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For the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of wetland ecosystems, precision in extracting high-quality wetland land cover information is crucial. This study focused on the National Nature Reserve of Liaohe Estuary in Panjin City, Liaoning Province, China. To enhance the classification accuracy of wetland land covers exhibiting similar spectral characteristics and alleviate the occurrence of the ‘salt-and-pepper’ effect, where certain land parcels are erroneously classified into multiple categories by pixel-based methods, an approach integrating object-oriented techniques and temporal features was employed for precise wetland land cover classification. The analysis utilized multi-temporal Sentinel-2 multispectral images. Initially, the images underwent segmentation using the SNIC method to generate uniform polygons, effectively mitigating misclassification issues. Subsequently, texture, geometry, band reflectance, and spectral deviation features were extracted for each segmented object. A total of 57 features, including vegetation and moisture components, were integrated to construct temporal characteristics. By applying the Random Forest (RF) algorithm in combination with Extreme Randomized Trees (ERT), 18 significant features influencing wetland extraction were identified. These selected features were then utilized to train a Random Forest (RF) model for classifying wetland land cover in the study area. The findings revealed that the integrated object-oriented and temporal feature classification approach achieved an impressive overall accuracy of 95.52% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.95 for the Liaohe Estuary wetland region. The accuracy for various land cover types reached 0.87 for both user and producer accuracy. Compared to alternative machine learning algorithms such as SegUnet++, SVM, and RF, the proposed method demonstrated a performance increase of 16.35%, 14.06%, and 6.14%, respectively. The incorporation of temporal features notably reduced land cover misclassifications, resulting in a 6.14% increase in overall accuracy and a 0.07 improvement in the Kappa coefficient compared to a method lacking temporal features. Particularly for categories like canals, aquaculture, rivers, and reservoirs, producer accuracy improved by over 7.5% and user accuracy by more than 2.9%. The effectiveness of the object-oriented approach was evident in addressing the “salt-and-pepper” effect, showcasing a rise of 2.81% in overall accuracy and 0.03 in Kappa coefficient compared to an approach not utilizing object-oriented techniques. In summary, the proposed classification method, integrating object-oriented methods and temporal features, offers superior accuracy in fine wetland land cover classification and mapping.

Soil bacterial communities play a crucial role in the functioning of estuarine wetlands. Investigating the structure and function of these communities across various wetland types, along with the key factors influencing them, is essential for understanding the relationship between bacteria and wetland ecosystems. The Liaohe Estuary Wetland formed this study’s research area, and soil samples from four distinct wetland types were utilized: suaeda wetlands, reed wetlands, pond returning wetlands, and tidal flat wetlands. The structure and function of the soil bacterial communities were examined using Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing technology in conjunction with the PICRUSt analysis method. The results indicate that different wetland types significantly affect the physical and chemical properties of soil, as well as the structure and function of bacterial communities. The abundance and diversity of soil bacterial communities were highest in the suaeda wetland and lowest in the tidal flat wetland. The dominant bacterial phyla identified were Proteobacteria and Bacteroidota. Furthermore, the dominant bacterial genera identified included RSA9, SZUA_442, and SP4260. The primary functional pathways associated with the bacterial communities involved the biosynthesis of valine, leucine, and isoleucine, as well as lipoic acid metabolism, which are crucial for the carbon and nitrogen cycles. This study enhances our understanding of the mutual feedback between river estuary wetland ecosystems and environmental changes, providing a theoretical foundation for the protection and management of wetlands.

Surfactant huff-n-puff (HnP) has been shown to be an effective protocol to improve oil recovery in tight and ultratight reservoirs. The success of surfactant HnP for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process depends on the efficiency of the designed chemical formula, as the formation of an in situ microemulsion by surfactant injection is considered to be the most desirable condition for achieving an ultra-low interfacial tension during the HnP process. In this work, we conducted experimental studies on the mechanism of in situ microemulsion EOR in the Mahu tight oil reservoir. Salinity scan experiments were carried out to compare different surfactants with crude oil from the Mahu reservoir, starting with the assessment of surfactant micellar solutions for their ability to form microemulsions with Mahu crude oil and examining the interfacial characteristics. Subsequently, detailed micromodels representing millimeter-scale fractures, micron-scale pores, and nano-scale channels were utilized to study the imbibition and flowback of various surfactant micellar solutions. Observations of the in situ microemulsion system revealed the mechanisms behind the enhanced oil recovery, which was the emulsification’s near-miscibility effect leading to microemulsion formation and its performance under low-interfacial-tension conditions. During the injection process, notable improvements in the micro-scale pore throat heterogeneity were observed, which improved the pore fluid mobility. The flowback phase improved the channeling between the different media, promoting a uniform movement of the oil–water interface and aiding in the recovery of a significant amount of the oil phase permeability.

In the context of rapid population growth and limited arable land resources, the agricultural system has to provide enough food in a sustainable way. Regional agricultural systems have good consistency in agricultural practices, management decisions, social economy, and climate, which is of great significance in ensuring food security. In this study, emergy analysis and the logarithmic mean divisia index method were integrated to construct an evaluation framework from the dimensions of socio-economic environment, resource environment, climate environment, and ecological environment. Then we evaluated and analyzed the changes in agricultural system sustainability from 1990 to 2019 in the mainstream of Liaohe River Basin, a typical agricultural basin in China. The results showed that the Emergy sustainability index (ESI) decreased from 0.17 to 0.14, and factors Δ P _t /G _t (social and economic development level), Δ G/I (agricultural economic benefits), and Δ G _t /G (economic structure) from the socio-economic environment dimension had the greatest impact on changes in ESI. Moreover, society and economy affected the factors in the resource environmental dimensions through the allocation of policies and resources, which in turn directly affected ESI. The influence of factors from the climatic environment and ecological environment weakens as the ability to manage agricultural systems increases. The research provided a reference for the planning and management of sustaining agricultural systems at a regional scale.

Parvalbumin (PV) interneurons in the auditory cortex (AC) play a crucial role in shaping auditory processing, including receptive field formation, temporal precision enhancement, and gain regulation. PV interneurons are also the primary inhibitory neurons in the tail of the striatum (TS), which is one of the major descending brain regions in the auditory nervous system. However, the specific roles of TS-PV interneurons in auditory processing remain elusive. In this study, morphological and slice recording experiments in both male and female mice revealed that TS-PV interneurons, compared with AC-PV interneurons, were present in fewer numbers but exhibited longer projection distances, which enabled them to provide sufficient inhibitory inputs to spiny projection neurons (SPNs). Furthermore, TS-PV interneurons received dense auditory input from both the AC and medial geniculate body (MGB), particularly from the MGB, which rendered their auditory responses comparable to those of AC-PV interneurons. Optogenetic manipulation experiments demonstrated that TS-PV interneurons were capable of bidirectionally regulating the auditory responses of SPNs. Our findings suggest that PV interneurons can effectively modulate auditory processing in the TS and may play a critical role in auditory-related behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]