Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Engineering
Streambed pollution: A comprehensive review of its sources, eco-hydro-geo-chemical impacts, assessment, and mitigation strategies
Published: 2021-09-10
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Streambeds are an integral component of the river ecosystems. It provides habitat for a vast array of benthic and aquatic organisms as well as facilitates the bio-degradation and transformation of organic matter and other nutrients. Increasing anthropogenic influence introduces multiple stressors to the stream networks resulting in pollution of streambeds, which in turn, could have detrimental [...]
Comprehensive aerial survey quantifies high methane emissions from the New Mexico Permian Basin
Published: 2021-08-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Limiting emissions of climate-warming methane from oil and gas (O&G) is a major opportunity for short-term climate benefits. We deploy a basin-wide airborne survey of the New Mexico Permian Basin, spanning 35,923 km^2, 26,292 active wells, and over 15,000 km of natural gas pipelines using an independently-validated hyperspectral methane point source detection and quantification system. The [...]
On the overlooked impact of river dams on beach erosion worldwide
Published: 2021-08-04
Subjects: Engineering
The current retreat of the world's coastline has a profound impact on human activities and ecosystems. The scientific community has primarily focused on the potential impact of sea level rise. At the global scale, the contribution of river sand loads to coastal erosion has been overlooked. Here we present the first global sand pathway model from land to sea. Our model reveals that sand tends to [...]
Combining shallow-water and analytical wake models for tidal array micro-siting
Published: 2021-07-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Oceanography
For tidal-stream energy to become a competitive renewable energy source, clustering multiple turbines into arrays is paramount. As a result, array optimisation is critical for achieving maximum power performance and reducing cost of energy. However, ascertaining an optimal array layout is a highly complex problem, subject to specific site hydrodynamics and multiple inter-disciplinary [...]
Rapid prediction of alongshore run-up distribution from near-field tsunamis
Published: 2021-07-28
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Rapid prediction of the spatial distribution of the run-up from near- field tsunamis is critically important for tsunami hazard characterization. Even though significant advances have been made over the last decade, physics- based numerical models are still computationally intensive. Here, we present a response surface methodology (RSM)-based model called the tsunami run-up response function [...]
Rapid prediction of peak storm surge from tropical cyclone track time series using machine learning
Published: 2021-07-27
Subjects: Engineering
Rapid and accurate prediction of peak storm surges across an extensive coastal region is necessary to inform assessments used to design the systems that protect coastal communities’ life and property. Significant advances in high-fidelity, physics-based numerical models have been made in recent years, but use of these models for probabilistic forecasting and probabilistic hazard assessment is [...]
Integrating Scientific Knowledge into Machine Learning using Interactive Decision Trees
Published: 2021-07-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Decision Trees (DT) is a machine learning method that has been widely used in the geosciences to automatically extract patterns from complex and high dimensional data. However, like any data-based method, the application of DT is hindered by data limitations and potentially physically unrealistic results. We develop interactive DT (iDT) that put the human in the loop and integrate the power of [...]
An open-source package with interactive Jupyter Notebooks to enhance the accessibility of reservoir operations simulation and optimisation
Published: 2021-07-14
Subjects: Engineering
In this paper we present the interactive Reservoir Operations Notebooks and Software (iRONS) toolbox for reservoir modelling and optimisation. The toolbox is meant to serve the research and professional community in hydrology and water resource management and contribute to bridge the gaps between them. iRONS is composed of a package of Python core functions and a set of interactive Jupyter [...]
HydroLang: An Open-Source Web-Based Programming Framework for Hydrological Sciences
Published: 2021-07-03
Subjects: Engineering
This paper presents HydroLang, an open-source and integrated community-driven computational web framework to support research and education in hydrology and water resources. HydroLang uses client-side web technologies and standards to perform different routines which aim towards the acquisition, management, transformation, analysis and visualization of hydrological datasets. HydroLang is [...]
On the Efficacy of Compact Radar Transponders for InSAR Geodesy: Results of Multi-year Field Tests
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Compact and low-cost radar transponders are an attractive alternative to corner reflectors (CR) for SAR interferometric (InSAR) deformation monitoring, datum connection, and geodetic data integration. Recently, such transponders have become commercially available for C-band sensors, which poses relevant questions on their characteristics in terms of radiometric, geometric, and phase stability. [...]
Phosphorus Retention in Lakes: A Critical Reassessment of Hypotheses and Static Models
Published: 2021-06-24
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Various hypotheses and models for phosphorus (P) retention in lakes are reviewed and 39 predictive models are assessed in three categories, namely mechanistic, semi-mechanistic, and strictly-empirical models. A large database consisting of 738 data points is gathered for the analyses. Assessing four pairs of competing hypotheses used in mechanistic models, we found that (i) simulating lakes as [...]
Impact of injection rate ramp-up on nucleation and arrest of dynamic fault slip
Published: 2021-06-18
Subjects: Engineering
Fluid injection into underground formations reactivates preexisting geological discontinuities such as faults or fractures. In this work, we investigate the impact of injection rate ramp-up present in many standard injection protocols on the nucleation and potential arrest of dynamic slip along a planar pressurized fault. We assume a linear increasing function of injection rate with time, up to a [...]
Mapping carbon stocks in Central and South America with SMAP vegetation optical depth
Published: 2021-06-12
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Mapping carbon stocks in the tropics is essential for climate change mitigation. Passive microwave remote sensing allows estimating carbon from deep canopy layers through the Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) parameter. Although their spatial resolution is coarser than that of optical vegetation indices or airborne Lidar data, microwaves present a higher penetration capacity at low frequencies [...]
European carbon storage resource requirements of climate change mitigation targets
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
As a part of climate change mitigation plans in Europe, CO2 storage scenarios have been reported for the United Kingdom and the European Union with injection rates reaching 75 – 330 MtCO2 yr-1 by 2050. However, these plans are not constrained by geological properties or growth rates with precedent in the hydrocarbon industry. We use logistic models to identify growth trajectories and the [...]
Flood Markup Language – A Standards-based Exchange Language for Flood Risk Communication
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Engineering
Flooding is one of the most common natural disasters. There are extensive amounts of studies on understanding and predicting flooding to support preparedness and response. It is critical to share and communicate flood forecasting and modeling datasets generated by different systems and organizations. Most of the organizations share flood risk data for operational purposes with limited metadata [...]