The randomized block experiment was conducted from March 2022 to October 2023 at the Xihai Xin Experimental Site in Ordos City. After the 2022 wheat harvest, researchers compared five green manure species—common vetch, hairy vetch, sesbania, forage rapeseed and forage oat—with a fallow control. Each treatment had three field replicates, producing 18 plots, each measuring 144 square metres. The green manures were sown on August 3, 2022, cut into 10–15-centimetre pieces and incorporated to a depth of 20–30 centimetres in early October.

Ningchun 4 spring wheat was subsequently sown on April 13, 2023. All treatments received the same basal fertilizer, urea top-dressings, irrigation and other field management. Soil carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes were measured during the wheat growing season with closed static chambers. The researchers also recorded wheat growth at the seedling, booting, heading and grain-filling stages and measured yield components and grain yield at maturity.

The crop–soil system emitted carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide but was a weak methane sink. Relative to fallow, green manure incorporation numerically increased cumulative carbon dioxide emissions by 7.29% to 44.30%. The highest cumulative carbon dioxide emission occurred under sesbania, at 5,466.83 kg per hectare, compared with 3,788.64 kg per hectare under fallow, although the researchers did not detect statistically significant differences among treatments. All green manure treatments except common vetch had greater cumulative methane uptake than fallow, with sesbania recording 49.65% greater uptake.

Cumulative nitrous oxide emission was highest under common vetch, at 2.51 kg per hectare, and lowest under forage oat, at 2.06 kg per hectare, which was comparable to the fallow treatment. Common vetch increased cumulative nitrous oxide emissions by 21.82% relative to fallow. Green manure also numerically increased growing-season global warming potential by 7.44% to 39.64%, with the largest increases recorded under sesbania and forage rapeseed. However, treatment differences in global warming potential were not statistically significant, and carbon dioxide contributed more than 85% of the calculated total.

Green manure improved several measured aspects of wheat growth. At grain filling, plant height was 3.68% to 11.32% higher than under fallow, leaf area index was 4.94% to 52.60% higher, and aboveground dry matter accumulation was 19.10% to 50.11% higher. The yield response was associated with changes in effective spike number, grain number per spike and thousand-grain weight. Grain yield was positively correlated with effective spike number, with a Pearson coefficient of 0.92, and with thousand-grain weight, with a coefficient of 0.95; both relationships had P values below 0.01.

Hairy vetch had the highest effective spike number and grain yield, with yield 11.95% above fallow. Forage rapeseed and forage oat increased yield by 11.24% and 11.09%, respectively. Forage oat had the highest grain number per spike, 25.36% above fallow, while forage rapeseed had the highest thousand-grain weight, 34.19% above fallow. These differing yield components helped explain why the five green manure species did not produce identical responses in either productivity or emissions.

Because global warming potential is measured per unit area, it can rise even when additional grain production lowers emissions per unit of yield. The yield-scaled greenhouse gas intensity results therefore differed from the area-scaled results. Hairy vetch reduced intensity by 4.10% relative to fallow and had the lowest value among the treatments, while common vetch also reduced intensity. Sesbania had the highest intensity, and forage rapeseed ranked second-highest. These comparisons are specific to the measured crop, treatment period and indicators; the study did not establish that green manure species consistently determine whether growing-season global warming potential rises or falls.

The findings offer region-specific evidence for choosing among the tested species: hairy vetch best combined yield with low yield-scaled greenhouse gas intensity, common vetch reduced intensity relative to fallow, and forage oat combined relatively high yield with the lowest cumulative nitrous oxide emission. The authors described those three species as promising for post-wheat incorporation in the Yellow River Basin of Inner Mongolia under the experimental conditions. Important limitations remain: the treatment comparison covered one post-wheat green manure cycle and one subsequent wheat season, used three replicates per treatment, and measured growing-season soil gas exchange rather than full life-cycle emissions or net ecosystem carbon balance. Longer-term effects on soil carbon accumulation, nitrogen-use efficiency, yield stability and economic returns were not established and require further evaluation.

Subject of Research: Comparison of five post-wheat green manure species for spring wheat yield and soil greenhouse gas emissions in arid irrigated Inner Mongolia

Article Title: Species-specific effects of post-wheat green manure incorporation on spring wheat yield and soil greenhouse gas emissions in an arid irrigated system

Article References: Li, B., Wang, L., Li, C., Lu, Z., Zhang, L., Liu, H., Li, J., & Zhang, D. (2026). Species-specific effects of post-wheat green manure incorporation on spring wheat yield and soil greenhouse gas emissions in an arid irrigated system. PLOS One, 21(10), e0360932. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360932

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0360932

Keywords: spring wheat, green manure, hairy vetch, forage oat, grain yield, soil carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane uptake, global warming potential, greenhouse gas intensity, Inner Mongolia, field experiment

The findings establish a one-year, single-farm baseline for these organisms in cattle in Inner Mongolia. The observational study collected cattle fecal samples during different seasonal sampling periods in 2024. Investigators extracted genomic DNA and then used nested polymerase chain reaction and sequencing to detect the pathogens and characterize their genetic variation.

The internal transcribed spacer region was amplified for E. bieneusi . For G. duodenalis , the researchers analyzed the small-subunit ribosomal RNA, beta-giardin, glutamate dehydrogenase and triosephosphate isomerase genes. This design paired prevalence measurements across seasons with genetic characterization of the detected organisms, allowing the investigators to compare both the frequency of detection and the diversity of identified genotypes or assemblages.

BEB4 was the dominant genotype in the sampled material. Three G. duodenalis assemblages—A, B and E—were identified, with assemblage E predominating. Thus, the genetic results documented multiple recognized genotypes of E. bieneusi and multiple assemblages of G. duodenalis in the cattle examined.

The authors described the investigation as the first systematic study of the seasonal distribution of these two pathogens in cattle in Inner Mongolia. Its scope was limited to 505 fecal samples collected during 2024 at a single intensive dairy farm in Hohhot, and the seasonal comparisons therefore describe that farm and sampling year rather than establishing population-wide trends across Inner Mongolia or China. Likewise, the genotype and assemblage findings characterize the sampled cattle and do not by themselves establish how the organisms are transmitted, whether particular genetic variants influence disease, or whether control measures are effective.

By combining season-specific prevalence estimates with sequencing-based identification, the study provides a baseline for the epidemiology and genetic diversity of E. bieneusi and G. duodenalis in an intensive dairy-cattle setting.

Subject of Research: Seasonal prevalence and genetic diversity of two intestinal pathogens in dairy cattle at an intensive farm in Inner Mongolia, China

Article Title: Seasonal Distribution and Genetic Diversity of Enterocytozoon bieneusi and Giardia duodenalis in Dairy Cattle from an Intensive Farm in Inner Mongolia, China

Article References: Liu, Y.-Y., Zhao, C.-X., Jia, J.-T., Liu, Z., Liu, T., Zhang, C.-H., Lv, Y.-R., Xue, S.-Y., Ding, Y.-L., Zhao, L., & Liu, Y.-H. (2026). Seasonal Distribution and Genetic Diversity of Enterocytozoon bieneusi and Giardia duodenalis in Dairy Cattle from an Intensive Farm in Inner Mongolia, China. Acta Parasitologica, 71(6), Article 241. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11686-026-01429-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11686-026-01429-4

Keywords: dairy cattle, intestinal pathogens, seasonal prevalence, genetic diversity, microsporidia, fecal PCR, Inner Mongolia, China, Seasonal, Distribution, Genetic, Diversity

The research team, led by Peng Li, Yong Gao, and Xiaohong Dang of Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, focused on two adjacent mining areas in Ejin Horo Banner, Ordos City, near the border between Shaanxi Province and Inner Mongolia. The Lijiata mining area sits in an aeolian sandy landscape at the southern edge of the Mu Us Sandy Land, while the Buertai area lies just a few kilometers away on the loess plateau, where thick Quaternary loess deposits blanket ridge-and-gully terrain. Because the two sites share nearly identical climatic conditions—roughly 350 millimeters of annual precipitation and a mean annual temperature of 6.6 degrees Celsius—the design allowed the researchers to isolate the effects of soil type and subsidence disturbance from the confounding influence of weather.

