资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Fine-scale satellite data are used to quantify forest harvest rates in 26 European countries, finding an increase in harvested forest area of 49% and an increase in biomass loss of 69% between 2011-2015 and 2016-2018.

Applying a bias correction to a state-of-the-art dataset covering non-alpine regions of the Northern Hemisphere and to three other datasets yields a more constrained quantification of snow mass in March from 1980 to 2018.

Oppositely charged colloidal particles are assembled in water through an approach that allows electrostatic interactions to be precisely tuned to generate macroscopic single crystals.

From rock salt to nanoparticle superlattices, complex structure can emerge from simple building blocks that attract each other through Coulombic forces(1-4). On the micrometre scale, however, colloids in water defy the intuitively simple idea of forming crystals from oppositely charged partners, instead forming non-equilibrium structures such as clusters and gels(5-7). Although various systems have been engineered to grow binary crystals(8-11), native surface charge in aqueous conditions has not been used to assemble crystalline materials. Here we form ionic colloidal crystals in water through an approach that we refer to as polymer-attenuated Coulombic self-assembly. The key to crystallization is the use of a neutral polymer to keep particles separated by well defined distances, allowing us to tune the attractive overlap of electrical double layers, directing particles to disperse, crystallize or become permanently fixed on demand. The nucleation and growth of macroscopic single crystals is demonstrated by using the Debye screening length to fine-tune assembly. Using a variety of colloidal particles and commercial polymers, ionic colloidal crystals isostructural to caesium chloride, sodium chloride, aluminium diboride and K4C60 are selected according to particle size ratios. Once fixed by simply diluting out solution salts, crystals are pulled out of the water for further manipulation, demonstrating an accurate translation from solution-phase assembly to dried solid structures. In contrast to other assembly approaches, in which particles must be carefully engineered to encode binding information(12-18), polymer-attenuated Coulombic self-assembly enables conventional colloids to be used as model colloidal ions, primed for crystallization.

River deltas rank among the most economically and ecologically valuable environments on Earth. Even in the absence of sea-level rise, deltas are increasingly vulnerable to coastal hazards as declining sediment supply and climate change alter their sediment budget, affecting delta morphology and possibly leading to erosion(1-3). However, the relationship between deltaic sediment budgets, oceanographic forces of waves and tides, and delta morphology has remained poorly quantified. Here we show how the morphology of about 11,000 coastal deltas worldwide, ranging from small bayhead deltas to mega-deltas, has been affected by river damming and deforestation. We introduce a model that shows that present-day delta morphology varies across a continuum between wave (about 80 per cent), tide (around 10 per cent) and river (about 10 per cent) dominance, but that most large deltas are tide- and river-dominated. Over the past 30 years, despite sea-level rise, deltas globally have experienced a net land gain of 54 +/- 12 square kilometres per year (2 standard deviations), with the largest 1 per cent of deltas being responsible for 30 per cent of all net land area gains. Humans are a considerable driver of these net land gains-25 per cent of delta growth can be attributed to deforestation-induced increases in fluvial sediment supply. Yet for nearly 1,000 deltas, river damming(4) has resulted in a severe (more than 50 per cent) reduction in anthropogenic sediment flux, forcing a collective loss of 12 +/- 3.5 square kilometres per year (2 standard deviations) of deltaic land. Not all deltas lose land in response to river damming: deltas transitioning towards tide dominance are currently gaining land, probably through channel infilling. With expected accelerated sea-level rise(5), however, recent land gains are unlikely to be sustained throughout the twenty-first century. Understanding the redistribution of sediments by waves and tides will be critical for successfully predicting human-driven change to deltas, both locally and globally.

A global study of river deltas shows a net increase in delta area by about 54 km(2) yr(-1) over the past 30 years, in part due to deforestation-induced sediment delivery increase.