Feature Article

West Africa is a very vulnerable part of the world to the impacts of climate change due to a combination of exposure and low adaptive capacity. Climate change has induced an increase in rainfall variability which in turn has affected the availability of water resources, ecosystem services and agricultural production. To adapt to the increased aridity, farmers have used indigenous and modern coping strategies such as soil and water conservation techniques, the use of drought-tolerant crops and varieties, crop diversification, etc., and lately, climate information services (CIS).

Impact-based forecasting and warning services aim to bridge the gap between producers and users of warning information by connecting and increasing synergies between the components of effective early warning systems. We tested qualitatively whether a warning message based on colour codes is understandable and useful to trigger risk mitigation actions at the local level in the flood-exposed communities of Rajapur and Ghorjan unions in Sirajganj district, Bangladesh.

A gap in emission inventories of urban volatile organic compound (VOC) sources, which contribute to regional ozone and aerosol burdens, has increased as transportation emissions in the United States and Europe have declined rapidly. A detailed mass balance demonstrates that the use of volatile chemical products (VCPs)—including pesticides, coatings, printing inks, adhesives, cleaning agents, and personal care products—now constitutes half of fossil fuel VOC emissions in industrialized cities.

Pelagic ecosystems are dynamic ocean regions whose immense natural capital is affected by climate change, pollution, and commercial fisheries. Trophic level–based indicators derived from fishery catch data may reveal the food web status of these systems, but the utility of these metrics has been debated because of targeting bias in fisheries catch. We analyze a unique, fishery-independent data set of North Pacific seabird tissues to inform ecosystem trends over 13 decades (1890s to 2010s).

A gluten-free diet is the only treatment option of coeliac disease, but recently an increasing number of trials have begun to explore alternative treatment strategies. We aimed to review the literature on coeliac disease therapeutic trials and issue recommendations for outcome measures.

Global warming and direct anthropogenic impacts, such as water extraction, largely affect water budgets in Mediterranean wetlands, thereby increasing wetland salinities and isolation, and decreasing water depths and hydroperiods (duration of the inundation period). These wetland features are key elements structuring waterbird communities. However, the ultimate and net consequences of these dynamic conditions on waterbird assemblages are largely unknown.

Domesticated species are impacted in unintended ways during domestication and breeding. Changes in the nature and intensity of selection impart genetic drift, reduce diversity, and increase the frequency of deleterious alleles. Such outcomes constrain our ability to expand the cultivation of crops into environments that differ from those under which domestication occurred. We address this need in chickpea, an important pulse legume, by harnessing the diversity of wild crop relatives.

Extra-tropical cyclones dominate autumn and winter weather over western Europe. The strongest cyclones, often termed windstorms, have a large socio-economic impact on landfall due to strong surface winds and coastal storm surges. Climate model integrations have predicted a future increase in the frequency of, and potential damage from, European windstorms and yet these integrations cannot properly represent localised jets, such as sting jets, that may signicantly enhance damage.

Green roofs offer a series of benefits to buildings and to the urban environment. Their use in dry climates requires optimizing the choice of their components (i.e., vegetation, substrate and drainage layer) for the specific local climatic conditions, in order to minimize irrigations needs while preserving the attributes of the roof. In this study, we calibrated and validated an existing hydrological model—IHMORS—for the simulation of the hydrological performance of green roofs.

The causative source of the first damaging earthquake instrumentally recorded in the Island of Ischia, occurred on 21 August 2017, has been studied through a multiparametric geophysical approach. In order to investigate the source geometry and kinematics we exploit seismological, Global Positioning System, and Sentinel‐1 and COSMO‐SkyMed differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar coseismic measurements.