From December 2024 through April 2025, the team deployed HOBO U23 automatic recorders at four fixed monitoring sites: subsidence and non-subsidence zones in each soil type. Sensors measured soil temperature and volumetric water content at six depths from 10 to 60 centimeters, logging data every hour. This continuous, high-resolution record captured the full arc of the freeze-thaw season, from initial freezing through stable freezing, alternating freeze-thaw, and final thaw. The researchers classified these stages using daily minimum and maximum soil temperatures relative to 0 degrees Celsius, then quantified water variability at each depth using coefficients of variation.

The timing results reveal a striking contrast between the two soils. Freezing progressed from shallow to deeper layers in both soil types, beginning in early to mid-December with little difference in onset dates. But the sandy soil froze as a coherent block: every layer from the surface down to 60 centimeters reached complete freezing on December 12. Loess soil behaved differently, with the upper 30 centimeters freezing completely on December 12 while the 40-to-60-centimeter layers lagged until late December. Loess then thawed earlier than sand—by as much as 35 days at some depths—and cycled through fewer daily freeze-thaw events, with counts ranging from 58 to 74 cycles in loess versus 75 to 93 in sand.

Subsidence left its own unmistakable fingerprint on this seasonal clock. In the loess subsidence area, complete freezing arrived approximately 6 days earlier than in the undisturbed reference zone, and thawing was delayed by about 2 days. The sandy subsidence area also showed delayed thawing, lagging the non-subsidence zone by 2 days. The explanation lies in how mining fractures the ground: surface subsidence destroys the original structural layering of the vadose zone, loosens the soil, and opens vertical fissures that increase infiltration pathways and the area of soil exposed to evaporation. Once ice forms, its thermal conductivity exceeds that of liquid water, accelerating water-heat exchange and speeding the freezing rate in the disturbed ground.

Soil temperature itself proved to be primarily a follower of air temperature, with the strongest atmospheric influence concentrated in the 0-to-40-centimeter layer and diminishing with depth. During freeze-thaw transitions, soil temperature exhibited a characteristic decrease-then-increase pattern and responded to air temperature with a noticeable lag. The subsidence zones also displayed distinctive thermal signatures: in the sandy subsidence area, surface temperatures during full freezing were higher while deep temperatures were lower, compressing the temperature differences among layers, whereas the loess subsidence area showed more pronounced temperature contrasts between depths.

Water dynamics diverged sharply between the soil types. In the loess region, soil water content outside the subsidence zone exceeded that inside it across nearly all layers, by margins ranging from 0.03 to 46.67 percent over the 0-to-60-centimeter profile. The non-subsidence loess zone recorded a maximum water content of 10.41 percent on December 13 and a minimum of 5.11 percent on January 21, while the subsidence zone swung from 11.62 percent down to just 1.35 percent. In the sandy region, the pattern partially reversed: water content in the 0-to-40-centimeter layers outside the subsidence zone ran 4.20 to 10.76 percent higher than inside, but the subsidence zone showed more active water movement in deeper layers and relative stability at the surface.

The variability analysis added another layer of nuance. Coefficients of variation ranked highest in the aeolian sand non-subsidence zone, followed by the sand subsidence zone, the loess subsidence zone, and finally the undisturbed loess zone. In the undisturbed loess profile, the upper 30 centimeters showed moderate variability while deeper layers were stable, but subsidence pushed the 0-to-10-centimeter and 30-to-40-centimeter layers into the strong-variation category. Sandy profiles showed strong variation from 0 to 30 centimeters under both conditions. These patterns reflect how the higher porosity and lower initial water content of sandy soil produce greater fluctuations during freeze-thaw cycles, while subsidence fissures amplify vertical hydraulic connectivity and promote preferential flow.

Perhaps the most technically significant result concerns the coupling relationship itself. Fitting polynomial curves to paired temperature and water measurements revealed significant nonlinear relationships at every depth in all four zones, with coefficients of determination ranging from 0.55 to 0.93, all statistically significant. In subsidence areas, soil water content initially rose with temperature, peaked, and then declined; in sandy subsidence sites, water increased steadily with temperature but at a gradually diminishing rate. Correlations were strongest in surface layers for most zones—the loess non-subsidence area peaked at R² of 0.93 in the 0-to-10-centimeter layer, while the sandy non-subsidence area reached 0.91 at 20 to 30 centimeters—but the sandy subsidence area broke the pattern, with correlations that did not vary systematically with depth, likely because wind erosion and subsidence fissures expose deep soil to environmental forcing.

The broader implications reach well beyond the Ordos Plateau. Because freeze-thaw processes regulate soil evaporation, water storage, and land-atmosphere energy exchange, any disturbance that shifts the timing of freezing and thawing ripples through the entire ecohydrological system of cold, arid regions. The study demonstrates that under comparable climatic conditions, soil structure—not climate—is the dominant regulator of hydrothermal coupling, and that mining-induced subsidence acts as a structural perturbation with measurable consequences for how water migrates and heat flows through the frozen vadose zone. As coal production continues across China’s ecologically fragile northern belt, these findings provide a scientific basis for restoration strategies that account for the hidden winter physics of disturbed ground, and they underscore that the legacy of underground extraction is written not only in sunken landscapes but in the frozen pores of the soil itself.

Subject of Research: Effects of coal mining-induced subsidence on soil water-heat coupling during freeze-thaw cycles in loess and aeolian sandy soils of Inner Mongolia

Article Title: Soil hydrothermal coupling dynamics in a Loess–Aeolian sandy mining subsidence area under freeze-thaw conditions

Article References: Li, P., Gao, Y., Dang, X., Liu, Y., Han, Y., Liu, J., & Li, X. (2026). Soil hydrothermal coupling dynamics in a Loess–Aeolian sandy mining subsidence area under freeze-thaw conditions. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 14, Article 1901630. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2026.1901630

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1901630

Keywords: soil freeze-thaw, mining subsidence, soil water-heat coupling, loess, aeolian sand, Inner Mongolia, seasonal frozen soil, coal mining, soil moisture dynamics, vadose zone, ecohydrology, Ordos Plateau

Spatial imagery, as the researchers define it, refers to people’s experiential understanding of the environment around them. It is the mental representation that accumulates as individuals walk streets, pass landmarks, and navigate routines, and it shapes everything from wayfinding to emotional attachment to place. For rural tourism destinations, the team argues, understanding how residents and tourists each picture the landscape is not an academic luxury. When the two groups’ images of a place diverge sharply, planning decisions based on one perspective can quietly alienate the other, undermining the coordinated development that destination managers seek.

To capture these divergent pictures, the researchers built a theoretical framework organized around three nested levels: spatial imagery elements, spatial imagery structure, and spatial imagery pattern. The element level asks which components of the environment, such as paths, landmarks, regions, nodes, and edges in the tradition of urban image analysis, dominate people’s mental representations. The structure level examines how those components are organized cognitively, from fragmented single impressions to richly sequenced networks. The pattern level maps where imagery concentrates in physical space, revealing the hotspots that anchor each group’s collective imagination.

