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Nature sustainability, november

Volume 3 Issue 11, November 2020

Highly efficient solar-based water sanitation

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation has potential for sustainable water sanitation, but controlling interfacial evaporators for solar tracking to ensure efficiency remains a challenge. Guo and colleagues create a black and super-wicking grooved surface that harnesses the sunlight and purifies water at an ultra-high level of efficiency.

See Singh et al.

Image: H. Cao, University of Rochester. Cover design: Valentina Monaco.

News & Views

• News & Views | 13 July 2020

  Plastic and plants

  Reports on the widespread presence of plastic particles in the environment have raised concerns about whether these particles could be taken up by plants and end up on our plates. An experimental study now reveals a mechanism through which nanoplastics can make their way into plant roots.

  • Matthias C. Rillig

Reviews

• Perspective | 10 August 2020

  Modifying national accounts for sustainable ocean development

  The authors propose that a dashboard of indicators should be used to monitor progress toward a sustainable ocean economy.

  • Eli P. Fenichel
  • Ethan T. Addicott
  • Ben Milligan

Research

• Matters Arising | 20 July 2020

  Native American imprint in palaeoecology

  • Marc D. Abrams
  • Gregory J. Nowacki

  Matters Arising | 20 July 2020

  Scale in the study of Indigenous burning

  • Christopher I. Roos

  Matters Arising | 20 July 2020

  W. W. Oswald et al. reply

  • W. Wyatt Oswald
  • David R. Foster
  • Deena L. Duranleau

  Brief Communication | 06 July 2020

  Re-evaluating effectiveness of vehicle emission control programmes targeting high-emitters

  Accurate estimates of emissions distribution in a vehicle fleet can help air pollution control. With diesel emissions data from chassis dynamometer tests and on-road remote sensing, this study shows that previous results about a skewed distribution towards the highest 10% emitters may not be correct.

  • Yuhan Huang
  • Nic C. Surawski
  • Edward F. C. Chan

  Article | 29 June 2020

  Emergent constraint on crop yield response to warmer temperature from field experiments

  Global responses of crops to warmer temperatures will affect agricultural sustainability. This study of maize, rice, soybean and wheat projects yield reductions of 3–13% under 2 °C warming.

  • Xuhui Wang
  • Chuang Zhao
  • […]
  • Shilong Piao

  Article | 06 July 2020

  Increasing dependence of lowland populations on mountain water resources

  Runoff from mountain water sources is critical to some lowland populations. In this Article, these populations are projected to increase from 0.2 billion people in the 1960s to 1.5 billion by mid-century.

  • Daniel Viviroli
  • Matti Kummu
  • Yoshihide Wada

  Article | 13 July 2020

  Effective uptake of submicrometre plastics by crop plants via a crack-entry mode

  The presence of microplastics in wastewaters used for irrigation highlights the urgency of analysing the possible uptake of microplastics by crop plants. This study shows that submicrometre and micrometre plastic particles from treated wastewater enter the steles of crop plants via a crack entry at sites of lateral root emergence.

  • Lianzhen Li
  • Yongming Luo
  • Yunchao Zhang

  Article | 13 July 2020 | Open Access

  Solar-trackable super-wicking black metal panel for photothermal water sanitation

  Solar-driven interfacial evaporation can be a sustainable process to obtain clean water but device efficiency and simplicity need improving. This study presents a super-wicking and super-light-absorbing aluminium surface with increased efficiency, a simple structure and strong performance.

  • Subhash C. Singh
  • Mohamed ElKabbash
  • Chunlei Guo

  Analysis | 20 July 2020

  Political dynamics and governance of World Heritage ecosystems

  Interaction between international organizations and national governments over 238 World Heritage ecosystems shows patterns of productive and counterproductive dynamics, which yield lessons to improve environmental governance.

  • T. H. Morrison
  • W. N. Adger
  • T. P. Hughes

  Analysis | 06 July 2020

  Gaps and opportunities in nitrogen pollution policies around the world

  A new database of over 2,700 policies on nitrogen around the world highlights the predominance of policies incentivizing its use or managing trade, and the need for integration to avoid shifting pollution from one sink to another.

  • David R. Kanter
  • Olivia Chodos
  • Wilfried Winiwarter

  Analysis | 13 July 2020

  Impacts of international trade on global sustainable development

  International trade interacts with Sustainable Development Goal targets in profound ways. This study finds that while trade improves scores for environmental Sustainable Development Goals in developed countries, it decreases them in developing countries, and distant trade is a bigger contributor to scores than adjacent trade between countries.

  • Zhenci Xu
  • Yingjie Li
  • Jianguo Liu

Amendments & Corrections

• Addendum | 07 October 2020

  Addendum: Tradeoffs between groundwater conservation and air pollution from agricultural fires in northwest India

  • Balwinder-Singh
  • Andrew J. McDonald
  • Bruno Gerard