Urban communities worldwide face significant flood risks due to human activities and climate change. Cities in the global South, such as Dar es Salaam, have suffered severe consequences, impacting people's lives and socio-economic development. Understanding how communities build resilience to flooding is crucial in reducing its impacts. However, research on endogenous resilience practices remains limited. This study examines the causes, impacts, and local practices for building resilience to flooding in Dar es Salaam's unplanned settlements. This study used a cross-sectional approach to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 782 households in eight wards using questionnaire surveys, interviews, and field observations. The findings show that torrential and prolonged rainfall influenced by climate variability and change, uncontrolled waste dumping, limited drainage systems, haphazard building development, and increased paved areas are responsible for persistent flooding in Dar es Salaam. Floods result in drowning, property and infrastructural damage, the proliferation of mosquito-waterborne diseases, trauma, and loss of lives and livelihoods with serious public health consequences. The respondents rely on community cohesion and labour to clean water channels and place sandbags on streets to prevent soil erosion and water from entering houses, fortify houses, build raised platforms above flood level, shelter in place, and migrate to safer areas. This study contributes to the global discourse on urban disasters and local adaptation practices for a broader understanding of climatic stresses. It provides empirical evidence on urban flooding, enabling policymakers, scientists, private sector leaders, and urban planners to make informed decisions and implement targeted interventions.

BACKGROUND: The invasive freshwater snail Pomacea canaliculata is an agricultural pest with a certain level of tolerance to abiotic stress. After the harvest of late rice, the snails usually burrow themselves into the soil surface layers to overwinter and pose a renewed threat to rice production in the following year. Revealing the response of snails to environmental stresses is crucial for developing countermeasures to control their damage and spread. RESULTS: In this study, we conducted a 120-day in situ experiment during the winter to investigate the survival and physiological changes of hibernating snails in 0-5 and 5-10 cm soil depths, aiming to explore their overwintering strategies. Our results showed that 73.61%, 87.50%, and 90.28% of male, female, and juvenile snails survived after hibernation for 120 days in 0-10 cm soil depth, respectively. The differences in survival rates based on sex and size of snails potentially reflect the countermeasures of snails to rapidly reproduce after hibernation. Simultaneously, the hibernating snails exhibited the ability to maintain a certain level of body weight. During this period, the snails increased their antioxidant enzyme activities to cope with oxidative stress, and enhanced their lipid storage. The hibernation survival of snails was not significantly affected by different soil depths, indicating that they have the potential to hibernate into deeper soils. Furthermore, snails were capable of increasing their contents of bound water and glycerol to cope with sudden cold spells during hibernation. CONCLUSION: Our findings emphasize the adaptive changes of P. canaliculata snails overwintering in paddy soils. In future studies, the vulnerabilities of P. canaliculata during hibernation (e.g. shell characteristics, nutrient reserves, and dehydration tolerance, etc.,) should be investigated to develop effective control methods for this period. (c) 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.