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The salinity of groundwater in Qinzhou Bay has been increasing since 2013. This phenomenon affects livelihoods and the local agricultural economy, specifically in the Longmengang area. In this work, we investigate the causes of water salinization to provide evidence for effectively managing the local water resources and improving water quality. We collected 110 samples of water from spatially distributed local wells, rivers, reservoirs, and the sea, and conducted a hydrochemical study complemented by numerical modeling. We found that water pumping and mariculture practices are the principal contributors to seawater intrusion into the groundwater table, which leads to increased water salinization. Plain Language Summary: Groundwater salinity in Qinzhou Bay is increasing due to excessive well water extraction and mariculture practices, which promote seawater intrusion into the local groundwater table. Based on the hydrochemical analyses, the spatially distributed trend of ions content in groundwater shows low concentrations inland and increasing concentrations seaward. However, several localities of Qinzhou Bay are out of this scenario because of artificial activities requiring specific monitoring and regulation. Key Points: Field investigations and hydrochemical analyses show salinization of groundwater in Qinzhou BayHydrogeological modeling indicates that different processes contribute to water salinizationGroundwater salinization in Longmen Island is caused by excessive groundwater use and mariculture practices [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambient vibration/noise (passive surface wave) is a relatively new method that has attracted an increased attention in recent years. The main advantages of the methods are low cost and environmentally friendly. But, it's a hot topic to extract high-mode dispersion curves which have strong constraint of structure. Recently, Xiaofei Chen proposed the vector wavenumber transform method (VWTM).In this study, we extract high-frequency Rayleigh wave's multimode dispersion curves from urban ambient vibration by the vector wavenumber transform method (VWTM). First, we evaluate the performance of VWTM by applying it to the synthetic data, and by comparing to the theoretical dispersion curves. Next, we apply the VWTM to engineering exploration in Shanghai China, and get high-resolution fundamental and higher-mode dispersion curves. Through comparative analysis with borehole data, we find the stratigraphic profile which obtained from the inversion with higher-mode dispersion curves is almost identical to stratigraphic texture. Because of the strong constraint of the higher-mode dispersion curves, the uncertainty of the inversion is greatly reduced. We find that VWTM is a practical and effective urban ambient vibration/noise processing method that can be used for the urban stratigraphic division, the buried depth of the bed rock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using next-generation sequencing technology alone, we have successfully generated and assembled a draft sequence of the giant panda genome. The assembled contigs (2.25 gigabases (Gb)) cover approximately 94% of the whole genome, and the remaining gaps (0.05 Gb) seem to contain carnivore-specific repeats and tandem repeats. Comparisons with the dog and human showed that the panda genome has a lower divergence rate. The assessment of panda genes potentially underlying some of its unique traits indicated that its bamboo diet might be more dependent on its gut microbiome than its own genetic composition. We also identified more than 2.7 million heterozygous single nucleotide polymorphisms in the diploid genome. Our data and analyses provide a foundation for promoting mammalian genetic research, and demonstrate the feasibility for using next-generation sequencing technologies for accurate, cost-effective and rapid de novo assembly of large eukaryotic genomes.