The field experiment was conducted in Bazaruto Archipelago National Park, where the largest known dugong subpopulation in the Western Indian Ocean occurs. Dugongs are large, mostly herbivorous marine mammals whose populations have declined throughout their range, and visual or aerial surveys can be difficult where animals are scarce, solitary, cryptic or avoid human activity. A positive eDNA result therefore offers a non-invasive way to supplement field observations, although the signal may reflect an animal that was present nearby or recently passed through the sampled area rather than one present at the exact sampling point and time.

During the campaign, the research team followed 12 non-linear boat tracks at an average speed of about 1.5 knots through known areas of dugong occurrence. The sampling design compared surface water with near-bottom water, filtered volumes of 1.5, 30 and 60 litres, and approximately 25 millilitres of sediment. Two filter configurations were used: 0.45-micrometre polyethersulfone Waterra cartridges for the 30- and 60-litre samples and 0.22-micrometre Millipore Sterivex filters for the 1.5-litre samples. Near-bottom water was collected about one metre above the seabed with a pump mounted on a manta tow frame, while surface samples were collected from the boat or from composite samples taken at the beginning and end of each track.

The investigators developed a species-specific qPCR assay, named Ddug01, targeting a 115-base-pair segment of the mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA gene. In silico analysis indicated amplification specific to dugongs and the extinct Steller’s sea cow. Testing with serial dilutions of dugong tissue DNA produced a linear response from undiluted DNA through a 10^-4 dilution, with a slope of -4.819, an R² of 0.984 and an amplification efficiency of 61.3%. The lowest concentration detected in all four technical replicates was 0.944 picograms of DNA per reaction, which was assigned as both the limit of detection and limit of quantification. Amplification became inconsistent at the next tenfold dilution and was absent at lower concentrations.

Each environmental sample was amplified in eight technical replicates, and a beta-binomial mixed-effects model accounted for positive versus negative replicates while including sampling batch as a random effect. Laboratory processing was associated with markedly stronger qPCR detection than field processing, with a significant treatment effect of χ² = 15.06 and p < 0.001. The comparison concerned complete operational workflows rather than extraction location alone: field samples were processed with smaller amounts of preservation buffer, lower centrifugation capacity and, for Sterivex filters, a different extraction kit. Positive results from field processing showed that the method functioned, but the lower yield indicates a practical limitation of the field protocol.

Filtration volume and vertical position interacted significantly, with χ² = 3.875 and p = 0.049. At the low volume of 1.5 litres, near-bottom samples had about 5.8 times higher odds of producing a positive qPCR replicate than surface samples, a statistically significant difference with p = 0.013. At 60 litres, however, detection was similar between the two vertical positions. The corresponding pattern appeared when volume was compared at each depth: increasing the filtered volume from 1.5 to 60 litres significantly improved detection in surface water, with an odds ratio of 5.49 and p = 0.012, whereas it did not significantly change detection near the bottom, with p = 0.917.

The highest sample-level detection rate came from 60-litre near-bottom samples processed in the laboratory, with 9 of 11 samples positive. The researchers also detected dugong DNA in samples collected 1 hour 40 minutes and 2 hours after the last visual sightings, and at two sites where no animals had been directly observed. One event without a visual sighting produced no eDNA detection, while a known feeding site with visible feeding trails also yielded no positive signal. These outcomes illustrate the complementary nature and limitations of the two approaches: eDNA may reveal animals missed by visual surveys, but absence of a detection does not necessarily establish that dugongs were absent, particularly where tides dilute signals or DNA disperses quickly.

Sediment did not outperform the water-based methods in this pilot. None of the 10 sediment samples produced a positive result, whereas every water-sampling and extraction combination produced at least one detection. The comparison is incomplete because sediment was processed only in the field, where overall detection was lower, and the extraction kit may have performed differently with sediment than with water. The result therefore does not establish that sediment is inherently unsuitable for dugong eDNA analysis. It shows only that the tested sediment workflow offered no advantage under the conditions encountered, while sediment eDNA may integrate signals over longer periods than water samples and could provide information about past rather than recent presence.

