Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Post-Processing a Conceptual Rainfall-Runoff Model with an LSTM
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Machine learning is becoming an increasingly important part of streamflow forecasting, but as these models to date lack a physical basis, there is a potential that they may produce values that are not realistic. We tested a simple post-processing strategy that uses the outputs from a calibrated conceptual model (the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting Model with Snow-17; SAC-SMA) as inputs into a [...]
Automatic atmospheric correction for shortwave hyperspectral remote sensing data using a time-dependent deep neural network
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Atmospheric correction is an essential step in hyperspectral imaging and target detection from spectrometer remote sensing data. State-of-the-art atmospheric correction algorithms either require filed-measurements or prior knowledge of atmospheric characteristics to improve the predicted accuracy, which are computational expensive and unsuitable for real time application. In this paper, we [...]
Range-based intensity normalization of ALS data over forested areas using a sensor tracking method from multiple returns
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Airborne laser scanning (ALS) point-clouds are used in forest inventory to map properties of the resource. In most cases, only the (x,y,z) coordinates of the point cloud are used to build predictive models of forest structure. Despite being recorded and provided by data suppliers, the intensity values associated with each point are rarely used as an input to such models because raw intensity [...]
Iron oxide reactivity controls organic matter mineralization in ferruginous sediments
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ferruginous sediments were widespread during the Archaean and Proterozoic Eons, but our knowledge about organic matter mineralization remains mostly conceptual, as analogous modern ferruginous sediments are largely unstudied. In sediments of ferruginous Lake Towuti, Indonesia, methanogenesis dominates organic matter mineralization despite abundant reactive ferric iron phases persisting throughout [...]
Habitability of the early Earth: Liquid water under a faint young Sun facilitated by strong tidal heating due to a nearby Moon
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Other Astrophysics and Astronomy, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, The Sun and the Solar System
Geological evidence suggests liquid water near the Earths surface as early as 4.4 gigayears ago when the faint young Sun only radiated about 70 % of its modern power output. At this point, the Earth should have been a global snowball. An extreme atmospheric greenhouse effect, an initially more massive Sun, release of heat acquired during the accretion process of protoplanetary material, and [...]
Towards local bioeconomy: A stepwise framework for high-resolution spatial quantification of forestry residues
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
In the ambition of a transition from fossil carbon use, forestry residues are attracting considerable attention as a feedstock for the future bioeconomy. However, there is a limited spatially explicit understanding of their availability. Confronted with limited resources for extensive field measurement campaigns, there are also limited discussions on the best practices towards a harmonized [...]
Forecasting the localized bilateral effects of ocean acidification on the counter carbonate pump using recurrent neural networks
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Chemistry, Computer Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The counter carbonate pump(CCP) is responsible for carbon dioxide sequestration and cycling forms of carbon in the ocean. It is primarily driven by calcifying plankton, such as foraminifera, coccolithophores, and pteropods. These organisms are particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification, which can have disastrous effects on their skeletons and productivity, upsetting the marine carbon cycle in [...]
Fracture mechanics of rate-and-state faults and fluid injection induced slip
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
Propagation of a slip transient on a fault with rate-and-state dependent friction resembles a fracture which near tip region is characterized by large departure of the slip velocity and fault strength from the steady-state sliding. We develop a near tip solution to describe this unsteady dynamics, and obtain the fracture energy Gc, dissipated in overcoming strength-excursion away from [...]
Climate has contrasting direct and indirect effects on armed conflicts
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability
There is an active debate regarding the influence that climate has on the risk of armed conflict, which stems from challenges in assembling unbiased datasets, competing hypotheses on the mechanisms of climate influence, and the difficulty of disentangling direct and indirect climate effects. We use gridded historical non-state conflict records, satellite data, and land surface models in a [...]
An Early Pliocene relative sea level record from Patagonia (Argentina)
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We report a geological unit surveyed and dated in central Patagonia, Argentina (Camarones town, San Jorge Gulf). The unit was interpreted as representative of an intertidal environment and dated to the Early Pliocene (4.69-5.23 Ma) with strontium isotope stratigraphy. The elevation of this unit was measured with differential GPS at ca. 36 m above present-day sea level. Considering modern tidal [...]
Application of the tilt derivative transform to bathymetric data for structural lineament mapping
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
High-resolution bathymetry surveys provide an opportunity to analyse local geological structure where onshore areas afford limited exposure. Semi-automated lineament detection methods are necessary for areas of large coverage where a manual analysis would be subjective and time-consuming. However, semi-automated approaches are dependent on effective feature extraction methods to identify genuine [...]
Mass independent fractionation of even and odd mercury isotopes during atmospheric mercury redox reactions
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mass independent fractionation (MIF) of even mass number mercury (Hg) stable isotopes is observed in rainfall and gaseous elemental Hg0 globally, and is used to quantify atmospheric Hg deposition pathways. The chemical reaction and underlying even-Hg MIF mechanism are unknown however, and speculated to be caused by Hg photo-oxidation on aerosols at the tropopause. Here we investigate the Hg [...]
Seasonal methane dynamics in high-elevation lakes in the Sierra Nevada California: the role of elevation, temperature, organic matter, and inorganic nutrients
Published: 2020-07-06
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Freshwater lakes are important but poorly constrained sources of methane to the atmosphere due to high, but variable, rates of methane production, as well as limited and inconsistent measurements worldwide. High-elevation lakes have been particularly overlooked—despite their large numbers in mountain ranges around the world, and despite methane dynamics at high elevations may be altered by rapid [...]
Surprising Changes in Aerosol Loading over India Amid COVID-19 Lockdown
Published: 2020-07-06
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Using ground-based and satellite observation along with aerosol reanalysis products, we show a widespread reduction in aerosol loading over the Indian subcontinent during the COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease 2019) lockdown. The pre-lockdown and lockdown period considered in the present study is 20th February–20th March 2020 and 24th March–22nd April 2020. In terms of aerosol optical depth (AOD), [...]
GANSim: Conditional Facies Simulation Using an Improved Progressive Growing of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
Published: 2020-07-05
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Geology, Hydrology, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Conditional facies modeling combines geological spatial patterns with different types of observed data, to build earth models for predictions of subsurface resources. Recently, researchers have used generative adversarial networks (GANs) for conditional facies modeling, where an unconditional GAN is first trained to learn the geological patterns using the original GANs loss function, then [...]