Metasurfaces can provide novel functionality for absorbing electromagnetic waves through a periodic array of inductive/capacitive resonators by controlling the material's permittivity and permeability. This attractive characteristic makes them widely applicable to various electromagnetic applications. However, conventional metasurfaces are dispersive and suffer from a narrow bandwidth with uncontrollable and unchangeable functions because the effective permittivity and permeability are tailored to a certain resonance frequency. Therefore, many studies have focused on how to increase the absorption frequency bandwidth and control the absorption frequency by using reconfigurable metasurfaces. This paper presents a report on the most recent progress in the realization of reconfigurable metasurfaces based on advanced materials for frequency‐selective absorption in the microwave, millimeter‐wave, sub‐terahertz, terahertz, and visible ranges. Furthermore, their tuning ratios for different advanced materials and spectra are summarized and compared. This progress report provides guidelines for the material selection for and the design of reconfigurable metasurfaces.

In Vietnam, most research has addressed important ecological and biological aspects of NTFPs, but research on the relationship between NTFPs and livelihoods of rural households is still limited. This research, therefore, seeks to fill a gap in understanding of the contribution of NTFPs to the livelihoods of forest-dependent people in Vietnam. Structured interviews were held with 100 households in three villages in Truong Son commune, Luong Son district, Hoa Binh Province, Vietnam with different types of household wealth ranking. The indirect opportunity cost (IOC) method was applied to provide an indirect estimate of the economic value of NTFP extraction by households. This research showed that NTFPs contribute moderately to livelihoods of all forest-dependent people in Vietnam, but that NTFPs are a more important livelihood source for poor households than for moderate and rich households. Significant determinants of a household’s dependence on NTFPs are the number of adults, other types of cash income (e.g. off-farm cash income, animal husbandry cash income, other forest activities cash income, pension, and salaries). The research findings suggest several implications for policymakers.

Forests in the Philippines, and many other developing countries in the tropics, have been extensively cleared over recent decades. There have been increasing efforts to reforest these cleared lands to achieve both socio-economic and environmental objectives. To date, planted forests have been dominated by monocultures. There has however been increasing calls to use mixtures of species, although there is limited evidence to support mixed-species plantations being a better or win-win approach to reforestation. To address this, we compared the tree growth, forest structure, and tree species diversity performance of monoculture and mixed-species tree plantations across 168 sites (251 survey plots) on Leyte Island, the Philippines. Our results indicate that mixtures of fast-growing exotics species had better growth performance compared to monocultures of fast-growing exotics species, and also better tree species diversity performance at both the plot and landscape scale. Our results suggest that mixtures of exotic or native species can provide benefits over monoculture plantations. Mixtures of productive exotic species are most suited to situations where the production function of the forest is most important, while mixtures of native species are most suited to situations where the biodiversity function of the forest is most important.

In coping with significant deforestation, forest degradation, and a lack of raw materials for the wood processing industry, currently in Hoa Binh province, massive reforestation projects have been implemented. However, when remarkable attempts and investments have been made in reforestation, interaction of household characteristics, socio-economic and institutional factors with small-scale forest tree planting decision are still little understood in Vietnam in general and in the study area in particular. In this study, 250 households of 2 districts, namely Cao Phong and Kim Boi, in Hoa Binh province were surveyed on factors influencing forest tree planting decision by households. We found that five main factors - including attitude to forest tree planting, knowledge of household head on silviculture, investment capital, participation in forest programs, and age of household head - significantly influenced forest tree planting decision by households in the study area.

There is a wide range of potential factors directly and indirectly influencing the decision of households participating in Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD⁺) programs. These potential factors can be grouped into characteristics of household heads, household characteristics, awareness of households on REDD+ program, and REDD+ policies factors. In this study, a survey conducted of 250 households (including 125 households participating and 125 non-participants in REDD+ program) in Ban Cam commune, Bao Thang district, Lao Cai province (150 households); and in Muong Phang commune, Dien Bien district, Dien Bien province (100 households), Vietnam. Binary logistic regression was used to identify key factors that significantly affect the decisions of households participating in REDD⁺ programs in the study area. Six key factors influencing household participation in REDD⁺ programs in the study area were identified, namely ethnicity, forestland area, educational level of household head, concern about forest degradation, equal distribution of government payment, and understanding of benefit on REDD⁺. The findings of this research provide implications for solution development, with the aim being to encourage participation of local households in REDD⁺ programs in the study area.