High-volume filtration also carried practical benefits. The 0.45-micrometre Waterra cartridge filtered water at an average rate of 25 seconds per litre, allowing a 60-litre sample to be processed in less than 25 minutes at the surface and underwater without clogging. Placing the cartridge directly on the pre-pump side of the system also reduced the amount of single-use tubing consumed, a relevant advantage for large monitoring programs. The field protocol used centrifugation limited to 5,000 g and could not process the full preservation-buffer volume processed in the laboratory. Such conditions are less effective for recovering free or weakly adsorbed DNA than higher-force centrifugation or precipitation methods involving reagents that are difficult to transport because of their toxicity and volatility.

The authors therefore favor mobile surface sampling with high-volume filtration as a practical approach for large-scale dugong monitoring, while acknowledging that the proof-of-concept study included only 12 sampling events and a limited number of positive detections. Sampling volume was also partly confounded with filter configuration and, in some laboratory comparisons, extraction kit, so the results cannot be attributed exclusively to volume. The study supports further testing across broader spatial, temporal and hydrodynamic conditions, including tidal cycles, and does not directly quantify DNA persistence or transport. Even with those limitations, the work shows that carefully chosen water sampling and processing conditions can improve the recovery of rare marine-mammal eDNA and could complement conventional surveys in tropical coastal habitats.

Subject of Research: Optimization of environmental DNA sampling and extraction for detecting rare dugongs in tropical coastal waters

Article Title: Optimizing Marine eDNA Protocols for Rare Megafauna: A Case Study on Dugongs in the Western Indian Ocean

Article References: Bernagou, L., Serval, A., Beudard, F., Mathey, J., Mercky, Y., Le Bozec, C., Trotzuk, E., Paunde, K., Garcia, M., Bellemain, E., & Corse, E. (2026). Optimizing Marine eDNA Protocols for Rare Megafauna: A Case Study on Dugongs in the Western Indian Ocean. Ecology and Evolution, 16(10), Article e74500. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.74500

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/ece3.74500

Keywords: dugong eDNA, environmental DNA, marine monitoring, qPCR, Bazaruto Archipelago, water filtration, molecular detection, Mozambique, sea mammal conservation, Optimizing, Marine, eDNA

The research, published in the journal One Ecosystem, tackles a blind spot that has long plagued land-use policy across Europe. Governments typically track land-take — the conversion of natural, forested or agricultural land into urban functions — as a simple accounting problem: hectares in, hectares out. The European Union’s headline target of No Net Land-Take by 2050 is built on this logic. Yet a hectare of shallow soil on a steep slope and a hectare of deep, fertile loam are not interchangeable, and treating them as such can mask the ecological damage done when the wrong hectares disappear.

To move beyond this surface-level view, the researchers combined cadastral land-use records with detailed soil and topographic maps of Wallonia. They first identified every parcel that shifted from non-artificialised in 2007 to artificialised in 2018, drawing on four official regional and national datasets, including the Walloon land-use map and a one-metre-resolution land-cover layer. The comparison was painstaking: the team cross-checked the 2007 baseline against a national map, correcting roughly 126 square kilometres of misclassified land, and then visually inspected 286 large parcels flagged by their automated classification. Nearly a third of those — 91 parcels — turned out to be falsely labelled as artificialised and were corrected, substantially improving the reliability of the final dataset.

With the converted areas mapped, the researchers characterised each one using abiotic properties that govern how ecosystems function: soil wetness, texture, depth, hydromorphy (the signs of prolonged waterlogging), slope and aspect. From these they built a map of ecologically constrained areas — peat soils and permanently waterlogged ground, temporarily wet soils, steep slopes exceeding 20 degrees, and shallow substrates. These are places where biophysical limitations restrict intensive agriculture and construction, but which, precisely because of those constraints, often retain semi-natural vegetation and a fine-grained mosaic of habitats that supports a disproportionately high capacity for regulating services.

The numbers confirm what policy has long feared about farmland. Agricultural areas — sown pasture, annual croplands and intensive orchards — accounted for 76.10 percent of all newly-artificialised surfaces over the study period, with forests contributing a further 16.42 percent. Most conversions produced built-up, impervious surfaces such as buildings and transport infrastructure (43.30 percent), while 37.85 percent became residential gardens and parks. The pattern reflects decades of Walloon zoning policy, which designates buildable land near existing urban and village centres — historically located on fertile agricultural plateaus and in valley bottoms. Nearly 90 percent of land currently available for residential development in the region is still agricultural.

