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Effective management of marine ecosystems requires understanding linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. While key species have been identified in many marine systems, the functions provided by different habitats have not been comprehensively synthesised in the region, limiting the ability to identify key habitats. Here, we assess the current state of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem functions associated with benthic and pelagic habitat types in the northern Baltic Sea. Drawing on literature, data and expert assessments, we evaluated 49 habitat types, identifying 750 habitat type-function linkages. Of these, 35% were supported by Baltic Sea literature and 29% by expert opinion, while one-third remained unassessed due to data gaps. Our findings highlight key habitat types with high functional importance and reveal major knowledge gaps and research biases across habitats. This synthesis provides a science-based foundation for marine spatial planning, ecosystem service assessment, and sustainable management of northern Baltic Sea biodiversity.

Fibroblast growth factor receptor-2 (FGFR2) translocations are frequently observed in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) and represent actionable therapeutic targets. While fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is commonly used for their detection, its applicability to large cohorts, particularly on tissue microarrays (TMAs), is limited by time-consuming and error-prone manual scoring due to core disorientation. We therefore sought to develop an automated imaging workflow to enable efficient and scalable assessment of FGFR2 translocations in FISH-stained TMAs. Tumor samples from 86 iCCA patients were obtained to construct TMAs, which underwent FISH staining for the detection of FGFR2 translocations. Slides were imaged with an automated inverted wide-field fluorescence microscope. First, a whole-slide overview scan at low resolution was acquired to identify TMA cores. Subsequently, a high-resolution automated scan was performed across the identified regions of interest (ROI) using a custom-built general analysis script with optimized parameters for single-cell analysis. Images were stored with positional metadata for downstream evaluation. Of 86 cases, 85 yielded images with sufficient quality for FGFR2 translocation analysis. Interphase FISH evaluation of the generated images revealed that 8.2% (7/85) of patients tested positive, consistent with reported frequencies. We developed an automated imaging workflow for high-throughput acquisition and archiving of FISH-stained TMAs for FGFR2 translocation assessment in iCCA. By enabling standardized digital imaging, precise core identification, and permanent image preservation, the workflow facilitates efficient and reproducible review of FISH images from large TMA cohorts in both diagnostic and translational research settings. It is readily adaptable to other FISH-based assays and staining protocols, extending its utility beyond FGFR2 testing.

Assessment frameworks do not capture the complexity of the social-ecological dynamics of small-scale fisheries (SSF), which support millions of livelihoods yet face persistent sustainability challenges. Reciprocal feedbacks between fish populations and fishers that are central to sustainability remain insufficiently integrated into assessment approaches because conventional fisheries management emphasizes population dynamics, whereas social-ecological systems research focuses on social drivers and faces operational challenges. We propose an integrative diagnostic approach that explicitly links fish population dynamics with theories of fisher behavior and governance. We illustrate its application using co-managed arapaima fisheries in the Amazon Basin, where sustainability emerges from multi-scalar social and ecological interactions. By capturing these feedbacks, the approach bridges ecological and social dimensions to identify key drivers of sustainability. It provides a replicable, interdisciplinary framework for diagnosing SSF sustainability and identifying leverage points to support adaptive governance across diverse contexts.

Biodiversity loss threatens forest ecosystem stability and functioning, while measures to enhance biodiversity trade-off with economic performance. Native tree-species mixtures are promoted to support associated taxa but usually underperform economically compared to non-native species, both in pure and admixed stands. Quantifying ecological-economic trade-offs remains challenging due to uncertainties in economic and biodiversity indicators. Using empirical data on economic (land rent/annuity) and biodiversity indicators (species richness) of five forest taxa from Central German forests, we applied multicriteria optimisation to forest stand-type compositions. We assess the compositional shift of pure (beech, spruce, Douglas-fir) and mixed stand types (beech-spruce, beech-Douglas-fir) under increasing biodiversity targets, accounting for uncertain indicator provision. Stand-type portfolios became more diversified with increasing biodiversity targets. Biodiversity-economic trade-offs were efficiently reduced by incorporating Douglas-fir (in pure and mixed stands) into the portfolio. However, enhancing biodiversity created economic loss, underscoring the need for financial compensation schemes.

