Mangrove forests are vital to coastal protection, biodiversity support, and climate regulation. In the Niger Delta, these ecosystems are increasingly threatened by oil spill incidents linked to intensive petroleum activities. This study investigates the extent of mangrove degradation between 1986 and 2022 in the lower Niger Delta, specifically the region between the San Bartolomeo and Imo Rivers, using remote sensing and machine learning. Landsat 5 TM (1986) and Landsat 8 OLI (2022) imagery were classified using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm. Classification accuracy was high, with overall accuracies of 98% (1986) and 99% (2022) and Kappa coefficients of 0.97 and 0.98. Healthy mangrove cover declined from 2804.37 km2 (58%) to 2509.18 km2 (52%), while degraded mangroves increased from 72.03 km2 (1%) to 327.35 km2 (7%), reflecting a 354.46% rise. Water bodies expanded by 101.17 km2 (5.61%), potentially due to dredging, erosion, and sea-level rise. Built-up areas declined from 131.85 km2 to 61.14 km2, possibly reflecting socio-environmental displacement. Statistical analyses, including Chi-square (χ2 = 1091.33, p < 0.001) and Kendall's Tau (τ = 1, p < 0.001), showed strong correlations between oil spills and mangrove degradation. From 2012 to 2022, over 21,914 barrels of oil were spilled, with only 38% recovered. Although paired t-tests and ANOVA results indicated no statistically significant changes at broad scales, localized ecological shifts remain severe. These findings highlight the urgent need for integrated environmental policies and restoration efforts to mitigate mangrove loss and enhance sustainability in the Niger Delta.

Soil salinization is a difficult challenge for agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability, particularly in arid and semi-arid coastal regions. This study investigates the spatial variability of soil electrical conductivity (EC) and its relationship with key cations and anions (Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, Cl⁻, CO₃²⁻, HCO₃⁻, SO₄²⁻) along the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea in Iran. Using a combination of field-based soil sampling, laboratory analyses, and Landsat 8 spectral data, linear Multiple Linear Regression and Partial Least Squares Regression (MLR, PLSR) and nonlinear Artifician Neural Network and Support Vector Machine (ANN, SVM) modeling approaches were employed to estimate and map soil EC. Results identified Na⁺ and Cl⁻ as the primary contributors to salinity (r = 0.78 and r = 0.88, respectively), with NaCl salts dominating the region’s soil salinity dynamics. Secondary contributions from Potassium Chloride KCl and Magnesium Chloride MgCl₂ were also observed. Coastal landforms such as lagoon relicts and coastal plains exhibited the highest salinity levels, attributed to geomorphic processes and anthropogenic activities. Among the predictive models, the SVM algorithm outperformed others, achieving higher R² values and lower RMSE (RMSE_Test = 27.35 and RMSE_Train = 24.62, respectively), underscoring its effectiveness in capturing complex soil-environment interactions. This study highlights the utility of digital soil mapping (DSM) for assessing soil salinity and provides actionable insights for sustainable land management, particularly in mitigating salinity and enhancing agricultural practices in vulnerable coastal systems.

This study comprehensively evaluates the system performance by considering the thermodynamic and exergy analysis of hydrogen production by the water electrolysis method. Energy inputs, hydrogen and oxygen production capacities, exergy balance, and losses of the electrolyzer system were examined in detail. In the study, most of the energy losses are due to heat losses and electrochemical conversion processes. It has also been observed that increased electrical input increases the production of hydrogen and oxygen, but after a certain point, the rate of efficiency increase slows down. According to the exergy analysis, it was determined that the largest energy input of the system was electricity, hydrogen stood out as the main product, and oxygen and exergy losses were important factors affecting the system performance. The results, in line with other studies in the literature, show that the integration of advanced materials, low-resistance electrodes, heat recovery systems, and renewable energy is critical to increasing the efficiency of electrolyzer systems and minimizing energy losses. The modeling results reveal that machine learning programs have significant potential to achieve high accuracy in electrolysis performance estimation and process view. This study aims to contribute to the production of growth generation technologies and will shed light on global and technological regional decision-making for sustainable energy policies as it expands.