But the study’s quieter revelation concerns the soils that planners rarely fight for. Overall, 12.31 percent of land-take occurred on ecologically constrained areas — slightly less than their 15.93 percent share of the region, but far from negligible. Among these, hydromorphic alluvial and colluvial soils and non-alluvial hydromorphic soils were the most affected subtypes. These waterlogged soils, often dismissed as having limited agronomic value, are exactly the ones that excel at regulating water flow, mitigating floods and maintaining water quality. Their conversion, the authors note, echoes a long-documented pattern in which urban development has repeatedly degraded wetlands and moisture-dependent environments.

To quantify what was lost, the team built an ecosystem service capacity matrix — a table crossing land-use and soil-condition categories (the service-providing units) against sixteen ecosystem services selected by a fifteen-member expert steering committee from the regional administration. Forty-three experts from universities, government and civil society then scored each cell from 0 (not relevant) to 5 (very high capacity) during workshops in October 2021, following individual pre-scoring rounds and consensus discussions. The approach refines the widely used matrix method of Burkhard and colleagues, which traditionally relies on land-cover classes alone, by embedding soil and topographic information directly into the rows of the matrix.

The results are stark. Provisioning services were essentially annihilated: all five evaluated — from food crops to fodder and livestock production — suffered capacity reductions of 98 to 100 percent, statistically highly significant. Regulating services fared scarcely better where water was concerned. Flood risk mitigation fell by 70 percent, soil erosion control by 64 percent and surface water quality regulation by 63 percent. Pollination dropped 63 percent and global climate regulation through carbon sequestration fell 61 percent. Cultural services declined between 42 percent (recreation) and 61 percent (cultural and spiritual inspiration). Only visual screening — the buffering of views — showed a minor, statistically insignificant change.

The analysis also exposed how much expert judgement itself shapes such assessments. Variation partitioning showed that land-use classes explained about 19.1 percent of the variance in capacity scores, while soil and topographic classes accounted for only 0.43 percent — a statistically non-significant contribution. In other words, the experts weighted differences between land uses far more heavily than variation within them, even though soil condition demonstrably matters: expert scores for timber production in coniferous forests, for example, climbed from 1 on permanently waterlogged peat soils to 4.8 on unconstrained ground. The team also found that artificialised land is anything but homogeneous — sealed surfaces scored zero for erosion control, while parks and gardens scored 3.0, cereal cropland on good soils 1.8 and permanent grassland 4.8 — yet the area-weighted balance of conversions still left regulating capacity in net decline, because gains from urban green space could not offset the losses from sealing and the disappearance of high-performing grasslands.

The study’s implications reach well beyond Wallonia. Its land-take estimate of 21.43 square kilometres per year is considerably higher than the roughly 5.7 square kilometres per year reported for Belgium by the European Environment Agency, a discrepancy the authors attribute to methodology: European figures rely on satellite-derived land-cover data with minimum mapping units that miss small-scale changes, whereas regional statistics use parcel-level cadastral records. As the EU’s new Soil Monitoring Law tightens definitions of land-take and soil artificialisation, the message of this research is that counting hectares is no longer enough. Whether a converted field sits on deep fertile loam or on a waterlogged valley-bottom soil determines whether a region loses little more than a line on a map — or the invisible machinery that keeps its water clean, its floods contained and its landscapes alive.

Subject of Research: Quantifying ecosystem service capacity loss from land-take in Wallonia using soil and topographic ecosystem condition data

Article Title: Beyond surface change: assessing ecosytem services capacity loss from land-take in Wallonia

Article References: Pairon, M., & Dufrêne, M. (2026). Beyond surface change: assessing ecosytem services capacity loss from land-take in Wallonia. One Ecosystem, 11, Article e172396. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.11.e172396

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/oneeco.11.e172396

Keywords: land-take, ecosystem services, soil sealing, Wallonia, No Net Land-Take, ecosystem condition, hydromorphic soils, flood regulation, capacity matrix, land-use planning, soil health, Belgium

The scale of the problem facing oyster reefs provides the backdrop for the new valuation. Worldwide, an estimated 85 percent of oyster reefs have been lost over the past century, with the steepest declines concentrated in estuaries and river deltas, the very environments where these reef-building bivalves thrive. Like all coastal ecosystems, oyster reefs are under growing stress from overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on life below water calls for the conservation and sustainable use of coastal and marine resources to safeguard human wellbeing, yet the habitats that could deliver many of those benefits continue to disappear. The new study was designed to quantify exactly what is being lost, and what could be regained, if restoration were pursued at scale.

