Natural cases of zooanthroponotic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to animals have been reported during the COVID-19 pandemic, including to free-ranging white-tailed deer (<i>Odocoileus virginianus</i>) in North America and farmed American mink (<i>Neovison vison</i>) on multiple continents. To understand the potential for angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)-mediated viral tropism we characterised the ...

Methanotrophs oxidize most of the methane (CH₄) produced in natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. Often living close to soil surfaces, these microorganisms must frequently adjust to temperature change. While many environmental studies have addressed temperature effects on CH₄ oxidation and methanotrophic communities, there is little knowledge about the physiological adjustments ...

Tourism entrepreneurs have the responsibility to adopt and promote more sustainable behaviours. By drawing on the understanding of entrepreneurship as practice and focusing on environmental sustainability, this chapter explores the case of an ecotourism company and its experience design process for behaviour change. This process is conceptualised as a complex entrepreneurial practice composed ...

The rise in offshore oil and gas operations, maritime shipping, and tourism in northern latitudes enhances the risk of oil spills to sub-Arctic and Arctic coastal environments. Therefore, there is a need to understand the potential adverse effects of petroleum on key species in these areas. Here, we investigated the effects of oil exposure on the early life stages of capelin (Mallotus villosus), ...

Tourism interventions, as tools for social change and preservation of natural and cultural assets are inherently complex. This study presents an improved method for the evaluation of complex tourism interventions. We argue that participatory methods can promote a culture of evaluation that supports partners throughout evidencing project impacts, eliminating negative attitudes to evaluation ...

Methods to capture the complexity of using policy instruments would allow us to better evaluate the reasons for their effectiveness. Drawing from complexity science, we produce a Causal Loop Diagram to analyse the implementation of two informational policy instruments in a tourism destination: the Global Sustainable Tourism Council criteria and the European Tourism Indicator Scheme. To interpret the ...

Seasonal changes in environmental conditions drive phenology, i.e., the annual timing of biological events ranging from the individual to the ecosystem. Phenological patterns and successional abundance cycles have been particularly well studied in temperate freshwater systems, showing strong and predictable synchrony with seasonal changes. However, seasonal successional changes in the abundance ...

Botrytis blight is an important disease of wild blueberry [<i>(Vaccinium angustifolium (Va)</i> and <i>V. myrtilloides (Vm)</i>)] with variable symptoms in the field due to differences in susceptibility among blueberry phenotypes. Representative blueberry plants of varying phenotypes were inoculated with spores of <i> B. cinerea </i>. The relative expression of pathogenesis-related genes (<i>PR3, ...

In semi-arid regions such as the southwestern zone of Morocco, better management of water resources is crucial due to the frequent flooding phenomena. In this context, the use of hydrological models is becoming increasingly important, specifically in the Aguenza watershed. A multitude of hydrological models are available to make very efficient modeling, and from this perspective, a comparative ...

This study aimed to evaluate the extent and severity of water erosion in the Toudgha river catchment in the Central High Atlas of Morocco using two different erosion models, the Erosion Potential Model (EPM) and the Priority Actions Programme/Regional Activity Centre (PAP/RAC) model. From the modeling results, the catchment was affected by varying degrees of erosion, ranging from “very slight” ...