Intertidal zone is a transitional boundary between terrestrial and marine environments, while gathers intense human activities. Our study elucidates that profiles of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in intertidal zones can be used to index regional development status.

We show that flood defenses combining ‘green’ and ‘grey’ features are more beneficial than considered earlier. Beyond wave reduction, ‘green’ salt marshes can lower flood impacts simply by limiting breach size when ‘grey’ engineered structures fail and do so even more effective under sea-level rise

Illicit activity- intentionally hidden behavior- is often left out of quantitative analyses of land changes like forest loss. Creative data approaches-like using news media as a proxy for drug trafficking- can overcome challenges and enable causal analysis.

We evaluate the high potential of PEF produced from industrial carbon dioxide emissions and non-food derived biomass which is an alternative to its counterpart PET.

In this blog I reflect on what led to the article we recently published in Nature Sustainability. Through this reflection, I highlight two crucial ingredients for this study.