Editorial: Climate-Environment Resiliency and Adaptation

Xixi Wang^1*Ruizhong Gao²William Higgisson³Rui Liu³

• ¹Old Dominion University, Norfolk, United States
• ²Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
• ³University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia

The accelerating pace of global climate change has triggered a cascade of environmental and societal impacts -from intensified storms, droughts, and heatwaves to rising seas, ecosystem degradation, and infrastructure failures. These impacts not only threaten ecosystems but also disrupt economies, exacerbate social inequalities, and compromise public health and social stability. As these challenges grow in complexity and interconnectedness, resilience -the capacity of systems to anticipate, absorb, recover from, and adapt to disturbances -has become a critical guiding principle for science, policy, and practice.Despite substantial progress, resilience and adaptation research still face key barriers.Many studies remain siloed within specific disciplines or scales, limiting the ability to translate scientific insights into actionable strategies. Others rely heavily on correlative approaches, without sufficiently capturing underlying processes or feedback between human and natural systems. This special issue seeks to bridge these gaps by bringing together a diverse set of studies that address resilience from complementary perspectives -integrating physical science, social science, data analytics, policy, and engineering.The 14 papers in this collection provide a rich cross-section of current research efforts.They range from biophysical process modeling and ecosystem responses to adaptation policy analysis and social vulnerability assessment. Together, they reflect a growing consensus: addressing the challenges of a changing climate requires a systemic, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary approach. Several contributions focus on how societies perceive and respond to climate impacts, highlighting the importance of traditional knowledge, socioeconomic context, user-inspired The development of new decision-support tools and methodologies is critical to translating resilience research into actionable strategies. Katende presents a scalable framework combining econometric modeling and geospatial interpolation for assessing climate resilience in data-scarce regions. This approach enhances the capacity of policymakers to make informed decisions even with limited data availability. The papers in this special issue reflect the remarkable breadth and depth of current research on climate resilience and adaptation. Collectively, they highlight several key messages that are shaping the future of this field:• Interdisciplinarity is essential. Building resilience requires integrating insights from hydrology, ecology, social science, engineering, and policy.• Local context matters. Solutions must be tailored to socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological conditions while remaining scalable and transferable.• Data and technology are enabling transformation. Advances in modeling, remote sensing, and machine learning are expanding our capacity to understand, predict, and respond to climate impacts.• Social considerations should remain an important focus. Effective adaptation strategies should account for differing community needs, support those most at risk, and draw on a broad range of knowledge and experience.• Bridging science and policy is critical. Research must inform decision-making at all levels -from local governance to global frameworks -to ensure that adaptation measures are both scientifically sound and practically viable.As climatic pressures continue to intensify and their cascading impacts on natural and human systems become increasingly evident, the imperative for collaborative cross-disciplinary approaches is more pronounced than ever. We hope this collection not only captures the state of current scientific understanding but also serves as a catalyst for advancing future research that effectively bridges science and practice, integrates knowledge into policy frameworks, and translates innovation into tangible societal benefits. By uniting diverse perspectives, methodologies, and domains of expertise, the contributions presented here collectively point