To build their global picture, the researchers, led by corresponding author Dr Matteo Convertino, an associate professor at Tsinghua University, began by assessing where suitable habitat for oyster reefs exists today and where reefs could spontaneously form given the right protection and restoration interventions. They imported thousands of geotagged records of oyster reefs from two public databases and then applied a well-established machine learning algorithm to predict geographic distributions and habitat suitability around the world, flagging potential new locations where reefs might be established. The suitability model weighed a suite of environmental variables, including local water temperature, salinity, light availability, nutrient richness, and oxygenation. Any location scoring 65 percent or greater on habitat suitability was classified as suitable for reef formation.

The team then went a step further, combining each area’s suitability score with a measure of the ecosystem services a reef there could provide to calculate what they call the ecopotential of every location. The higher the ecopotential, the greater the potential benefit of restoring or protecting a reef at that site. This portfolio of services extends far beyond oysters for human consumption. Oyster reefs filter enormous volumes of water, protect shorelines from erosion and storm damage, recycle nutrients through the food web, and sequester carbon. They also provide food, shelter, and nursery grounds for a plethora of fish and invertebrates, functioning as foundational habitat that supports entire coastal food webs. Capturing the full value of this portfolio is what pushes the estimated GEP into the trillions.

The modeling results identified ten hotspot nations where predicted ecopotential is greatest: the United States, Australia, Chile, China, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, France, Germany, and Italy. Across these countries, approximately 295,000 square kilometers, or about 6 percent of their coastal zones, were deemed suitable for oyster reefs. Yet reefs are currently known to occupy only 10 percent of that suitable area, mainly in lagoons and bays, estuaries, and river deltas. The gap between what exists and what could exist points to enormous room for expansion. Perhaps more striking is the finding that only 23 percent of the suitable area currently falls under any form of marine protection, meaning the vast majority of remaining and potential reef habitat remains exposed to the pressures that have already erased most of the world’s oyster reefs.

The quantified benefits of full restoration are vivid when expressed in raw ecological terms. If every area with positive ecopotential were occupied by reefs, the authors calculate that these ecosystems could filter prodigious volumes of water: 77.58 quadrillion liters in the United States, 69.92 quadrillion liters in Australia, and 46.58 quadrillion liters in Chile. Water filtration by dense aggregations of filter-feeding oysters improves clarity, removes excess nutrients, and can help suppress harmful algal blooms, cascading through coastal ecosystems in ways that benefit seagrasses, fish populations, and human users alike. The same fully realized reef network could sequester as much as 12.3 million metric tons of carbon per year, adding a meaningful climate mitigation component to the reefs’ portfolio of services.

For a single country, the monetary value of just a subset of these services is already substantial. In the United States alone, the combined potential value of nitrogen removal, carbon sequestration, and water purification by oyster reefs was estimated at 25.1 billion dollars a year. Nitrogen removal matters because coastal eutrophication, driven by agricultural and urban runoff, is one of the most damaging forces in estuarine systems worldwide, and oysters incorporate and process nitrogen as they filter and grow. Carbon sequestration reflects the burial of organic material in reef structures and surrounding sediments. Water purification, meanwhile, underpins fisheries, tourism, and coastal water quality. These three services represent only part of the total portfolio, which is why the global GEP estimate reaches into the trillions when all services and all suitable nations are considered.

The authors are careful to frame these figures as estimates rather than guarantees. The calculations infer ecosystem services from global averages of key parameters, and the actual values could shift with changes in oyster populations over time or with the advancing climate crisis. Significant work on habitat restoration and protection would also be required before any of the potential could be unlocked. We estimated that 90 percent of sites suitable for oyster reefs require restoration, while 80 percent need protection through conservation efforts, Convertino said. In other words, the current oyster situation is very suboptimal, but there is a huge opportunity, considering the benefits. The statement captures the central tension of the study: the ecological and economic potential is enormous, but realizing it demands investment and policy action on a comparable scale.