The empirical work combined qualitative and quantitative techniques in a mixed-methods design. The team conducted interviews with residents and visitors, asked participants to draw cognitive maps of the village, and then subjected the resulting data to spatial interpolation and geographic information system analysis. This combination allowed the researchers to move beyond anecdote: rather than simply reporting that residents and tourists feel differently about Shiwei, they could locate those differences on the ground and characterize their geometry.

The first major finding concerns elements. Residents primarily organize their spatial imagery through region and path elements, emphasizing spatial continuity, familiarity, and daily practicality. Their mental village is stitched together from the routes they walk to work, the fields they tend, and the neighborhoods they inhabit, forming a coherent fabric of lived experience. Tourists, by contrast, rely mainly on landmark elements to perceive the village, focusing on symbolic uniqueness and tourism functionality. For visitors, Shiwei is a constellation of photogenic highlights, distinctive buildings, and service points, each standing out against a background that remains largely undifferentiated.

The second finding concerns structure, and here the contrast is equally stark. Residents frequently employ high-level sequential cognitive maps, meaning their representations link locations into ordered chains and networks that reflect the temporal rhythm of daily life. Tourists primarily utilize low-level monolithic cognitive maps, in which individual attractions are stored as isolated units rather than connected sequences. This difference in cognitive architecture suggests that residents possess a deeply integrated understanding of village space, while tourists operate with a more fragmented, checklist-like image assembled around discrete destinations.

The third finding concerns pattern, and it is the most visually striking. When the researchers mapped the density of image hotspots across the village, residents’ hotspots exhibited an elliptical clustering pattern with a distribution described as dense in the north and sparse in the south. Tourists’ hotspots, by contrast, were distributed in multiple clusters concentrated in three main areas, forming an overall arc-shaped pattern. In other words, the resident image of Shiwei is a single continuous core weighted toward one end of the settlement, while the tourist image is a broken ring of attraction clusters strung along the village’s most visited axis.

These results carry practical weight for rural tourism planning. If visitor imagery clusters in a few landmark-dense zones while resident imagery spreads along paths and regions that visitors barely register, then infrastructure investments, signage, and route design based solely on tourist maps will neglect the connective tissue that makes the village function for its inhabitants. Conversely, development that respects only resident routines may fail to channel tourist flows in ways that disperse economic benefit. The authors position their framework as a diagnostic tool for identifying such mismatches before they harden into planning conflicts.

The study is also notable for its methodological ambition. Analyzing spatial imagery at the micro-scale of a single village required the team to adapt cognitive mapping techniques, traditionally used for cities, to a setting where the entire imageable environment can be walked in minutes. By pairing interview data with spatial interpolation and GIS analysis, the researchers demonstrated that qualitative mental representations can be converted into quantifiable spatial patterns, an approach they describe as a methodologically rigorous attempt at this scale. The work was supported by multiple grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and related programs, reflecting sustained institutional investment in rural spatial research.

Shiwei itself, a village known for its Russian heritage architecture and borderland scenery, is an apt laboratory for these questions, since its tourism economy depends precisely on the symbolic distinctiveness that dominates tourist imagery. As rural destinations across China and beyond grapple with balancing community life and visitor economies, the study’s central lesson travels well beyond one village: the same landscape is genuinely different places in different minds, and sustainable planning begins by mapping both.

Subject of Research: Differences in spatial imagery between residents and tourists in a rural tourism village

Article Title: Differences in spatial imagery from the dual perspectives of residents and tourists: A case study of Shiwei village

Article References: Xu, Y., an, C., nacun, B., Wu, J., Han, L., & Ilia, K. (2026). Differences in spatial imagery from the dual perspectives of residents and tourists: A case study of Shiwei village. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09250-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09250-0

Keywords: spatial imagery, cognitive maps, rural tourism, Shiwei village, Inner Mongolia, GIS analysis, spatial planning, landmarks, tourist perception, resident perception, destination development, human geography

The specimen was collected during field expeditions in 2014 at the Duanjiagou site in Ningcheng County, Chifeng City. It consists of an articulated, three-dimensionally preserved postcranial skeleton: ten cervical vertebrae, nine dorsal vertebrae, sixteen caudal vertebrae, fragments of ribs, partial pectoral girdles and forelimbs, a partial right pelvic girdle, and nearly complete hindlimbs. The fossil beds at the site are lithologically identical to the Lujiatun Unit of the Yixian Formation in western Liaoning, and uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals has constrained the deposit to approximately 125.7 million years ago, give or take 1.5 million years. That places the animal squarely within the same time window that produced the classic Jehol troodontids of Liaoning Province.

Assigning the skeleton to a species required a distinctive anatomical signature, and the researchers found one: two pneumatic foramina, small air-filled openings, on the lateral surface of the anterior cervical vertebrae, a feature recognized as diagnostic of Sinovenator changii. High-resolution X-ray computed tomography at Zhejiang University, producing more than 2,500 slices at 40-micrometer thickness, allowed the team to visualize these delicate structures inside the articulated neck. A phylogenetic analysis of 853 anatomical characters across 170 taxa, run under both equal and implied weighting schemes in the software TNT, independently recovered SDUST-V1062 as the sister group of Sinovenator, corroborating the identification.

Equally important is the evidence that this individual had reached adulthood. Histological thin sections, cut 30 micrometers thick from the right ulna and examined under polarized light, revealed four lines of arrested growth, the annual markers that record seasonal pauses in bone deposition. Critically, the outermost spacing between these lines is extremely narrow and nearly devoid of blood vessels, a configuration known as an external fundamental system. This signal indicates that skeletal growth had essentially ceased and that the animal had attained nearly its maximum body size when it died. Complete fusion of the cervical neural arches and centra further supports its adult status, making this a mature reference specimen rather than a growing juvenile whose proportions might mislead comparisons.

The completeness of the skeleton allows the first detailed look at the postcranial anatomy of Sinovenator changii. The neck vertebrae lengthen toward the sixth cervical, the longest in the series at 28.3 millimeters, before shortening again, and the proatlas, a rarely preserved plate-like element above the atlas, is fully intact. Within Troodontidae, the proatlas has previously been reported only in Gobivenator and Sinovenator itself. The forelimb shows a humerus about 68 percent of femoral length, with a short deltopectoral crest covering roughly 30 percent of the humerus, proportions typical of early troodontids but far from the massively crested humeri of some Late Cretaceous relatives such as Linhevenator. A crescent-shaped semilunate carpal, the wrist bone central to the evolution of the avian wing, caps the metacarpals as in most maniraptorans.

Perhaps the most evolutionarily telling feature lies in the pelvis. At the proximal end of the pubis, the new specimen bears a moderately developed ambiens process, a bony projection that anchors the M. ambiens, one of the principal knee-extensor muscles in dinosaurs. In Late Cretaceous troodontids such as Saurornithoides, Gobivenator, and Latenivenatrix, this process is dramatically elongated front to back, far exceeding the length of the ischial peduncle. In SDUST-V1062 it is shorter than the ischial peduncle, a condition the authors interpret as an incipient stage in the process’s elongation. Because the length of this bony attachment sets the moment arm of the muscle, the modestly developed process implies a shorter mechanical advantage, hinting that early troodontids like Sinovenator had comparatively constrained sprinting and weight-bearing capacities relative to their later, more powerful-running relatives.