This study employs a transfer matrix, dynamic degree, stability index, and the PLUS model to analyze the spatiotemporal changes in forest land and their driving factors in Yibin City from 2000 to 2022. The results reveal the following: (1) The land use in Yibin City is predominantly characterized by cultivated land and forest land (accounting for over 95% of the total area). The area of cultivated land initially increased and then decreased, while forest land continued to decline and construction land expanded significantly. The rate of forest land loss has slowed (with the dynamic degree decreasing from −0.62% to −0.04%), and ecosystem stability has improved (the F-value increased from 2.27 to 2.9). The conversion of cultivated land to forest land is the primary driver of forest recovery, whereas the conversion of forest land to cultivated land is the main cause of reduction; (2) cultivated land is concentrated in the central and northeastern regions, while forest land is distributed in the western and southern mountainous areas. Construction land is predominantly located in urban areas and along transportation routes. Areas of forest land reduction are mainly found in the central and southern regions with rapid economic development, while areas of forest land increase are concentrated in high-altitude zones or key ecological protection areas. Stable forest land is distributed in the western and southern ecological conservation zones; (3) changes in forest land are primarily influenced by annual precipitation, elevation, and distance to rivers. Road accessibility and GDP have significant impacts, while slope, annual average temperature, and population density exert moderate influences. Distance to railways, aspect, and soil type have relatively minor effects. The findings of this study provide a scientific basis for the sustainable management of forest resources and ecological conservation in Yibin City.

Creating a crop type map is a dominant yet complicated model to produce. This study aims to determine the best model to identify the wheat crop in the Haridwar district, Uttarakhand, India, by presenting a novel approach using machine learning techniques for time series data derived from the Sentinel-2 satellite spanned from mid-November to April. The proposed methodology combines the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), satellite bands like red, green, blue, and NIR, feature extraction, and classification algorithms to capture crop growth's temporal dynamics effectively. Three models, Random Forest, Convolutional Neural Networks, and Support Vector Machine, were compared to obtain the start of season (SOS). It is validated and evaluated using the performance metrics. Further, Random Forest stood out as the best model statistically and spatially for phenology parameter extraction with the least RMSE value at 19 days. CNN and Random Forest models were used to classify wheat crops by combining SOS, blue, green, red, NIR bands, and NDVI. Random Forest produces a more accurate wheat map with an accuracy of 69% and 0.5 MeanIoU. It was observed that CNN is not able to distinguish between wheat and other crops. The result revealed that incorporating the Sentinel-2 satellite data bearing a high spatial and temporal resolution with supervised machine-learning models and crop phenology metrics can empower the crop type classification process.

Photovoltaic systems have shown significant attention in energy systems due to the recent machine learning approach to addressing photovoltaic technical failures and energy crises. A precise power production analysis is utilized for failure identification and detection. Therefore, detecting faults in photovoltaic systems produces a considerable challenge, as it needs to determine the fault type and location rapidly and economically while ensuring continuous system operation. Thus, applying an effective fault detection system becomes necessary to moderate damages caused by faulty photovoltaic devices and protect the system against possible losses. The contribution of this study is in two folds: firstly, the paper presents several categories of photovoltaic systems faults in literature, including line-to-line, degradation, partial shading effect, open/close circuits and bypass diode faults and explores fault discovery approaches with specific importance on detecting intricate faults earlier unexplored to address this issue; secondly, VOSviewer software is presented to assess and review the utilization of machine learning within the solar photovoltaic system sector. To achieve the aims, 2258 articles retrieved from Scopus, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect were examined across different machine learning and energy-related keywords from 1990 to the most recent research papers on 14 January 2025. The results emphasise the efficiency of the established methods in attaining fault detection with a high accuracy of over 98%. It is also observed that considering their effortlessness and performance accuracy, artificial neural networks are the most promising technique in finding a central photovoltaic system fault detection. In this regard, an extensive application of machine learning to solar photovoltaic systems could thus clinch a quicker route through sustainable energy production.