The Aeronautical Reconnaissance Coverage Geographic Information System (ArcGIS) 10.2 and Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model are used to comprehensively evaluate ecosystem services in the Dongting Lake Wetland, focusing on water yield, soil conservation, carbon storage, and snail control and schistosomiasis prevention. The spatial and temporal variations of these services, as well as their variations between different land use types in a period of 10 years from 2005 to 2015, are investigated, and the value of such services is then estimated and analyzed. The results of this study show various temporal and spatial trends in the ecosystem services, such as (1) the overall increase of all these services during the study period (although significant in some services, such as schistosomiasis patient reduction, by 86.8%; and, very slight in some others such as soil conservation, only by 0.02%); (2) different orders of the services values that are based on different land use types; and, (3) the temporal changes in the proportion of the values of different ecosystem services with respect to the total services value. Besides, it is concluded that the evaluation of ecosystem services of a certain wetland is heavily dependent on the characteristics of the area where the wetland is located, and the assessment indicators and methods should be selected based on such characteristics through the analysis of the results and a comparison with the findings of literature.
A comprehensive review is conducted on the application of Lagrangian mesh-free methods for simulating flows in various types of porous media, ranging from fixed structures like coastal breakwaters to deformable and transportable media. Deformable porous media refer to soil structures that may deform under the influence of currents and waves, while transportable media involve processes such as sediment transport and scour around hydraulic, coastal, and ocean structures. This review addresses problem dimensionality, governing equations, domain discretization schemes, interaction mechanisms, and applications. The literature analysis reveals that while various numerical techniques have been employed to model the complex interaction between fluid and solid phases, not all methods are physically or mathematically justifiable. However, some approaches have significantly advanced the modeling process over the past two decades. Based on these findings, a modeling framework is proposed to guide the construction of mesh-free models for simulating flow interactions with natural or engineered porous structures. It highlights two effective approaches: (i) Three-dimensional (3D) pore-scale microscopic modeling of flow through large-sized solid particles using coupled smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and discrete element method (DEM), and (ii) two-dimensional (2D) macroscopic modeling of flow in small-sized porous media using the mixture theory and SPH. The framework highlights the mixture-theory-based methods as particularly effective for large-scale simulations and the advanced SPH-DEM coupling techniques that enable precise simulations of complex fluid–solid interactions. The framework serves as a guide for researchers developing mesh-free numerical models to simulate fluid flows in porous media for hydraulic, coastal, and ocean engineering applications.