The specimen also turns out to be the largest known troodontid from the Jehol Biota. Body-size estimates derived from femoral length place it at roughly 1.24 meters in body length and 4.53 kilograms in mass. That figure sits within a broader pattern the study documents across the Deinonychosauria, the group uniting troodontids and their dromaeosaurid cousins such as Velociraptor. Troodontids range from about 0.54 to 2.82 meters in length, a roughly five-fold spread, whereas dromaeosaurids span 0.49 to 4.94 meters, a ten-fold disparity that reaches up to 368 kilograms in estimated mass. The authors suggest this gap may reflect greater diversity in locomotion, ecological niches, or growth strategies among dromaeosaurids. Intriguingly, the pattern is already visible in the Jehol Biota itself, where the largest dromaeosaurid, a subadult Tianyuraptor at 1.82 meters, dwarfs the largest troodontid.

Biogeographically, the discovery matters because nearly all Early Cretaceous Chinese troodontids had been confined to Liaoning and Hebei provinces. Sinovenator, Sinusonasus, Mei, Daliansaurus, and Liaoningvenator all come from the Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, and Jinfengopteryx from Hebei. Finding Sinovenator changii some distance west in Inner Mongolia demonstrates that at least one early troodontid species ranged across a wider swath of the ancient northeastern Chinese landscape than previously recognized. The site itself has already yielded eusauropod teeth and a symmetrodont mammal named Ningchengodon foxi, and the new troodontid adds a key predatory component to this emerging fossil assemblage, which mirrors the famous Lujiatun beds hundreds of kilometers to the east.

For researchers tracing the dinosaur-bird transition, Sinovenator occupies a pivotal position. As one of the earliest-diverging troodontids, it combines unmistakable troodontid traits, such as an asymmetrical foot with a slender second metatarsal and a robust fourth, with primitive paravian features inherited from deeper in the family tree. Previous work on the species concentrated on exquisitely preserved skulls, leaving the skeleton comparatively understudied. The new specimen also clarifies a point of contention: a reported lateral cnemial crest on the tibia of the paratype IVPP V12583 is absent in SDUST-V1062, and the authors argue that poor preservation and possible taphonomic distortion in the paratype make that character uncertain, prompting a re-evaluation of what was thought diagnostic of the species.

Ultimately, SDUST-V1062 is more than a single new fossil; it is a bridge connecting the dawn of troodontid evolution with its later flourishing. By documenting an adult, near-complete skeleton in three dimensions, the study gives paleontologists a firm anatomical baseline for one of the most ancient members of the lineage, reveals the first stages of a biomechanical trend that unfolded over tens of millions of years, and redraws the map of where these agile, feathered predators roamed. As excavations continue in the Ningcheng Basin, this Inner Mongolian troodontid may prove to be the first of many surprises from a corner of the Jehol Biota that is only beginning to give up its secrets.

Subject of Research: Postcranial anatomy, ontogeny, and paleogeographic range of the Early Cretaceous troodontid dinosaur Sinovenator changii

Article Title: A new postcranial skeleton of Sinovenator changii ( Theropoda , Troodontidae ) from the Jehol Biota of the Ningcheng Basin, Inner Mongolia, China

Article References: Yu, D., Zhang, H., Zhou, C.-F., & Pei, R. (2026). A new postcranial skeleton of Sinovenator changii (Theropoda, Troodontidae) from the Jehol Biota of the Ningcheng Basin, Inner Mongolia, China. Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, 145, 901-926. https://doi.org/10.3897/sjp.145.196379

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/sjp.145.196379

Keywords: Sinovenator changii, Troodontidae, Jehol Biota, Yixian Formation, Inner Mongolia, Early Cretaceous, paleontology, osteohistology, deinonychosaurians, ambiens process, phylogenetics, dinosaur-bird transition

The study, published in the journal Nature, was led by scientists from the University of Chicago, Shenyang Normal University, Shandong University of Science and Technology, the University of Bonn and Ohio University. The team’s findings center not on milk itself, which almost never fossilizes, but on the bony architecture that makes nursing possible. Because the soft tissues involved in suckling — the soft palate, the constrictor muscles of the throat and the coordinated reflexes that move liquid from mouth to esophagus — are rarely preserved in the fossil record, researchers have long lacked direct evidence for when this feeding apparatus appeared. Megacauda offers a rare window into that hidden history through the skeletal structures that once anchored these soft tissues.

Using high-resolution microCT imaging, the researchers digitally reconstructed the skull and skeletal anatomy of the fossil in extraordinary detail. The scans revealed an unexpected and almost whimsical mosaic of traits. Megacauda possessed specialized blade-like cheek teeth resembling those of modern seals, a pelvis reminiscent of a platypus, and a tail like that of an otter. Taken together, these features indicate that the animal was likely a semiaquatic predator, hunting small vertebrates and invertebrates in freshwater environments during a time when dinosaurs dominated the land. At approximately the size of a modern otter, Megacauda ranks among the largest known Jurassic mammaliaforms and stands as one of the earliest documented examples of adaptation to a semiaquatic lifestyle in this lineage.

But the most consequential discovery was hiding in the roof of the animal’s mouth. The team identified a pair of small bony projections that closely resemble structures found in living therian mammals — the group that includes both marsupials such as kangaroos and opossums and placental mammals such as elephants and humans. In modern mammals, these structures help support the soft palate and the muscles involved in suckling, swallowing and protecting the airway. Their presence in a Middle Jurassic mammaliaform suggests that the anatomical foundations of nursing were already emerging tens of millions of years before the rise of modern mammals, pushing back the inferred origins of this sophisticated feeding system dramatically.

The throat region yielded further surprises. Megacauda also possessed highly specialized hyoid bones, the slender elements in the neck that, in living mammals, anchor the muscles responsible for swallowing. In combination with the palatal projections, this evidence suggests that Megacauda likely possessed an early version of the coordinated muscular system that modern mammals use to move milk and food safely from the mouth to the esophagus — a system that must perform a delicate balancing act, directing liquids and solids into the digestive tract while keeping the airway clear. The anatomy of the fossil, the researchers conclude, indicates that structures involved in coordinating swallowing and sucking had already begun to evolve by the Middle Jurassic.

Perhaps the most provocative implication of the discovery is that it overturns a longstanding assumption about how these structures came to be. In the same animal, the newly identified therian-like bony hooks coexist with more primitive bony ridges known from earlier mammaliaforms and mammalian ancestors. If the modern structures had evolved directly from those primitive ridges, as previously believed, one would expect the ridges to be replaced rather than retained alongside their supposed descendants. Their coexistence in a single skull suggests instead that the evolutionary pathway was more complex — that the modern suckling apparatus did not arise by simple transformation of the older anatomy, but through a more intricate sequence of innovations layered onto an existing framework.

Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study, emphasized the significance of the find. The anatomy of Megacauda, he noted, suggests that structures involved in coordinating swallowing and sucking had already begun to evolve by the Middle Jurassic, and the discovery helps scientists better understand the biological foundations of one of the defining characteristics of mammals: feeding young with milk. For decades, he added, researchers have wanted to know when the soft-tissue structures necessary for suckling and complex swallowing first appeared, and Megacauda provides some of the clearest evidence yet that many of these innovations emerged well before the rise of modern mammals.

The findings also carry important implications for understanding the diversity of living mammals. Today’s therian mammals nurse their young using a sophisticated suckling mechanism supported by the soft palate and constrictor muscles, while monotremes — the egg-laying mammals such as platypuses and echidnas — use a distinctly different method for obtaining milk and lack some of the anatomical features that therians rely on. The new evidence suggests a surprising twist: rather than monotremes retaining a primitive condition, they likely lost elements of the ancestral suckling apparatus during their evolutionary history and independently developed an alternative means of milk intake. In other words, the common ancestor of all living mammals may have been equipped with a more complete version of the nursing toolkit than any of its modern descendants now possess in full.

