City green space can promote people’s health and aesthetic satisfaction; however, most extant research focuses on suburban forests and urban parks. Urban landscape forests have important ecological and aesthetic value for urban environments. This study conducted a visual stimulation to examine the impact of four common spatial element combinations in urban landscape forests on teenagers’ recovery potential and preference. The results indicate that urban landscape forests had positive physiological and psychological effects on adolescents, including decreased blood pressure, improved heart rate, reduced anxiety, and improved recovery ability. Diastolic blood pressure relief performance was better among males than females. In addition, a stepwise linear regression analysis was performed to explore the quantitative relationship between spatial elements and recovery and preference values. The results demonstrate that water elements were a significant predictor in the quantitative relationship between spatial elements in landscape forests and restoration and preference values. Terrain, flower, and shrub elements did not have a significant effect on overall restoration and preference values. This study highlights the intervention value of urban landscape forests in promoting the health and well-being of adolescents, with implications for future planning and design of urban landscape forests.

In recent years, soil salinization has become increasingly severe, and the ecological functions of saline–alkali soils have deteriorated because of the lack of plants. Therefore, understanding the tolerance mechanisms of saline–alkali-tolerant plants has become crucial to restore the ecological functions of saline–alkali soils. In this study, we evaluated the molecular mechanism underlying the tolerance of Kosteletzkya pentacarpos L. (seashore mallow) seedlings treated with 0.05 or 0.5% saline–alkali solution (NaCl: NaHCO3 = 4:1 mass ratio) for 1 and 7 days. We identified the key genes involved in tolerance to saline–alkali stress using orthogonal partial least squares regression analysis (OPLS-RA) based on both chlorophyll fluorescence indexes and stress-responsive genes using transcriptome analysis, and, finally, validated their expression using qRT-PCR. We observed minor changes in the maximum photochemical efficiency of the stressed seedlings, whose photosynthetic performance remained stable. Moreover, compared to the control, other indicators varied more evidently on day 7 of 0.5% saline–alkali treatment, but no variations were observed in other treatments. Transcriptome analysis revealed a total of 54,601 full-length sequences, with predominantly downregulated differentially expressed gene (DEG) expression. In the high concentration treatment, the expression of 89.11 and 88.38% of DEGs was downregulated on days 1 and 7, respectively. Furthermore, nine key genes, including KpAGO4, KpLARP1C, and KpPUB33, were involved in negative regulatory pathways, such as siRNA-mediated DNA methylation, inhibition of 5′-terminal oligopyrimidine mRNA translation, ubiquitin/proteasome degradation, and other pathways, including programmed cell death. Finally, quantitative analysis suggested that the expression of key genes was essentially downregulated. Thus, these genes can be used in plant molecular breeding in the future to generate efficient saline–alkali–tolerant plant germplasm resources to improve the ecological functions of saline–alkali landscapes.

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Green space integrates diversified urban functions, and the analysis of its utilization, can help improve the vitality of the social and economic development of cities while contributing to the important goal of enhancing urban green space (UGS) planning and management. In this study, the heat value obtained from Baidu heat maps was used as an external representation of spatial vitality, and the factors that influence vitality were analyzed from two dimensions, i.e., the inner and outer space characteristics of green space, using spatial big data such as points of interest (POIs), Open Street Map (OSM) and online review data. The findings indicated that green space and urban resources in Chengdu are highly centralized. That is, a high road network density and nearby transportation facilities make it easier for visitors to reach parks, while peripheral functional density also plays a role in promoting vitality; additionally, reasonable and moderate space and functional layouts are conducive to the development of green space. In addition, our study integrates the tour experience index, which has a strong positive impact on vitality, to better reflect the human-oriented characteristics of green space, which are of great relevance to the construction and renewal of human space in UGSs.