Ambrosia trifida is an invasive annual plant species that creates dense stands, suppressing native vegetation in affected habitats. To assess its ecological impact and the short-term effectiveness of mechanical management, we conducted field removal experiments using cutting and uprooting methods. We examined plant community composition, species richness, and diversity before and after treatment. Mechanical removal significantly altered plant community structure, leading to increased emergence of native species and reduced dominance of A. trifida, while control plots showed minimal change. Treated plots also had substantially lower soil seed bank density, with most remaining seeds concentrated in the upper 0-5 cm layer, indicating that limiting annual seed input is crucial for suppressing population persistence. However, recovery responses varied by site: Mugunri experienced notable declines in A. trifida cover and a greater establishment of native species, whereas the CCZ site retained A. trifida as a sub-dominant and saw limited recruitment of native species. These differing outcomes suggest that site-specific environmental conditions, initial species pools, and residual seed bank size may affect vegetation recovery after invasive plant removal. While this study demonstrates that mechanical removal disrupts A. trifida dominance and encourages short-term vegetation recovery, its one-year duration limits our understanding of longterm successional pathways. Continued monitoring, repeated annual removal, and assessments across multiple sites are necessary to better understand the mechanisms driving post-removal recovery and to inform the development of effective restoration strategies.
The ever-evolving fashion industry has brought forth direct and indirect effects on the environmentto the extent that environmental contamination, labor exploitation, and pirated or counterfeit products have emerged as serious social issues. The sustainability-related issues are associated with all stages of the product lifecycle, ranging from the extraction of raw materials to product disposal (Berkhout & Smith, 1999).In lifecycle management (LCM), the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability is seen from the perspective of the product lifecycle (Kocmanova & Nemecek, 2009). TBL refers to corporate efforts to keep a balance among financial viability, environmental soundness and social accountability (Elkington, 1997). As sustainable products are defined in the light of lifecycles, research on product lifecycle management (PLM) has drawn much attention (Gmelin & Seuring, 2014).In addition, PLM is known to exert substantial effects on new product development, which warrants the need to view new sustainable products from the perspective of PLM (Cantamessa, Montagna, & Neirotti, 2012). Therefore, the present study intends to apply a conceptual model of PLM-based new sustainable product development to the fashion industry and to take multifaceted approaches to sustainable fashion product development. To that end, case studies of 21 local and global sustainable fashion brands, 1:1 in-depth interviews with 24 experts from sustainable and non-sustainable fashion brands, and participant observation of 5 sustainable fashion brands were conducted as part of this study. The findings illuminate the management issues attributable to the lack of technology and expertise, as well as the quantification issues involving monitoring or normalized data collection, despite the presence of some process-specific sustainable items in sustainable products developed by the fashion brands. Also, the findings will serve as reference data for further discussions and provide some implications for the sustainable fashion product development of fashion brands.