Beyond the story of feeding, Megacauda adds to a growing appreciation of just how ecologically inventive early mammaliaforms were at a time when they are often imagined as small, shrew-like creatures scurrying beneath the feet of dinosaurs. A semiaquatic predator the size of an otter, armed with seal-like teeth and propelled by a platypus-like pelvis and otter-like tail, paints a very different picture of the Jurassic world. Peishu Li, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and a co-author of the study, observed that these discoveries continue to reveal that the Age of Dinosaurs was also a time of extraordinary evolutionary innovation among early mammals.

The research team included April I. Neander and Zhe-Xi Luo of the University of Chicago; Yikun Li and Honggang Zhang of Shenyang Normal University in China; Chang-Fu Zhou of Shandong University of Science and Technology in Qingdao, China; Thomas Martin of the University of Bonn in Germany; and Peishu Li of the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. Together, their work transforms a single fossil from Inner Mongolia into a milestone in the study of mammalian origins — evidence that the gentle, life-sustaining act of a mother nursing her infant was being assembled, piece by piece, in the freshwater waterways of the Jurassic, millions of years before the first modern mammals ever drew breath.

Subject of Research: Evolutionary origins of mammalian suckling and swallowing anatomy revealed by a Jurassic mammaliaform fossil

Article Title: Ancient origins of mammalian suckling and swallowing uncovered

Article References: Ancient origins of mammalian suckling and swallowing uncovered. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: mammalian evolution, suckling, swallowing, Jurassic, fossil, Megacauda sungei, mammaliaforms, hyoid bones, therian mammals, monotremes, microCT imaging, Inner Mongolia

Potato Fusarium wilt is caused primarily by the soil-borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum, a pathogen that colonizes the vascular tissue of the plant and disrupts water transport, producing wilting, chlorosis, and ultimately plant death. Because the fungus persists for years in soil and spreads through tubers, machinery, and irrigation water, chemical fungicides often provide only partial and short-lived relief. In regions where potatoes are grown in continuous rotation, as they commonly are across northern China, yield losses of 30 to 78 percent have been recorded. The search for environmentally sustainable alternatives has therefore intensified, and Bacillus-based biological control agents have attracted particular attention because they colonize the rhizosphere, the nutrient-rich zone of soil surrounding plant roots, and attack pathogens through multiple mechanisms at once.

The CMC-6 strain was isolated from potato rhizosphere soils in Inner Mongolia, a region where the disease pressure is high and where the research consortium, which also includes scientists from the Inner Mongolia Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences, Beijing Forestry University, and the Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Technology Extension Center of Chahar Right Middle Banner, has been working on integrated disease management. In direct antagonism assays, CMC-6 inhibited the growth of F. oxysporum by 76.37 percent, but its activity was not limited to a single target. The strain also showed broad-spectrum antifungal effects against six additional phytopathogens, including Rhizoctonia solani, which causes potato black scurf and stem canker; Alternaria alternata, the agent of early blight; and Botrytis cinerea, the notorious gray mold fungus. That breadth suggests a strain whose chemical arsenal is not narrowly tailored to one adversary but broadly lethal to filamentous fungi.

Beyond its antagonistic activity, CMC-6 displayed a suite of traits associated with plant growth promotion. The bacterium produced indole-3-acetic acid, the principal natural auxin that stimulates root development, at a measured concentration of 12.24 milligrams per liter. It solubilized inorganic phosphate, converting a mineral form of the nutrient that plants cannot absorb into one they can, and it secreted an array of hydrolytic enzymes capable of degrading plant cell wall polymers, including cellulase, ligninase, pectinase, and protease activities. These enzymes are a double-edged sword in the best sense: they help the bacterium digest organic matter and compete in the rhizosphere, and they can directly erode the structural integrity of fungal hyphae, whose walls contain chitin and glucans embedded in a matrix that pectinases and proteases can destabilize.

The genomic analysis revealed the depth of the strain’s biosynthetic potential. Whole-genome sequencing showed a single circular chromosome of 3,929,792 base pairs carrying 3,694 predicted protein-coding genes. Embedded within that genome were 13 biosynthetic gene clusters, or BGCs, the coordinated sets of genes that encode the enzymes assembling complex secondary metabolites. Among the clusters identified were those for macrolactin, bacillaene, fengycin, difficidin, surfactin, bacillibactin, and bacilysin, a roster that reads like a catalog of the most potent antimicrobial compounds known from Bacillus species. Fengycin and surfactin are cyclic lipopeptides that disrupt fungal membranes; bacillaene and macrolactin are polyketides with demonstrated antibacterial and antifungal activity; difficidin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic; bacillibactin is an iron-scavenging siderophore that starves competitors of an essential nutrient; and bacilysin is a dipeptide antibiotic that interferes with fungal cell wall synthesis.

Genome sequence alone, however, cannot prove which of these weapons the bacterium actually deploys, and this is where the study’s metabolomic component becomes decisive. The researchers compared, by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry, the metabolic profiles of the antagonistic strain CMC-6 and a non-antagonistic B. velezensis strain designated Z6. This comparative design is methodologically elegant: by contrasting two closely related strains that differ in antagonistic behavior, metabolites enriched specifically in the antagonist become candidate effectors of biocontrol. The analysis identified a series of significantly enriched antifungal and antibiotic-related compounds in CMC-6, including fumigaclavine B, dioscin, and fungichromin. Fungichromin, a polyene macrolide, is particularly notable because polyenes bind ergosterol, the anchor molecule of fungal membranes, punching lethal pores in hyphal cells. Dioscin, a steroidal saponin of plant origin, and fumigaclavine B, an ergot alkaloid, add further chemical diversity to the strain’s repertoire and may act synergistically with the lipopeptides encoded by its BGCs.

The practical test of all this molecular firepower came in greenhouse and field experiments. In the greenhouse, CMC-6 achieved a control efficacy of 79.23 percent against Fusarium wilt and increased plant biomass by 27.69 percent, a figure consistent with its growth-promoting traits of auxin production, phosphate solubilization, and enzyme secretion. Field trials conducted across three sites in Inner Mongolia delivered more modest but commercially meaningful results: control efficacies of 35.53, 47.51, and 58.43 percent, accompanied by consistent yield gains exceeding 17.57 percent and reaching a maximum of 27.43 percent. The gap between greenhouse and field performance is a familiar pattern in biocontrol research, reflecting the messier realities of open-field conditions, variable soils, competing microbes, and fluctuating weather, but yield increases of that magnitude across multiple sites represent a substantial economic return for a treatment that requires no synthetic chemistry.

What distinguishes this study from much of the earlier literature on Bacillus biocontrol is its integration of the two levels of analysis. Many previous reports identified either antifungal activity or the presence of biosynthetic genes, but few have connected the full chain from genome to metabolite to field outcome. By sequencing the genome, cataloging the BGCs, profiling the metabolome against a non-antagonistic comparator, and then validating performance in pots and plots, the team built a coherent mechanistic narrative: the strain’s antagonism is plausibly underwritten by a combination of membrane-disrupting lipopeptides, polyene antibiotics, siderophore-mediated iron competition, and cell wall-degrading enzymes, while its growth promotion rests on hormone production and nutrient mobilization. This multi-layered mode of action also has strategic value for disease management, because pathogens find it far harder to evolve resistance against a cocktail of mechanisms than against a single-site fungicide.

