Landscapes in urban waterfront spaces are of high societal value as they can meet people’s physical, psychological, and social needs for health and well-being, but the relationship between waterfront landscape features and public health benefits has yet to be clarified. From the perspective of blue health, this paper takes blue spaces along the Min River of Fuzhou City as the research object. It constructs the mediation model of “Waterfront landscape characteristic (WLC)→Water-friendly environmental preference (WEP)→Emotional benefit (EB)”. The role of WEP in the mechanisms linking WLC and EB in different waterfront spaces was explored through the quantification of indicators, questionnaires, and physiological measurements. The main results showed that (1) the ability of different types of waterfront spaces to arouse positive emotions in the population is characterized by blue-dominated space > co-dominated space > green-dominated space, while the opposite is true in terms of inducing negative emotions; (2) green visibility, blue visibility, naturalness, water-friendliness, and openness are all significantly related to EBs and could affect positive emotions either directly or mediated by WEPs, but openness seems not to affect negative emotions through WEPs; (3) cleanliness affects the population’s WEP for the coherence dimension, but has no significant role in improving EBs. This study could expand new ideas for research in habitat health, provide a reference for embodied evidence-based waterfront landscape design, and help promote the construction and development of healthy cities.

Urbanization, despite driving regional economic growth, has led to significant disparities in development levels among cities. Many studies have made valuable suggestions for ecological conservation in economically underdeveloped regions. However, for medium-level cities with large economic development needs, the question of how to strike a balance between development and conservation in land development patterns is a critical issue to be addressed. By integrating ecosystem services assessment models and land use prediction models, we proposed a framework for guiding future land-use strategies based on ecosystem service values, using Jiaxing City as a case study. Firstly, we assessed and mapped the current status of ecosystem services value. Then, we simulated the land use distribution pattern and ecosystem services value under three development strategies: inertial development, cropland protection, and ecological development. Eventually, we determined the optimal urban land development pattern. The results showed that the total ecosystem service value for Jiaxing is CNY 124.82 billion, with climate regulation, water conservation, and flood mitigation contributing the most. The ecological development strategy yields the highest service value, with a 0.81% increase compared to the current situation, while the cropland protection and inertial development strategies result in decreases of 0.73% and 10.93%, respectively. Furthermore, the ecological strategy expands high-value service areas, concentrated in the northern river network and southern hilly regions. These findings offer valuable insights for urban planners and policymakers in formulating sustainable strategies and integrating ecosystem service values into economic policies to promote urban development.

Understanding how assembly processes shape local plant assemblages from the potential species pool is crucial for biodiversity conservation and revegetation. Mountainous regions are global biodiversity hotspots with high levels of diversity, concentration, and vulnerability. Road construction in these areas poses ecological challenges, including habitat loss and reduced biodiversity. Feature-based ecology highlights non-biological filtering as a key driver of habitat-specific community formation. Analyzing trait structures and their association with the environment can reveal community assembly processes under specific environmental conditions. However, quantifying species-environment-traits interactions during community assembly on roadside slopes is still underexplored. In our study, 76 naturally recovered roadside slopes, 656 self-established plant communities and 113 plant species across ten functional traits, along with their environmental associations, in the karst mountain region of southwestern China, were examined. Our findings show that there are still abundant native plants with colonization potential settled on steep roadside slopes in karst mountain areas. Diffusion constraints stemming from distance to the core species pool, elevation, and differences in adjacent vegetation types emerged as key factors causing variations in species composition of self-established communities. The slope environment exerts strong selective pressures leading to a convergence pattern in traits related to dispersal and colonization while showing a divergence pattern in traits linked to competitive strategies and regeneration. These findings identify critical functional traits and environmental factors shaping roadside plant communities and illustrate the predictability of environmental filtering and fundamental community assembly. Overall, our study sheds light on the intricate interactions among assembly processes, functional traits, and environmental factors driving local plant assemblages in mountainous regions, providing insights for effective diversity conservation and revegetation strategies.

Traditional urban expansion struggles to balance economic and ecological demands. Intensive development planning based on re-naturalization has become the policymakers’ choice. However, planning-oriented land use patterns and re-naturalization pathways remain difficult to determine. This study developed a spatial decision-support framework integrating ecosystem service valuation (ESV), land-use simulation, and ecological planning for Shanghai. This study assessed the spatiotemporal dynamics of ESV and simulated land use patterns and ESV for 2035 under different scenarios (inertial development, cropland protection, and ecological development). The optimal scenario and corresponding re-naturalization pathways were determined based on the principle of the optimal ESV. The results showed that ESV has declined over the past 20 years (−5.21%/5 years). High-value areas shrank significantly due to ecological space degradation. The planning-oriented ecological development scenario is the optimal scenario, with the highest ESV of CNY 189,240.29 million, which is higher than the status quo, inertia development scenario, and cropland protection scenario by 9.69%, 23.27%, and 9.53%, respectively. Taking the land use patterns under the ecological development scenario as the re-naturalization objective, 12 re-naturalization pathways totaling 686.88 km² were identified. Cropland to forestland and built-up land to cropland were the largest, accounting for 67.88% and 15.02%, respectively. This study provides valuable insights into ecological planning and re-naturalization in urbanized areas.

Since the worldwide breakout of COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people died and lost their jobs. The pandemic made almost all economies in recession, with negative GDP growth rate and high unemployment rate. As the top two biggest economies, China and the US are not immune to this pressure. The restaurant industry in these two countries, which is the very basic aspect of people to reflect consumption power, can be influenced significantly. Quarantine requirement prevents people from dining out, even ordering delivery. People and industries are frustrating about future economy growth. Therefore the purpose of this article is to provide information on the restaurant industry and quick service segment in both countries, trying to give out suggestions by investigating professional data and reports and conducting observations and interviews as these methodology can help explain the numbers on websites and could be realistic. Main data source for both countries will be the second-hand information published on the Internet. Observations and interviews will be conducted in China by the author and the objects will be traditional restaurants and their owners, especially quick service restaurant owners. Revenue loss, high unemployment rate, and increasing operational cost drag the quick service restaurant section into recession.