Climate change adds a further layer of complexity to the outlook. Because global warming generally decreases the habitat quality of oyster reefs, the researchers expect the global GEP to decline from the current potential value of twelve trillion dollars as conditions shift. Yet the picture is not uniformly negative. Some countries may see an expansion of reefs due to more favorable conditions for the growth and dispersal of oysters. The study singles out Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, and France as places where reef extent could grow under warming conditions, a reminder that the biogeography of coastal ecosystems will be reshuffled rather than simply diminished. For policymakers, the implication is that restoration priorities may need to be dynamic, tracking shifting habitat suitability over decades.

What the study ultimately offers is a new way of seeing an ecosystem that most people encounter only on a dinner plate. By translating the ecological work of oyster reefs into the language of gross ecosystem product, the researchers make a case that resonates in ministries of finance as much as in marine biology laboratories. A reef that filters quadrillions of liters of water, sequesters millions of tons of carbon, buffers shorelines, and nurseries commercial fish stocks is not a luxury but infrastructure, and infrastructure that has been allowed to collapse by 85 percent in a single century. The twelve trillion dollar figure is not a promise but a ceiling, one that depends on restoring nine tenths of suitable sites and protecting four fifths of them. Whether the world’s nations choose to make that investment will determine whether oyster reefs remain a remnant of past coastlines or become a cornerstone of future planetary health.

Subject of Research: Global valuation of the gross ecosystem product of oyster reefs

Article Title: The world’s oyster reefs could add $12 trillion to planetary health each year – if they were better managed

Article References: The world’s oyster reefs could add $12 trillion to planetary health each year – if they were better managed. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: oyster reefs, ecosystem services, gross ecosystem product, marine restoration, coastal ecosystems, water filtration, carbon sequestration, habitat suitability, machine learning, climate change, marine conservation, Frontiers in Marine Science

The research team, led by Bruno M. Exposto of the Polytechnic University of Bragança in Portugal, working with colleagues at the Federal University of Technology of Paraná in Brazil, took a deliberately counterintuitive approach. Rather than assuming that more processing means better performance, they compared raw, in-natura cork with pre- and post-carbonized derivatives of both cork and industrial almond shell residues. The results upended expectations: thermal activation through carbonization proved ineffective, while the humble raw cork, designated CiN in the study, delivered the best overall performance. At 25 degrees Celsius and a modest adsorbent dosage of 1.0 gram per liter, raw cork achieved a cumulative mean removal efficiency of 66.1 percent across the three estrogens simultaneously present in solution.

The numbers behind that headline figure reveal how the three hormones behaved when forced to compete for the same binding sites. The maximum experimental uptake capacities were 3.82 milligrams per gram for estrone, 3.75 milligrams per gram for 17β-estradiol, and a striking 7.23 milligrams per gram for the synthetic estrogen EE2, yielding a combined capacity of 14.79 milligrams per gram. That EE2, the artificial compound used in oral contraceptives, captured nearly twice the capacity of either natural hormone is one of the study’s most consequential observations, and the authors traced it to the molecule’s higher hydrophobicity and a lower activation energy barrier for its uptake. In a real wastewater matrix, where these compounds arrive together rather than one at a time, such competitive dynamics determine whether a treatment actually works.

Understanding the speed and shape of the uptake process was central to the work. The kinetic profiles of all three estrogens were accurately captured by the pseudo-second-order model, a mathematical framework that assumes the rate-limiting step involves chemical interactions between the adsorbate and the binding sites rather than simple diffusion-limited filling. That model predicted an equilibrium time of 440 minutes at 25 degrees Celsius, meaning the system needs roughly seven and a half hours to settle into its final partitioning between water and cork. For engineers designing contact tanks or packed-bed filters, that timescale matters: it defines how long contaminated water must linger against the material before the bulk of the hormone load has been transferred to the solid phase.

Equally important was the equilibrium modeling. Because the three estrogens compete, single-solute isotherm models, which describe one pollutant at a time, cannot capture reality. The team therefore applied the Sheindorf–Rebuhn–Sheintuch (SRS) multicomponent isotherm model, an extension of classical adsorption theory that explicitly accounts for competition between species sharing the same surface. The SRS model successfully simulated the competitive equilibrium data, providing a quantitative handle on how strongly each hormone suppresses the uptake of the others. This kind of validated multicomponent framework is rare and valuable, because most published adsorption studies report only single-contaminant results that dramatically overstate real-world performance.

