Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Life Sciences
The long journey of a benzodiazepine
Published: 2024-03-07
Subjects: Other Life Sciences
Medications make up 12-25% of health care’s greenhouse gas emissions production. By utilizing a life cycle analysis approach, this article lays out each step of production and disposal and estimates the global journey of a generic clonazepam pill. Generic clonazepam was selected because it is a commonly prescribed medication and is often linked to deprescribing initiatives due to its potential [...]
Comment on Hodgkins et al. (2018)
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Biochemistry, Other Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Hodgkins et al. (2018) used mid infrared spectra (MIRS) to make inferences about the stability of peat against decomposition along a latitudinal gradient from the tropics to northern latitudes. Recently, we have shown that these spectral prediction models are biased and their predictions more uncertain than considered in Hodgkins et al. (2018) (Teickner and Knorr (2022)). Here, we show what [...]
Calling for a National Model Benchmarking Facility
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Biology, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Life Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Systems Biology
The modern world uses predictive computer models for many important purposes, including weather predictions, epidemic management, flood forecasting and warnings, and economic policymaking. We need to know how much we can trust the projections of these models, not only to achieve more accurate projections for systems, but also to undertake scientific learning about systems by incrementally testing [...]
Contribution of zooplankton nutrient recycling and effects on phytoplankton size structure in a hypereutrophic reservoir
Published: 2022-02-16
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Consumer nutrient recycling influences aquatic ecosystem functioning by altering the movement and transformation of nutrients. In hypereutrophic reservoirs, zooplankton nutrient recycling has been considered negligible due to high concentrations of available nutrients. A comparative analysis (Moody and Wilkinson, 2019) found that zooplankton communities in hypereutrophic lakes are dominated by [...]
The challenge of setting ‘climate ready’ ecological targets for environmental flow planning
Published: 2021-12-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Life Sciences
Implementing environmental flows has emerged as a major restoration tool for addressing the impacts of hydrologic alteration in large river systems. The ‘natural flow paradigm’ has been a central guiding principle for determining important ecohydrological relationships. Yet, climate change and associated changes in rainfall run off relationships, seasonality of flows, disruptions to food webs and [...]
What’s obstructing climate change adaptation in environmental water management?
Published: 2021-12-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Life Sciences
Climate change is irreversibly changing the water cycle, yet existing environmental flow assessment methods often fail to recognise the non stationarity of hydro climatic systems. Failure to do so will lead to the inability of environmental water management to achieve its restoration targets. Australia has undergone major reform over the past twelve years to recover water from consumptive use for [...]
Environmental Flows Assessments in the face of uncertainty: supporting the adaptive management of environmental flows
Published: 2021-12-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Life Sciences
Adaptive management has become the preferred approach for managing environmental flows globally, and successful implementation recognizes multiple dimensions of variability and complexity in socio-ecological systems. This paper outlines an environmental flow assessment methodology that explicitly addresses the uncertainty and change inherent in adaptively managing multiple values for management [...]
Chevrons: origin and relevance for the reconstruction of past wind regimes
Published: 2020-12-15
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Meteorology, Other Life Sciences, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Since its first use in the late 80’s, the term chevron has been employed in numerous studies to describe large U- and V-shaped ridges found in or near shorelines worldwide. Most studies have so far focused on Bahamian chevrons that are exclusively of Late Pleistocene age, and on the supposed Holocene chevrons found in S-Madagascar and Australia. In the Bahamas, these deposits have been [...]
A newly reconciled data set for identifying sea level rise and variability in Dublin Bay
Published: 2020-05-27
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Statistics and Probability
We provide an updated sea level dataset for Dublin for the period 1938 to 2016 at yearly resolution. Using a newly collated sea level record for Dublin Port, as well as two nearby tide gauges at Arklow and Howth Harbour, we perform data quality checks and calibration of the Dublin Port record by adjusting the biased high water level measurements that affect the overall calculation of mean sea [...]
Identification of Hydrologic Landscapes in Brazilian basins and its application as indicator of water yield and storage
Published: 2020-04-09
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This study aimed to use the Hydrologic Landscapes as environmental classification method in the Piracicaba, Capivari and Jundiaí river basins, validate and use it as an indicator of water yield and storage areas. The method comprises in the same Information Plan (IP) factors that interact with the hydrological cycle in its terrestrial phase. The state of São Paulo, where most of the area is [...]
Northern peatland depth and lateral expansion is inconsistent with a 1055 GtC estimate of carbon storage
Published: 2020-03-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Peatlands contain one of the largest stores of terrestrial carbon and exert a considerable influence on the global climate cycle. However, both the magnitude of the peatland carbon pool and the development of this pool through time are poorly constrained. In a recently published article, Nichols and Peteet combine basal radiocarbon dates from palaeoecological studies with previously published [...]
Machine learning for digital soil mapping: applications, challenges and suggested solutions
Published: 2020-02-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
The uptake of machine learning (ML) algorithms in digital soil mapping (DSM) is transforming the way soil scientists produce their maps. Machine learning is currently applied to mapping soil properties or classes much in the same way as other unrelated fields of science. Mapping of soil, however, has unique aspects which require adaptations of the ML algorithms. These features are for example, [...]
serac: a R package for ShortlivEd RAdionuclide Chronology of recent sediment cores
Published: 2020-01-17
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Short-lived radionuclides are measured in surface sediment to provide a geochronology for the past century. Age-depth models can be produced from 210Pbex activity-derived sedimentation rates and confirmed by 137Cs and 241Am activities that are result of fallout from nuclear weapon tests and the Chernobyl accident. Different methods of age depth modelling using such data require expertise in lake [...]
The environmental impacts of palm oil in context
Published: 2020-01-10
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Food Science, Life Sciences, Other Food Science, Other Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils in general, and palm oil in particular, is perhaps the most controversial illustration of these trade-offs. Global annual demand for vegetable oil for food, animal feed and fuel is currently at 210 million tons1 (Mt), with [...]
The first climate tipping point – Already in the past?
Published: 2020-01-03
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Humanity may have passed its first climate tipping point and face self-sustained melting of the permafrost for hundreds of years even if all man-made GHG emissions are stopped.