Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil dryness and its lead relationship to wildfires in the Apalachicola National Forest, Florida, USA
Published: 2022-04-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate models show rainy seasons getting rainier and dry seasons getting drier due to global warming from increasing greenhouse gases but local changes in drying, the understanding of which is important for mitigation efforts, will not necessarily match the global response. Here long-term weather observations from the Weather Service Office in Tallahassee are used to examine soil moisture [...]
Understanding surface-wave modal content for high-resolution imaging of submarine sediments with Distributed Acoustic Sensing
Published: 2022-04-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ocean Bottom Distributed Acoustic Sensing (OBDAS) is emerging as a new measurement method providing dense, high-fidelity, and broadband seismic observations from fibre-optic cables deployed offshore. In this study, we focus on 33 km of a telecommunication cable located offshore the Sanriku region, Japan, and apply seismic interferometry to obtain a high-resolution 2-D shear-wave velocity (VS) [...]
A global analysis of controls on submarine-canyon geomorphology
Published: 2022-04-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
ABSTRACT The role of possible controlling factors in influencing the geomorphology of submarine canyons has been investigated using a database of 282 globally distributed modern examples collated from the literature and open-source worldwide bathymetry. Canyon geomorphology has been characterized quantitatively in terms of maximum and average canyon dimensions, canyon sinuosity, average canyon [...]
Upstream propagation of sea-level signals in fluvio-deltaic environments: time-lags and the dynamics of the fluvial surface
Published: 2022-04-14
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Stratigraphic interpretation generally relies upon the assumption that the fluvio-deltaic surface responds uniformly to sea-level changes; however, recent theoretical work suggests that changes in its relief and concavity can influence the propagation of sea-level information upstream and result in geologically long-lived lags in the system response. We test this theoretical result using [...]
Maars, tuff rings, and tuff cones at the Manyara rift escarpment, Tanzania.
Published: 2022-04-14
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
About 350 maar craters, tuff rings, and tuff cones are spread along the Manyara rift escarpment, and clustered around the Hanang and Kwahara volcanoes in North Tanzania. They lie in the East African Rift, an active extensional setting, where the magma composition is moderately to highly alkaline and carbonate-rich. We present newly-collected depositional characteristic observations, grain size [...]
On the timing and nature of magmatism in the North Atlantic Igneous Province: New implications from basaltic rocks of the Faroe Islands
Published: 2022-04-14
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
New 40Ar/39Ar ages representing a number of basaltic sills and a key lava flow from the Faroe Islands are presented in this contribution and utilised in order to assess the igneous history of parts of this region. In turn, the acquired ages are contrasted against other Faroese rocks of known ages as well as against other comparable igneous regions in the North Atlantic area. Altogether, the novel [...]
Interactive Hydrological Modelling and Simulation on Client-Side Web Systems: An Educational Case Study
Published: 2022-04-13
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Water Resource Management
Computational hydrological models and simulations are fundamental pieces of the workflow of contemporary hydroscience research, education, and professional engineering activities. In support of hydrological modelling efforts, web-enabled tools for data processing, storage, computation, and visualization have proliferated. Most of these efforts rely on server resources for computation and data [...]
Plate Tectonics, Mixed Heating Convection and the Divergence of Mantle and Plume Temperatures
Published: 2022-04-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Petrological data indicate that upper mantle and mantle plume temperatures diverged 2.5 billion years ago. This has been interpreted as plate tectonics initiating at 2.5 Ga with Earth operating as a single plate planet before then. We take an Occam’s razor view that the continuous operation of plate tectonics can explain the divergence. We validate this hypothesis by comparing petrological data [...]
A unified numerical model for two-phase porous, mush and suspension flow dynamics in magmatic systems
Published: 2022-04-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Magmatic systems in the Earth's mantle and crust contain multiple phases including solid crystals, liquid melt and low viscosity fluids. Depending on depth, tectonic setting and chemical composition, magmatic systems can range from partially molten rock at low melt fraction to magma mushes at intermediate melt fraction to magmatic suspensions at high melt fraction. However, the theories [...]
DEM-assisted in-season soil moisture estimation based on normalized Sentinel-1 SAR imagery
Published: 2022-04-13
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil moisture is a crucial in-field variable used in many applications. Soil moisture might be measured in the field using soil sensors and can be estimated via satellite imagery. The present study proposes an innovative SAR-based method that significantly improves the accuracy of soil moisture estimation and does not require field-measured data. The method is based on the previously developed [...]
Quantifying Rates of Landscape Unzipping
Published: 2022-04-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Measuring rates of valley head migration and determining the timing of canyon-opening are insightful for the evolution of planetary surfaces. Spatial gradients of in situ-produced cosmogenic nuclide concentrations along horizontal transects provide a framework for assessing the migration of valley networks and similar topographic features. We developed a new derivation for valley head retreat [...]
A machine learning approach to water quality forecasts and sensor network expansion: Case study in the Wabash River Basin, USA
Published: 2022-04-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Midwestern cities require forecasts of surface nitrate loads to bring additional treatment processes online or activate alternative water supplies. Concurrently, networks of nitrate monitoring stations are being deployed in river basins, co-locating water quality observations with established stream gauges. However, tools to evaluate the future value of expanded networks to improve water quality [...]
A theory of cloud spacing for equilibrium deep convection
Published: 2022-04-05
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Precipitating convection is an important component of tropical atmospheric circulation. A cloud typically persists for an hour before it is shut down by its own evaporation-driven downdraft, which generates a gust front in the mixed layer that triggers neighboring clouds. There is no systematic theory for what sets the spacing of precipitating clouds, which is the first step towards understanding [...]
On the combination of the planktonic foraminiferal Mg/Ca, clumped (Δ47) and conventional (δ18O) stable isotope paleothermometers in palaeoceanographic studies
Published: 2022-04-04
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Assuming that foraminiferal clumped isotope (Δ47) values are independent of seawater salinity and pH, the combination of Mg/Ca, 18O and 47 values, may in theory allow us to disentangle the temperature, salinity/δ18Osw and pH signals. Here, we present a new Mg/Ca-Δ47 dataset for modern planktonic foraminifera, from various oceanographic basins and covering a large range of temperatures (from 0.2 [...]
Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca as Palaeothermometers: New data from Middle Jurassic Belemnites from Germany and Portugal.
Published: 2022-04-03
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In belemnite macrofossil calcite, Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca ratios have long been proposed as a palaeotemperature proxy. However, its use has proved controversial with different studies yielding contradictory results. Oxygen isotopes (