The implications extend beyond potatoes. Fusarium oxysporum exists as a collection of host-specific forms that attack tomatoes, bananas, cotton, melons, and many other crops, and the broader spectrum of CMC-6 against Rhizoctonia, Alternaria, and Botrytis suggests the strain could be developed into formulations for multiple disease systems. The authors frame their work as providing valuable microbial resources for developing effective bioformulations, and the identification of specific metabolites such as fungichromin and fumigaclavine B gives formulation scientists molecular markers to monitor during product development, ensuring that industrial production preserves the chemical output that makes the strain effective. The research was supported by the Science and Technology Program of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Central Government-Guided Local Science and Technology Development Fund, and the Fundamental Research Funds Project, reflecting regional investment in solutions for a crop and a disease central to Inner Mongolia’s agriculture.

As chemical fungicides face mounting regulatory and environmental pressure worldwide, studies like this one map the route toward biologically grounded crop protection. CMC-6 is not a miracle cure; its field efficacy varied across sites, and translating a laboratory strain into a shelf-stable, consistent commercial product remains a formidable engineering challenge involving fermentation, formulation, and registration. But the study demonstrates that with modern genomics and metabolomics, researchers can now dissect exactly why a soil bacterium protects a plant, rather than simply observing that it does. That mechanistic transparency is what turns a promising isolate into a rational platform for the sustainable, integrated management of one of the world’s most stubborn potato diseases.

Subject of Research: Genomic and metabolomic characterization of the biocontrol bacterium Bacillus velezensis CMC-6 against potato Fusarium wilt

Article Title: Genomic and metabolomic characterization of Bacillus velezensis CMC-6 reveals biocontrol potential against potato Fusarium Wilt

Article References: Zhang, C., Zhao, Y., Wang, D., Yu, J., Gai, Y., Guo, H., Hao, J., & Zhao, M. (2026). Genomic and metabolomic characterization of Bacillus velezensis CMC-6 reveals biocontrol potential against potato Fusarium Wilt. BMC Genomics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-13412-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-13412-4

Keywords: Bacillus velezensis, potato Fusarium wilt, biological control, biosynthetic gene clusters, secondary metabolites, metabolomics, Fusarium oxysporum, plant growth promotion, rhizobacteria, sustainable agriculture, Inner Mongolia, whole-genome sequencing

The research team, led by Nuan Yang of Xi’an University of Science and Technology together with Shen Qu and Ruihong Yu of Inner Mongolia University, focused on a question that has long frustrated hydrogeologists: in a landscape crisscrossed by irrigation canals, bordered by a major river, and fed by distant mountain runoff, which source dominates groundwater recharge at any given place and time? The stakes are considerable. The South Bank Irrigation District is one of the large canal-fed agricultural zones along the Yellow River, and its shallow aquifer is both a buffer against drought and a vulnerable pathway for salinity and agricultural contaminants to move through the landscape.

To untangle the picture, the researchers sampled three distinct water bodies: water flowing through the irrigation canal network, water in the Yellow River itself, and groundwater drawn from wells across the district. Sampling campaigns were carried out in April, July, and November, capturing the hydrological character of spring, summer, and autumn. Each sample was analyzed for its major hydrochemical composition, the suite of dissolved ions that reflects the rocks and soils the water has passed through, and for its stable isotope ratios, specifically the abundance of deuterium relative to hydrogen, expressed as δ²H, and of oxygen-18 relative to oxygen-16, expressed as δ¹⁸O.

Stable isotopes work as natural tracers because every water source carries a distinctive isotopic fingerprint set by where its moisture originally evaporated, how far it traveled, how much it evaporated en route, and at what temperature it fell as precipitation. The Yellow River, fed largely by distant headwaters, carries one isotopic signature; canal water, diverted and exposed to intense evaporation in shallow channels across an arid plain, carries another; and lateral runoff moving through the aquifer from upgradient areas carries yet another. By measuring these fingerprints in groundwater and comparing them against the potential end members, the team could quantify the proportional contribution of each recharge source rather than merely guessing at their relative importance.

The isotope analysis confirmed that groundwater in the district draws on three principal sources: lateral runoff entering from upgradient terrain, infiltration from the irrigation canal network, and seepage from the Yellow River. But the more striking result is how strongly the balance among these sources shifts across space and time. Moving from the upstream to the downstream reaches of the district along the flow path, the dominant recharge mechanism changes from lateral runoff, which supplies more than half of the groundwater in upstream zones, to canal infiltration, which exceeds fifty percent downstream. In the middle reaches during April, river infiltration takes over as the leading contributor, supplying more than forty percent of the recharge.

Summer tells a different story. In July, when irrigation demand peaks and the monsoon-influenced climate delivers most of the region’s sparse precipitation, groundwater recharge is dominated by lateral runoff and river infiltration working in tandem. Downstream, precipitation itself becomes a significant player, contributing more than forty percent of recharge, a reminder that even in semi-arid northern China, seasonal rainfall can briefly rival the engineered water deliveries that usually dominate the district’s water balance. By November, as the irrigation season winds down and autumn irrigation flushes salts from the soil ahead of the freezing winter, the pattern shifts again: canal infiltration and lateral runoff each supply more than thirty-five percent of the groundwater, with the river’s direct role receding.

These seasonal swings matter because they mean the aquifer is not a static reservoir but a dynamic system whose chemistry and vulnerability change with the agricultural calendar. During the spring irrigation flush, canal water percolating through the soil carries with it whatever salts and nutrients the fields have accumulated, so recharge at that time of year is chemically distinct from the cleaner recharge delivered by lateral runoff or river seepage. The isotopic evidence shows that the same physical parcel of aquifer can be fed by canal water in one season and by river water or precipitation in another, which has direct implications for predicting how contaminants move and how salinity evolves in the shallow groundwater.

To verify that the isotopic mixing results were physically plausible, the team turned to reverse hydrogeochemical modeling, a computational technique that calculates the mineral reactions required to transform one water composition into another along a flow path. The modeling, grounded in the classical geochemical framework developed by researchers such as Plummer and Appelo and Postma, validated the recharge sources identified by the isotopes and clarified the subsurface chemistry: groundwater composition in the district is governed predominantly by the dissolution and precipitation of multiple minerals, including the evaporite and carbonate phases typical of arid alluvial basins, while also being modulated by the seasonal turnover in recharge sources. In other words, the water’s chemistry records both the rocks it dissolves and the season in which it arrived.

The study’s methodology, which combines hydrochemical analysis, dual stable isotopes, Bayesian-style isotope mixing frameworks of the kind pioneered by Moore and Semmens and refined by Parnell and colleagues, and inverse geochemical modeling, reflects a broader trend in hydrogeology toward multi-tracer approaches that can disentangle complex human-modified water cycles. Earlier work by members of the same team had documented spatio-seasonal isotope patterns across the Inner Mongolia reaches of the Yellow River Basin and hydrochemical salinization in the irrigation area, and the new study extends that record by explicitly quantifying recharge proportions through time. Comparable approaches are now being applied from the Ganga basin in India to the Qaidam Basin in western China, as researchers confront aquifers increasingly dominated by irrigation returns rather than natural recharge.

For water managers, the message is that protecting groundwater in large irrigation districts requires seasonally and spatially targeted strategies rather than uniform policies. The canal network, so essential to agriculture, is also a dominant recharge pathway whose influence grows downstream, meaning water quality in the canal system propagates directly into the aquifer. The river’s contribution concentrates in the middle reaches and in summer, so river regulation and bank conditions there deserve particular attention. And because precipitation matters most downstream in summer, changes in rainfall patterns under a warming climate could alter the recharge balance in ways that canal operations alone cannot compensate. The authors argue that their results provide important insights for protecting vulnerable riverbank agricultural groundwater systems, and as irrigation intensifies across the world’s drylands, the isotopic detective work done along the Yellow River’s south bank offers a widely transferable playbook for keeping those hidden reserves both understood and safe.

