Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Grand Challenges (and Great Opportunities) in Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, and Diagenesis Research
Published: 2018-09-23
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Technological advances make these exciting times for geoscientists studying Earth surface processes, their depositional products, and interactions with the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere; from monitoring contemporary sediment transport processes to interpretation of sedimentary archives that record ancient environmental changes. We set out three research challenges: 1) [...]
Complex and cascading triggering of submarine landslides and turbidity currents at volcanic islands revealed from integration of high-resolution onshore and offshore surveys
Published: 2018-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
Submerged flanks of volcanic islands are prone to hazards including submarine landslides that may trigger damaging tsunamis and fast-moving sediment-laden seafloor flows (turbidity currents) that break critical seafloor infrastructure. Small Island Developing States are particularly vulnerable to these hazards due to their remote and isolated nature, small size, high population densities and weak [...]
Response of Marine-Terminating Glaciers to Forcing: Time Scales, Sensitivities, Instabilities and Stochastic Dynamics
Published: 2018-09-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Recent observations indicate that many marine‐terminating glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are currently retreating and thinning, potentially due to long‐term trends in climate forcing. In this study, we describe a simple two‐stage model that accurately emulates the response to external forcing of marine‐terminating glaciers simulated in a spatially extended model. The simplicity of the model [...]
Wood Jam Dynamics Database and Assessment Model (WooDDAM): A Framework to Measure and Understand Wood Jam Characteristics and Dynamics
Published: 2018-09-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Wood jams in rivers and on floodplains play an essential role in shaping valley bottoms, and their dynamics regulate the ecology and morphology of river systems. We present the Wood Jam Dynamics Database and Assessment Model (WooDDAM) to improve understanding and management of natural and anthropogenic wood jams in rivers. WooDDAM is comprised of a field data collection protocol, an open database [...]
Benchmarking flexible meshes and regular grids for large-scale fluvial inundation modelling
Published: 2018-09-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Damage resulting from flood events is increasing world-wide, requiring the implementation of mitigation and adaption measures. To facilitate their implementation, it is essential to correctly model flood hazard at the large scale, yet fine spatial resolution. To reduce the computational load of models, flexible meshes are an efficient means compared to uniform regular grids. Yet, thus far they [...]
Scoping the potential usefulness of seasonal climate forecasts for solar power management
Published: 2018-09-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Solar photovoltaic energy is widespread worldwide and particularly in Europe, which became in 2016 the first region in the world to pass the 100 GW of installed capacity. As for all the renewable energy sources, for an intelligent management of solar power, it is essential to have reliable and accurate information about weather/climate conditions that affect the production of electricity. This [...]
Earthquake early warning using future generation gravity strainmeters
Published: 2018-09-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Recent studies reported the observation of prompt elastogravity signals during the 2011 M9.1 Tohoku earthquake, recorded with broadband seismometers and gravimeter between the rupture onset and the arrival of the seismic waves. Here we show that to extend the range of magnitudes over which the gravity perturbations can be observed and reduce the time needed for their detection, high-precision [...]
GLOBAL WATER TRANSFER MEGAPROJECTS: A SOLUTION FOR THE WATER-FOOD-ENERGY NEXUS?
Published: 2018-09-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Globally, freshwater is unevenly distributed, both in space and time. Climate change, land use alteration, and increasing human exploitation will further increase the pressure on water as a resource for human welfare and on inland water ecosystems. Water transfer megaprojects (WTMP), i.e. large-scale engineering interventions to divert water within and between catchments, represent an approach in [...]
Effects of estuarine mudflat formation on tidal prism and large-scale morphology in experiments
Published: 2018-08-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Human interference in estuaries has led to increasing problems of mud, such as hyper‐turbidity with adverse ecological effects and siltation of navigation channels and harbours. To deal with this mud sustainably, it is important to understand its long‐term effects on the morphology and dynamics of estuaries. The aim of this study is to understand how mud affects the morphological evolution of [...]
Mapping and Monitoring Rice Agriculture with Multisensor Temporal Mixture Models
Published: 2018-08-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rice feeds more humans than any other crop on Earth. Accurate prediction of the timing and volume of rice harvests therefore has considerable global importance for food security and economic stability, especially in the developing world. Optical and thermal satellite imagery can provide critical constraints on the spatial extent of rice planting and the timing of rice phenology. We present a [...]
Why does Amazon precipitation decrease when tropical forests respond to increasing CO2?
Published: 2018-08-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Earth system models predict a zonal dipole of precipitation change over tropical South America, with decreases over the Amazon and increases over the Andes. Much of this has been attributed to the physiological response of the rainforest to elevated CO2, which describes a basin-wide reduction in stomatal conductance and transpiration. While robust in Earth system model experiments, details of [...]
A mathematical morphology approach to the identification of drought events in space and time
Published: 2018-08-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Drought events occur worldwide and possibly incur severe consequences. Trying to understand and characterizing drought events is of primordial importance in order to improve the preparedness for coping with future events. In this paper, drought events are characterized by exploiting their spatio-temporal nature. Operators borrowed from mathematical morphology are applied to represent drought [...]
Mechanistic coupling of social and biophysical models of water management through agent typologies
Published: 2018-08-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Modeling the coupled social and biophysical dynamics of water resource systems is increasingly important due to expanding population, fundamental transitions in the uses of water, and changes in global and regional water cycling driven by climate change. Models that explicitly represent the coupled dynamics of biophysical and social components of water resource systems are challenging to design [...]
Diatom evidence of 20th Century ecosystem change in Lake Baikal, Siberia
Published: 2018-08-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lake Baikal has been experiencing limnological changes from recent atmospheric warming since the 1950s, with rising lake water temperatures, reduced ice cover duration and reduced lake water mixing due to stronger thermal stratification. This study uses lake sediment cores to reconstruct recent changes (c. past 20 years) in Lake Baikal’s pelagic diatom communities relative to previous 20th [...]
Climate Change and Curtailment: Evaluating Water Management Practices in the Context of Changing Runoff Regimes in a Snowmelt-Dominated Basin
Published: 2018-08-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate change directly affects the hydrologic cycle in mountainous watersheds, which has consequences for downstream users. Improved water projections under diverse potential climate futures are critical to improving water security and management in these watersheds. The hydrologic science researchers and water resource managers, however, often focus on different metrics of flow regimes in [...]