The advancement of space exploration into an era of sample return missions from Mars, asteroids, and icy moons raises the potential for biological contamination either to or from Earth. We consider the possibility that extraterrestrial organisms introduced to Earth could behave analogously to invasive species by destabilizing ecosystems or interacting unpredictably with their new environment. There are myriad cases of microbial organisms rapidly adapting to novel extreme conditions, undermining the notion that extraterrestrial life (e.g., indigenous to Mars) would be unable to survive on Earth. The plausibility of encountering extraterrestrial life warrants stringent planetary protection measures grounded in biosafety and biosecurity principles. Due to its proximity, natural isolation, and apparent lack of a biosphere, the Moon can serve as a secure site for biocontainment of extraterrestrial samples. Building upon historical lessons from biological invasions, we argue that a lunar quarantine infrastructure should form the cornerstone of modern astrobiological risk mitigation strategies.

While immediate emission cuts are more urgent than ever, we witness climate action being hampered by societal opposition and ethical complexities connected to questions of legitimacy, fairness and participation. Securing support for climate action is needed at all levels of decision-making, ranging from institutionalized, democratic processes to households and individuals, their lifestyles and consumption choices. This Special Section advances our understanding of the acceptability and legitimacy of climate policy processes. Its seven articles examine the diverse factors and mechanisms that influence acceptability throughout policy actions and measures. The collection addresses public acceptability, perceived justice, and inclusive participation across policy levels utilizing various perspectives and methods. Empirical findings are anchored in key mitigation sectors, including transportation and mobility, and housing. While the cases predominantly draw on Finland, their insights are broadly relevant and transferable, as Finland shares many climate policy challenges with other regions.

Humans have relied on peatlands for millennia, but their exploitation through drainage-based agriculture, forestry, and peat extraction has led to their widespread degradation. Yet, peatlands play a crucial role in mitigating climate change, pollution, and biodiversity decline. To tackle these crises, humanity must, among other actions, conserve the remaining c. 431 million hectares of (near-) natural peatlands and rewet all c. 57 million hectares of degraded peatlands before 2050. This seemingly insurmountable challenge may elicit frustration, despair, and inaction. Here, we explore positive examples of peatland conservation, rewetting, and restoration to encourage and inspire peatland action worldwide. We highlight nine 'bright spots' in science, policy, society, conservation, rewetting, restoration, techniques, livelihoods, and markets. Common success factors include inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, the creation of positive narratives, and solution-oriented approaches. We conclude that action toward sustainable peatland management holds significant potential, for which the bright spots provide clear guidance.

Water banking offers a transformative solution to freshwater scarcity, but stakeholder involvement is essential for success. Responsible Innovation (RI) and Value Sensitive Design (VSD) include stakeholders in design but both exhibit methodological flaws. This study addressed these limitations by performing an exploratory synthesis of the two approaches within an empirical case in the Dutch Southwestern Delta. First, a systematic literature review produced values inventories for water and water banking; then, a stakeholder workshop used an RI-VSD approach to validate the inventories. The validation highlighted several missing values, such as fit for use and broad prosperity. Stakeholders also emphasised that values are dynamic, influenced by water availability, technology development, and regional specifics such as flood history. Using an RI-VSD approach resulted in a thorough and validated values inventory, contributing to the limited empirical evidence available and forming the basis for inclusive design of a water bank to manage freshwater scarcity.

The history of Newfoundland, Canada, is told through the cod fishery that led to the development of thousands of outport settlements connected by boat and sea. The collapse of the Northern cod stock and the 1992 fishing moratorium that put 30 000 Newfoundlanders out of work, reshaped the ecological, economical, and social fabric of the island. In the years that followed, fisheries for shellfish became the most important, both in volume and value. I explore the changing landscape of Newfoundland ports and fisheries from 1998 to 2023. The number of fishing ports, vessels, and fishers all declined by more than 70%, while the average number of species fished per port declined by 25%. Fisheries catches dropped by 25% from 1998 to 2023, with shellfish accounting for the greatest share throughout. The total economic value of the fishery was relatively stable from 1998 to 2023.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is gaining global traction as a market-based instrument for sustainable resource management, yet remains relatively novel in many developing countries. This study explores the perspectives of stakeholder groups, including buyers, sellers, and intermediaries, regarding PES in Sri Lanka, using a semi-structured questionnaire survey. Findings reveal varying levels of willingness to engage, with intermediaries showing more optimism, while buyers and sellers were more cautious and often skeptical about the feasibility. The study emphasizes the need for early knowledge dissemination to prevent misconceptions and foster stakeholder confidence. Collaborative engagement among all stakeholder groups is recommended to enhance implementation success and promote the long-term sustainability of PES schemes. Sri Lanka thus provides a relevant context for examining how stakeholder perceptions shape early implementation readiness for PES in settings where institutional arrangements are still evolving.