Subject of Research: Spatio-temporal variation of groundwater recharge sources in a large Yellow River irrigation district

Article Title: Deciphering spatio-temporal variation of groundwater recharge patterns in the large irrigation district

Article References: Yang, N., Qu, S., Gao, A., Shi, J., Zhang, Z., Miao, P., & Yu, R. (2026). Deciphering spatio-temporal variation of groundwater recharge patterns in the large irrigation district. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 48(16), Article 633. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-026-03526-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10653-026-03526-9

Keywords: groundwater recharge, stable isotopes, Yellow River, irrigation district, hydrogeochemistry, Inner Mongolia, canal infiltration, river infiltration, lateral runoff, reverse geochemical modeling, water resources, spatio-temporal variation

The research team, led by Mengqing Jiao and Rong Ma of the Institute of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, reconstructed the evolution of the Daihai wetlands from 1984 to 2023. Their central conclusion is stark. Over the full study period, the wetlands followed what the authors describe as an expansion-then-rapid-contraction trajectory, ending in a net loss of 9.12 square kilometers of wetland area. More significantly, the soil organic carbon held in those wetlands declined by approximately 1.63 times ten to the fifth tonnes — roughly 163,000 tonnes of carbon that had been locked away in waterlogged soils and is now effectively lost from regional storage.

What makes the study technically interesting is not simply the accounting of loss, but the way the team disentangled the forces driving it. Wetland change in semi-arid basins is rarely the product of a single cause. Climate warming increases evaporation, drought reduces inflows, irrigation diverts water, grazing and agriculture reshape the land surface, and the underlying topography determines how sensitive any given shoreline is to a falling water table. To separate these threads, the researchers needed methods capable of handling both spatial complexity and temporal change — and they deployed an unusually sophisticated combination of them.

The first challenge was simply defining where the wetlands were, and how their outlines changed. Rather than relying on a single satellite index, which can confuse wetlands with adjacent irrigated fields or salt flats, the team used multi-source remote sensing indices drawn from Landsat imagery processed on the Google Earth Engine platform. Landsat’s archive, stretching back to the early 1980s, provides the long temporal baseline that shorter-record sensors cannot match. But mapping wetland boundaries over forty years introduces a subtle problem: how do you verify that a boundary drawn by an algorithm in 1984 is comparable to one drawn in 2023, when the entire landscape has shifted?

The team’s answer was to borrow a tool from computer vision. The shape context algorithm, originally developed for object recognition in images, describes the geometry of a shape by measuring the distribution of points relative to one another. By applying shape context matching — combined with the Hungarian method for optimal assignment, a classic algorithm from operations research — the researchers could quantitatively compare wetland outlines across different epochs, validating that their delineations tracked genuine boundary evolution rather than mapping artifacts. It is a striking example of methodological cross-pollination: a technique designed to help machines recognize handwritten digits and objects in photographs now helps hydrogeologists audit the retreat of a lake’s ecological margin.

With the wetland boundaries established, the team turned to attribution. They employed an optimized version of Geodetector, a statistical framework widely used in Chinese geoscience for measuring how well a candidate explanatory variable accounts for spatial variation in an outcome. Geodetector’s strength is that it makes no assumption of linearity; it detects whether the spatial stratification of one variable — say, population density or slope — matches the spatial stratification of another, such as wetland extent. The optimization allows the model to search over parameter choices rather than fixing them in advance, reducing the risk that a true driver is missed simply because the analysis window was poorly specified.

The results reveal a clear regime shift in what has been controlling the wetlands’ fate. In the earliest phase of the record, topographic factors dominated: the shape of the lake basin itself, with its gentle or steep gradients, determined where wetlands could expand or had to retreat as water levels changed. During the middle period, human activities intensified and became the leading driver, consistent with the broader literature on closed lakes in China’s semi-arid agro-pastoral regions, where expanding irrigation has been shown to accelerate the shrinkage of terminal lakes. By the final stage, no single factor prevailed; instead, the study found multi-factor coupling, with climate, terrain, and anthropogenic pressures acting in combination. This progression — from geology to humanity to interaction — is itself a finding, suggesting that management responses calibrated to a single era’s drivers will quickly become obsolete.

The carbon story adds a second, deeper layer. Wetland soils are among the most carbon-dense on Earth, because waterlogging slows the decomposition of plant matter, allowing organic carbon to accumulate over centuries. To estimate how much carbon the Daihai wetlands held and lost, the team conducted in-situ soil sampling and built a soil organic carbon density-depth model, a standard approach that combines measured carbon concentrations with bulk density and depth intervals to compute stocks per unit area. Applying this model across the mapped wetland area through time revealed a non-linear, two-stage pattern mediated by wetland area itself. Notably, lake area and wetland soil organic carbon stock diverged before 2001 — the lake and its carbon reservoir were not moving in lockstep — before the sustained contraction of the lake drove both downward together.

That non-linearity matters for how we project the future. If carbon losses scaled simply with area, the remedy would be straightforward: preserve area, preserve carbon. But the Daihai record shows the relationship is mediated — the carbon storage capacity of the remaining wetlands weakens as the lake shrinks, meaning each additional hectare lost may carry a disproportionate carbon cost. This finding resonates with recent global research showing that while wetland restoration is effective, it is often insufficient to fully compensate for the soil organic carbon lost during degradation. Carbon accumulated over centuries cannot be rebuilt on management timescales, which makes every avoided loss more valuable than an equivalent restored gain.

Daihai is not an isolated case. Inner Mongolia’s lakes have been shrinking broadly over recent decades, with studies attributing the trend to combined climatic warming and human water use, and global assessments have documented rapid groundwater declines that threaten closed-basin lakes worldwide. What the Daihai study contributes is a full causal and carbon accounting for a single, well-instrumented basin — a template for how other shrinking lake systems, from the Aral region to the closed basins of the American West, might be assessed. The practical implications are pointed. Protecting the remaining wetland margin around Daihai requires addressing the drivers of the current stage, which the study identifies as coupled rather than singular — meaning water management, land use policy, and climate adaptation must be coordinated rather than pursued in isolation. And for the carbon accountants compiling national inventories, the message is that shrinking lakes are not merely a water story; they are a slowly unfolding carbon story, written in the soils left behind as the water withdraws.

Subject of Research: Driving mechanisms of wetland evolution and soil organic carbon loss under the shrinkage of Daihai Lake, an endorheic lake on China's Inner Mongolia Plateau

Article Title: An investigation into the driving mechanisms of wetland evolution under the influence of Daihai Lake’s shrinkage

Article References: Jiao, M., Ma, R., Jiang, R., Dong, W., & Zhao, L. (2026). An investigation into the driving mechanisms of wetland evolution under the influence of Daihai Lake’s shrinkage. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 198(11), Article 1178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-026-16016-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10661-026-16016-3

Keywords: Daihai Lake, wetland evolution, soil organic carbon, lake shrinkage, remote sensing, Geodetector, endorheic lake, Inner Mongolia, carbon storage, semi-arid climate, land use change, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment

The mineral was approved by the International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification under proposal number IMA 2024-091, and carries the official symbol Xhu-Ce. Its name honors Professor Xianhua Li, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in recognition of his contributions to research on early Earth and planetary evolution and, in particular, his recent advances in the geochronology, geochemistry, and resource development of the Bayan Obo deposit. The holotype specimen, catalogued as GMCTM2024012, is held at the Geological Museum of China in Beijing, while a co-type specimen resides in the crystal structure laboratory at China University of Geosciences, Beijing. These reference samples ensure that any future researcher can compare material against the defining specimens of the species.