The researchers also probed how acidity and alkalinity govern the process, and the answer was unambiguous. Highly alkaline media, at pH values of 12 or above, caused a significant decline in uptake capacity, an effect the authors attribute to electrostatic repulsion. At such extreme pH, the ionization states of the estrogen molecules and the cork surface change in ways that make the hormone and the adsorbent repel rather than attract each other. For practical applications, this finding brackets the operating window: the material performs best under the near-neutral conditions typical of most natural and treated waters, but strongly caustic environments would undermine it.

Thermodynamic analysis added another layer of mechanistic clarity. The sequestration process was confirmed to be spontaneous, with a negative standard Gibbs free energy change; exothermic, with a negative standard enthalpy change, meaning it releases heat and proceeds more readily at lower temperatures; and entropically favorable at the solid–liquid interface, with a positive standard entropy change. Taken together, these signatures describe a process that does not need to be driven by external energy input, a property that bodes well for low-cost, passive deployment in treatment trains, particularly in regions where sophisticated infrastructure or reagent supply chains are lacking.

Perhaps the deepest contribution of the study lies in its mechanism analysis. By combining kinetic, thermodynamic, and isotherm evidence, the authors identified a synergistic interplay between two uptake modes. The first is physisorption via pore filling, in which hormone molecules physically lodge inside the porous architecture of the cork. The second, and apparently the more decisive, is chemisorption governed by p-electron donor–acceptor interactions and hydrogen bonding networks. In these interactions, the electron-rich aromatic rings of the estrogen molecules engage with complementary electron-accepting or donating sites on the cork surface, while hydroxyl and carbonyl groups on both partners form hydrogen bonds that lock the hormones in place. Crucially, the team concluded that surface chemistry can play a more decisive role than texturized porosity in sequestering endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a conclusion that directly challenges the industry’s long-standing fixation on maximizing surface area through energy-intensive activation.

That conclusion carries real economic and environmental weight. Conventional activated carbon remains the workhorse adsorbent for micropollutant removal, but its production demands high-temperature processing and, often, chemical activation, both of which carry substantial carbon and cost footprints. Cork and almond shells, by contrast, are abundant agricultural and industrial byproducts. Portugal is among the world’s leading cork producers, and almond processing generates mountains of shell waste annually; the study’s materials were supplied by the companies Amendouro and Corticeira Amorim, underscoring the industrial relevance of the feedstocks. Converting these residues into an effective water-treatment medium without any carbonization step means the adsorbent arrives with a fraction of the embedded energy of conventional alternatives, and the waste stream becomes a resource rather than a disposal problem.

The broader context makes the work timely. Steroid estrogens are on the European Union’s watch list of substances of concern for water intended for human consumption, and monitoring studies across European rivers, including Portuguese estuaries such as the Douro and the Mira, have repeatedly detected estrogenic compounds at biologically active levels. Exposure to these chemicals has been linked to feminization of fish populations and a range of endocrine effects in wildlife, and they resist many conventional treatment steps such as coagulation and standard chlorination. Adsorption onto bio-based materials has emerged as one of the most promising remediation routes, but the field has lacked rigorous multicomponent studies that reflect the competitive reality of mixed contaminants. By delivering validated kinetics, a working multicomponent isotherm model, a full thermodynamic picture, and a coherent mechanistic narrative, all anchored in a material that requires no activation at all, the Bragança and Paraná team has provided both a practical candidate technology and a conceptual correction to the field: when it comes to capturing endocrine disruptors from water, what is on the surface of a sustainable residue may matter far more than how many pores it contains.

Subject of Research: Competitive adsorption of steroid estrogens from water using sustainable cork and almond-shell residues

Article Title: Competitive adsorption of natural and synthetic estrogens onto sustainable almond-shell and cork residues: kinetics, multi-component isotherms, and mechanism analysis

Article References: Exposto, B. M., Gomes, M. C. S., de Menezes, M. L., Brito, P., Queiroz, A., & Ribeiro, A. E. (2026). Competitive adsorption of natural and synthetic estrogens onto sustainable almond-shell and cork residues: kinetics, multi-component isotherms, and mechanism analysis. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-026-38277-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11356-026-38277-8

Keywords: estrogens, cork, almond shell, adsorption, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, water remediation, multicomponent isotherms, Sheindorf–Rebuhn–Sheintuch model, biomass valorization, p-electron donor–acceptor interactions, hydrogen bonding, wastewater treatment