Socio-environmental conflicts associated with large-scale economic projects in Indigenous territories are well documented, but conflicts in coastal areas remain largely unexplored, despite the crucial differences between inland and coastal ecosystems. While the empirical literature about socio-environmental conflicts in Indigenous territories in coastal areas is growing, the role of financial institutions and corporations in these conflicts is often overlooked. This study addresses this gap by examining the financial institutions and corporations associated with more than 400 reported socio-environmental conflicts affecting Indigenous Peoples in coastal areas worldwide. Our results show that most financial institutions supporting projects linked to conflicts are based in West Europe and North America, with North American financial institutions linked to multiple projects. The energy sector accounts for the highest number of socio-environmental conflicts, particularly those involving corporations operating across continents. Many European and North American corporations operate mostly in Africa, but also globally. Corporations with overseas operations are associated with a higher intensity of conflicts. These findings highlight the need to scrutinize financial investments and corporate practices driving socio-environmental conflicts in coastal Indigenous territories, where human rights are often at risk. The lack of due diligence and accountability in applying environmental and social safeguards weakens protections for both ecosystems and Indigenous communities. Strengthening the enforcement of national and international laws on environmental sustainability, human rights and Indigenous rights is therefore essential for coastal development projects.

In a world marked by disconnect and alienation, the need for relational approaches in science and society is clear. Despite attempts toward sustainable transformations, pressure on the world, humans, and more-than-human entities continues to rise. The current food system has a well-documented, negative impact on sustainable development. However, it also offers potential for sustainability-oriented change, and the way we relate to food is proving to be a key pillar. In this perspective we elaborate on human-food resonance as a theoretical concept of understanding relationships between humans and food. We argue that, rather than a lifeless resource, food is an affective agent in its diverse materializations. Human-food resonance illustrates how food may affect  sustainable transformations. The concept indicates where relationships with food are shaped. It thus offers a theoretical framework and a vision of a good life in relation to food, while highlighting the need for future empirical research.

Natural disturbances are fundamental in shaping forest ecosystems, yet management decisions in production forests can aggravate or mitigate their impacts. Understanding the interplay between forest adaptation strategies and susceptibility to damage is important for sustainable forest management. Here, we review the scientific literature to explore the relationship between natural disturbances and the impact of forest adaptation strategies on the forest susceptibility to damage. To do so we reviewed seven different adaptation strategies (mixed-species stands, shorter rotations, longer rotations, few or no thinnings, logging residue removal, prescribed burning and uneven-aged forestry), and how they affect forest susceptibility to damage by ten different disturbances. Each of the strategies offers opportunities to improve the forest's resilience to damage in different ways and against specific disturbances. A combination of these strategies may have a greater impact on reducing forest susceptibility to damage. The review informs the development of adaptation strategies considering relevant forest characteristics coupled to natural disturbances.

Urban spatial dynamic modeling (SDM) has long been used to anticipate land-use change, urban expansion, and infrastructure demand. Yet, despite increasing methodological sophistication, most applications remain oriented toward reproducing spatial patterns rather than supporting sustainability transitions. This perspective argues that SDM is at a turning point and outlines how it can evolve to address climate neutrality, resilience, and equity in both growing and shrinking cities. Five interlinked development pathways are proposed: (i) hybrid AI-theory models balancing predictive accuracy and interpretability; (ii) human-centric accessibility frameworks grounded in time geography; (iii) network-based resilience approaches drawing on graph theory and space syntax; (iv) semantic place functions enabled by vision-language foundation models; and (v) scalable architectures applicable across diverse data and governance contexts. Together, these pathways reposition SDM from a forecasting tool to a transition-support instrument, aligning it with planning support systems and enabling more sustainable and just urban futures.

Seagrasses perform various critical functions within social-ecological systems, though populations have declined drastically. Restoring seagrass is crucial, requiring holistic consideration of ecological and human dimensions. To date, biophysical factors predominantly guide restoration and marine spatial planning (MSP). Sociocultural data underpin optimal and just restoration design, but remain a "missing layer" in MSP. To address this gap, we combined participatory mapping and ground-truthed remote sensing to map seagrass distribution, human activities, and place values in Sanday, UK. Local knowledge guided in situ surveys, co-producing Sanday's first scientific seagrass records. We "found" two meadows absent from current seagrass modelling, mostly within protected areas, and highlighted corresponding human activities (notably shellfisheries) and values (humanistic and scientific). We propose three restoration priority sites, given seagrass extent, habitat protection, and compatible activities and values. This study demonstrates potential for transdisciplinary mapping to improve restoration planning, addressing the missing sociocultural layer and key gaps within MSP processes. The video abstract can be found at this link: https://vimeo.com/877072379 ; https://linktr.ee/seagrassSES .