Xianhuaite-(Ce) was found in two rock samples collected from different parts of the Bayan Obo complex. One specimen, BY-E2024-103, came from the East Orebody, where it occurs as black-brown megacrystalline aggregates at the contact between aegirine-type and dolomite-type niobium-rare earth-iron ores. The other, BY-EC2024-14, was collected from the East Contact Zone within dolomite-type ore. In that second sample, quantitative mineral mapping using a Tescan integrated mineral analyzer showed the rock is dominated by dolomite at nearly 72 percent by volume and magnetite at about 12 percent, with fersmite making up 8 percent. Xianhuaite-(Ce) itself accounts for a modest 0.40 volume percent, appearing alongside columbite-(Fe), aeschynite, fergusonite-(Ce), and small amounts of pyrochlore, phlogopite, barite, apatite, and other phases typical of skarn-altered assemblages.

Under the microscope and in hand specimen, the new mineral presents as irregular grains or tetragonal prisms ranging from tiny slivers of roughly 0.03 by 0.03 by 0.1 millimeters up to crystals of about 0.4 by 0.4 by 0.6 millimeters. It is dark brown to blackish brown in bulk, but thin fragments transmit a pale yellow-brown to brownish-red light. It shows an adamantine luster, a white streak, perfect cleavage on the {001} plane, and a conchoidal fracture, and it is brittle. Its Mohs hardness falls between 5 and 6, and micro-indentation testing yielded a mean Vickers hardness number of 469.5 kilograms per square millimeter at a 200-gram load. The calculated density is 5.23 grams per cubic centimeter, and the mineral shows no fluorescence under longwave ultraviolet light and no magnetic response.

Chemical analysis by electron probe microanalysis with wavelength-dispersive spectrometry, performed on a JXA-iHP200F instrument at 15 kilovolts and 20 nanoamperes, established the empirical formula. Normalized to 15 oxygen atoms per formula unit, it reads (K1.30Ba0.69Sr0.02)(Ce0.39La0.31Nd0.04Pr0.02Ca0.15Na0.09)(Nb4.75Fe0.13Ti0.09Mg0.04)O15. In plain terms, the large channel sites of the structure are filled mostly by potassium and barium, with a smaller site occupied chiefly by cerium and lanthanum plus minor calcium and sodium, while the octahedral framework sites are dominated by niobium with a little iron, titanium, and magnesium. Backscattered electron imaging confirmed the crystals are chemically homogeneous at the micrometer scale, and the simplified formula (K,Ba)2(Ce,La)(Nb,Fe)5O15 rounds to the ideal K2CeNb5O15.

The structural work is where the discovery becomes remarkable. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction on a fragment measuring just 0.02 by 0.02 by 0.01 millimeters, collected with molybdenum radiation on a Rigaku XtaLAB PRO-007HF diffractometer, revealed a tetragonal unit cell with a = 12.5355 angstroms, c = 3.9213 angstroms, and a volume of 616.19 cubic angstroms, in the centrosymmetric space group P4/mbm. The refinement converged to an R1 value of 0.0189 based on 427 independent reflections, an exceptionally good fit. The structure is a textbook tetragonal tungsten bronze framework: niobium-centered oxygen octahedra share corners to build a two-dimensional network in the horizontal plane, generating rings of four and five octahedra that line vertical channels running along the c axis. The larger five-membered channels host potassium and barium in ninefold coordination, while the four-membered channels accommodate cerium and calcium in twelvefold coordination.

Raman spectroscopy independently corroborated this architecture. The spectrum shows a prominent band near 853 wavenumbers assigned to vibrations of the NbO6 octahedra, additional peaks at 645 and 537 wavenumbers corresponding to niobium-oxygen stretching modes, and low-frequency features at 175, 135, and 81 wavenumbers characteristic of cation motions in tetragonal tungsten bronze phases. The absence of any peaks above 1000 wavenumbers is consistent with a structure containing no hydroxyl or water groups. Bond valence sum calculations further confirmed that the assigned oxidation states and site occupancies are internally consistent, with the B1 octahedral site modeled as roughly 95 percent niobium and 5 percent trivalent iron, matching the chemical analyses.

What does the mineral say about how Bayan Obo formed its enormous metal endowment? The deposit has been studied for decades, yet the mechanisms of niobium enrichment remain debated, largely because the niobium is scattered across at least 30 distinct mineral species rather than locked in one dominant host. The textural evidence from the East Contact Zone sample offers a clue: xianhuaite-(Ce), fersmite, and columbite-(Fe) occur as interstitial phases between magnetite grains, and both xianhuaite-(Ce) and fersmite contain relict pyrochlore inclusions inherited from an earlier mineralization stage. The authors argue these relationships are inconsistent with primary magmatic crystallization and instead point to precipitation from niobium-bearing fluids during a later hydrothermal overprint. The surrounding assemblage of forsterite, phlogopite, chlorite, and dolomite is characteristic of magnesian skarn systems formed when granite intrudes dolomitic host rocks.

The regional context strengthens that interpretation. The East Contact Zone experienced variable degrees of skarnization during the emplacement of Permian granites, a thermal event that apparently did not add new niobium to the system but likely remobilized niobium already present. Taken together, the mineral assemblages, textures, and geology suggest xianhuaite-(Ce) formed under fluid-dominated conditions during the Permian granitic event, recording the remobilization and redistribution of niobium rather than its original accumulation. The coarse-grained East Orebody sample lacks diagnostic assemblages for direct petrographic constraints, but regional geochronology indicates the Permian thermal event affected the entire district, so the researchers tentatively assign its xianhuaite-(Ce) to the same episode, while noting that direct dating is still lacking.

The discovery also resonates beyond geology. Synthetic compounds with the same ideal composition, K2CeNb5O15, belong to a family of tetragonal tungsten bronze materials studied for their physical properties, and laboratory work has documented temperature-driven symmetry transitions within this structural family. The natural mineral refines best in the centrosymmetric high-temperature form, P4/mbm, and intensity statistics support that choice. By capturing a structure long known only from synthesis, xianhuaite-(Ce) expands the known structural diversity of natural niobium minerals and provides new mineralogical constraints on how niobium behaves during the multistage evolution of one of the world’s most extraordinary ore deposits. For a metal critical to advanced technologies, every new clue about where and how it concentrates carries practical weight.

Subject of Research: Discovery and characterization of the new niobium mineral xianhuaite-(Ce) from the Bayan Obo deposit

Article Title: Xianhuaite-(Ce), K2CeNb5O15, a new niobium mineral from the Bayan Obo deposit, China

Article References: Yang, B., Xue, Y., Yang, L., Sun, N., Li, G., Yu, J., Yan, G., Liu, J., Zhao, Y., Meng, W., Chen, Z., Chen, L., Liu, Z., Yan, Z., Hou, X., Ao, X., & Wang, J. (2026). Xianhuaite-(Ce), K 2 CeNb 5 O 15 , a new niobium mineral from the Bayan Obo deposit, China. European Journal of Mineralogy, 38(4), 449-459. https://doi.org/10.5194/ejm-38-449-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/ejm-38-449-2026

Keywords: xianhuaite-(Ce), Bayan Obo, niobium, new mineral, tetragonal tungsten bronze, rare earth elements, crystal structure, skarn, hydrothermal remobilization, mineralogy, Inner Mongolia, electron microprobe