction of the communication with a simultaneous reduction in reading effort by merging identical messages. Grouping coherent messages into conversations enables efficient comparison with a knowledge model. Building such a model is complex, but can be supported by a term recommender system. In this paper, MoNA is presented as a platform that implements these approaches and enables an assisted analysis of mobile communications.

Intersecting Ecosystem Services Across the Aquatic Continuum: From Global Change Impacts to Local, and Biologically Driven, Synergies and Trade-Offs

The study of ecosystem services requires the integration of different observational points. This is particularly true in Water, as this element continuously cycles, increasing chances of interaction among services originating in different ecosystems. However, aquatic scientists historically approached the study of inland/freshwater and open/marine waters in different ways and this cultural division potentially hampers integrative approaches. Herein, we explored the literature pertaining to ecosystem services across the last 23 years, analysing 4,590 aquatic papers. By aggregating and intersecting topics included in this papers’ collection using text-mining and topical network approaches, we saw that the study of local environmental conditions (e.g., river estuary management) and synergies and trade-offs between services (e.g., carbon sequestration and water purification) can display several potential conceptual links between freshwater and marine sciences. Our analyses suggest that to intersect ecosystem services across the aquatic continuum, the conceptual integration between marine and freshwater science must be reinforced, especially at the interface between different “salinity realms.” Such integration should adopt a “system thinking” perspective, in which the focus is on multiple socio-ecological processes giving rise to interactions that are (i) biologically mediated, (ii) potentially conflicting, and (iii) entangled within networks.

A Stepwise Approach to Beach Restoration at Calabaia Beach

Sea hazards are increasingly threatening worldwide coastal areas, which are among the most strategic resources of the Earth in supporting human population, economy and the environment. These hazards enhance erosion processes and flooding events, producing severe socio-economic impacts and posing a challenge to ocean engineers and stakeholders in finding the optimal strategy to protect both the coastal communities and the health of the environment. The impact of coastal hazards is actually worsened not only by an enhancing rate of relative sea level rise and storminess driven by climate changes, but also by increasing urban pressure related to the development of the sea economy. With regard to larger environmental awareness and climate change adaptation needs, the present study focuses on a stepwise approach that supports the actions for coastal protection at Calabaia Beach, which is located in the Marine Experimental Station of Capo Tirone (Cosenza, Italy). These actions first aim to protect humans and coastal assets, then to restore the environment and the local habitat, overcoming the need for the emergency interventions carried out in the last decades and pointing out that healthy ecosystems are more productive and support a sustainable marine economy (“Blue Growth”).

A Simplified Method for an Evaluation of the Effect of Submerged Breakwaters on Wave Damping: The Case Study of Calabaia Beach

Erosion processes threaten the economy, the environment and the ecosystem of coastal areas. In addition, human action can significantly affect the characteristics of the soil and the landscape of the shoreline. In this context, pursuing environmental sustainability is of paramount importance in solving environmental degradation of coastal areas worldwide, with particular reference to the design of complex engineering structures. Among all the measures conceived to protect the shoreline, environmentally friendly interventions should be supported by the stakeholders and tested by means of mathematical models, in order to evaluate their effectiveness in coastal protection through the evaluation of wave damping and bedload. This study focuses on protected nourishments, as strategic interventions aimed to counteract coastal erosion without affecting the environment. Here, we develop a simplified method to provide a preliminary assessment of the efficiency of submerged breakwaters in reducing wave energy at a relatively low computational cost, if compared to the standard 2D or full 3D mathematical models. The methodology is applied at Calabaia Beach, located in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea (Italy), in the area of the Marine Experimental Station of Capo Tirone. The results show that the simplified method is proven to be an essential tool in assisting researchers and institutions to address the effects of submerged breakwaters on nourishment protection.

Ecological assessment of anthropogenic impact in marine ecosystems: The case of Bagnoli Bay

Pollutants alter marine systems, interfering with provisioning of ecosystem services; understanding their interaction with ecological communities is therefore critical to inform environmental management. Here we propose a joint compositional- and interaction-based analysis for ecological status assessment and apply it on the benthic communities of the Bagnoli Bay. We found that contamination differentially affects the communities' composition in the bay, with prokaryotes influenced only by depth, and benthos not following the environmental gradient at all. This result is confirmed by analyses of the community structure, whose network structure suggest fast carbon flow and cycling, especially promoted by nematodes and polychaetes; the benthic prey/predator biomass ratio, adjusted for competition, successfully synthesise the status of predator taxa. We found demersal fish communities to separate into a deep, pelagic-like community, and two shallow communities where a shift from exclusive predators to omnivores occurs, moving from the most polluted to the least polluted sampling units. Finally, our study indicate that indices based on interspecific interactions are better indicators of environmental gradients than those defined based on species composition exclusively.

Economy and Ecology: Encounters and Interweaving

In this editorial text, we point to the importance and development of disciplines that closely link economic sciences with ecology. Drawing on the most important literature in these fields, we have highlighted the trends that are popular today in both fields (double eco features).

Sustainable Tourism in the Open Innovation Realm: A Bibliometric Analysis

This study evaluates bibliometric analysis of sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm, depicts emerging themes, and offers critical discussion for theory development and further research. Through the use of bibliometrix, this paper investigates the amount of studies conducted in this area and verifies if such studies have represented a contribution to the evolving research in the field of sustainable tourism. Specifically, the paper identifies whether and to what extent scholars have explored these interconnections and maps to get to a conceptual structure of the field under investigation. The results identify the development status and the leading trends in terms of impact, main journals, papers, topics, authors, and countries. The analysis and the graphical presentations are crucial, as they can help both researchers and practitioners to better understand the state of the art of sustainable tourism in the experiential and digital era.