Digital technology plays an increasingly important role in wildlife management and conservation, by enhancing monitoring capabilities and reshaping human-wildlife interactions. However, the transformative potential of these digital solutions for coexistence remains unclear. This paper presents a novel framework to assess the transformative potential of digital systems in wildlife management and conservation, focusing on two key factors: Digital Maturity, which evaluates technical sophistication of digital systems, and Systemic Depth, which measures their capacity for enabling lasting change. We used this framework to evaluate 524 studies in a systematic literature review in wildlife management and conservation, and found that although sometimes higher Digital Maturity or Systemic Depth was achieved, overall the transformative potential of applied digital systems was still low. Studies that scored high emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration, adaptability, data sharing, and technologies such as machine learning. This research highlights achieving transformative potential requires a holistic approach integrating ecological, social, and technological perspectives.

Incorporating citizen views through stakeholder engagement enhances the democratic and equitable governance of sustainability transitions. Using stakeholder theory as a conceptual frame, this study evaluates the use of different stakeholder participation processes to co-produce solutions for more sustainable housing in Finland. This study examines how citizens are positioned, levels of participation, and factors affecting success. Data were collected in three participatory processes: a service design process, a hackathon, and transition arenas, which sought to improve citizens' opportunities for more sustainable housing. Our results show that citizens were positioned differently across the stakeholder processes. Although all processes aimed for high levels of participation-such as collaboration and empowerment-the achieved levels varied and, in some cases, remained limited. Moreover, several contextual, organizational, and process-related factors influenced the outcomes and shaped how participating stakeholders perceived citizens' views. Addressing these challenges is crucial when selecting participatory methods for research, planning, and policy.

Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a sensorineural disorder that provokes complex neuroplastic and neurodegenerative changes within the central nervous system (CNS). This study investigated the temporal dynamics of neuronal density, axonal integrity and glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission in the central inferior colliculus (CIC) and the ventral medial geniculate body of the thalamus (MGV) after NIHL. To achieve this, a correlative multimodal approach combining audiometric, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and histological biomarkers was performed. Adult mice were noise-exposed to broadband white noise (5-20 kHz) for 3 h at either high (115 dB SPL) or moderate (90 dB SPL) intensity, while unexposed mice served as controls. Separate cohorts of mice were investigated 1, 7, 56 and 84 days post-exposure using in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques: Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of gray matter density (GMD), diffusion MRI (dMRI) of microstructural connectivity, and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) for glutamate and GABA quantification. Frequency-specific auditory brainstem responses (ABR) were recorded at 4, 8, 16 and 32 kHz before and after exposure to examine hearing threshold (HT) shifts. Brains were subsequently processed for fluorescence immunohistochemistry (FIHC) targeting NeuN, DAPI, NF, VGAT, VGLUT1 and VGLUT2. Mice exposed to 115 dB exhibited sustained HT elevations up to 84 days, suggesting a NIHL phenotype. Neurofilament (NF) expression significantly increased in the CIC and MGV 1d after 115 dB noise exposure, suggesting early axonal stress followed by normalization. dMRI alterations were observed 7d after 90 dB noise exposure. Glutamate and GABA decreases 84d after 90 dB exposure were also detected by 1H-MRS. No consistent changes in GMD or neuronal density were observed. Correlation analyses revealed weak relationships across audiometric, MRI and histological parameters. Overall, these findings reveal rapid neuroplastic adaptations following NIHL, and underscore the need for more sensitive biomarkers to detect early CNS consequences of NIHL.

Land use and biodiversity conservation are increasingly recognized as ethical and value-laden topics rather than merely ecological or socio-technical problems. While this has increased multidisciplinary and participatory approaches in research, explicit engagement with environmental ethics, where those questions are scrutinized though an ethical lens, remains limited. To address this need, we reviewed how the environmental ethics literature defines and characterizes active human presence across different environments, how it frames human impacts on nonhumans, and the assumptions and normative implications articulated by these perspectives. Using a narrative approach, we identify four main narratives from environmental ethics on human and nonhuman coexistence: wilderness, rural stewardship, urban cohabitation, and relational narratives. By synthesizing these narratives, our findings offer conceptual tools that can support sustainability researchers, practitioners, and policymakers reflect more critically on the ethical dimensions of land-use decisions and better navigate contested visions of desirable landscape futures.