Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
From Maps to Mandates: Multitemporal Vegetation Cover Analysis as a Tool to Evaluate Environmental Judicial Decisions
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
This study examines the use of multitemporal vegetation cover analysis as a tool to assess the ecological effectiveness of judicial decisions that recognize the rights of nature, using Colombia’s 2016 T-622 decision on the Atrato River as a case study. Using satellite data from MapBiomas and generalized additive models (GAMs), we evaluated changes in ten types of vegetation cover between 2006 and [...]
Recommendations for improving the design, amenity and performance of privately owned, small-scale biobasins
Published: 2025-07-13
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Due to spatial constraints in cities, it is increasingly challenging to integrate appropriate water sensitive urban design (WSUD) solutions. There has been a shift from larger, precinct-scale bioretention systems owned by local governments to smaller scale ‘biobasins’ managed by private landholders. This shift has brought about unique challenges in regulation, design, maintenance, and [...]
Environmental impacts of shrimp aquaculture – a systematic review of life cycle assessments
Published: 2025-07-13
Subjects: Life Sciences
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to evaluate the environmental impacts of shrimp aquaculture, a rapidly expanding global food sector. However, existing shrimp LCA studies report widely divergent results, varying by more than fiftyfold across key impact categories. This systematic review identified 16 peer-reviewed shrimp LCAs and investigates the reasons for these discrepancies. [...]
Spatial Analysis of Lead (Pb) Contamination in Soils of the Savar Industrial Zone, Bangladesh Using QGIS-Based Interpolation
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lead (Pb) contamination poses significant environmental and public health risks in industrial regions. This study employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to assess the spatial distribution of Pb in soils across the Savar industrial zone, Bangladesh—an area characterized by dense industrial activity, including tanneries, textile mills, and metal-processing plants. Using point data from ten [...]
Spatial Analysis and Heatmap Visualization of Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in Dhaka and Mymensingh Divisions, Bangladesh
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physiology
Arsenic contamination in groundwater poses a critical public health threat in Bangladesh, particularly in its central and northern regions. This study investigates the spatial distribution of arsenic concentrations across the Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions using geospatial clustering and interpolation techniques. A total of 1,124 groundwater samples were analyzed using Python-based spatial [...]
River Network HyperGraphs and Transportation Network HyperGraphs: A Graph-Theoretic Approach for Geoscientific and Civil Applications
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Other Life Sciences, Other Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
River Network Graphs and Transportation Network Graphs are classical models that represent river systems and transportation infrastructures as vertices and edges, respectively, and underpin applications in hydrological simulation, watershed management, shortest-path computation, and urban traffic analysis. In this paper, we extend these graph-based models into the hypergraph and superhypergraph [...]
Multi-Model Machine Learning Analysis of Urban Temperature Trends: A Comparative Study on Climate Change Impacts in U.S. Cities of Midwest KANI Region
Published: 2025-07-02
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences
Urban temperature prediction is critical for regional climate planning, environmental monitoring, and thermal hazard mitigation. This study employs a multi-model supervised machine learning framework to predict and forecast daily urban air temperatures and evaluate model performance across key counties in the U.S. Midwest KANI region: Polk (IA), Pulaski (AR), Lancaster (NE), and Johnson (KS), [...]
The rapid progress of climate change requires effective concepts for protecting people indoors
Published: 2025-07-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
According to the latest forecasts from the United Nations, it is highly likely that we will miss by a wide margin the 1.5 °C climate target set in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Rather, this planet has to prepare for a global temperature increase of 2.6 - 3.1 °C by 2100 and associated frequently occurring extreme weather events. It is therefore high time to design and technically equip the [...]
Runoff potential index for upland-lowland drought assessment in rainfed rice using earth observation and mechanistic crop modelling
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Drought vulnerability assessment in agricultural systems remains increasingly critical under climate change, yet current approaches are constrained by limitations of existing topographic indices, particularly in low-gradient terrains where the widely-used Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) exhibits numerical instability and fails to detect critical microtopographic variations that control water [...]
Assessment of heavy metal contamination in seawater, sediments, and fish tissues from Msimbazi Bay, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Heavy metal pollution in marine environments is a growing concern globally due to its potential threats to aquatic ecosystems and human health. Major industrial zones in Tanzania, including Dar es Salaam city, significantly contribute to heavy metal pollution in aquatic ecosystems. The samples for heavy metal analysis in seawater, sediments, and fish tissues were collected, prepared, and [...]
Determination of Low Molecular Weight Organic Acids in Environmental Samples by Ion Chromatography Method
Published: 2025-06-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ion chromatography using the IonPac AS 11 HC analytical column, a 3.0 mM NaOH eluent, and a conductivity detector offers a straightforward, cost-effective, and rapid method for quantifying six organic acids, Lactate, Formate, Acetate, Propionate, Pyruvate, and Glyoxalate, at concentrations as low as micrograms per liter in environmental samples. The method includes comprehensive details on [...]
Comprehensive quantification of production costs for large-scale kelp aquaculture and cost reduction opportunities
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A highly realistic techno-economic analysis (TEA) was developed to assess the cost of production (COP, US $ per fresh tonne kelp) for large-scale kelp aquaculture. The TEA resolves feedbacks across structural design and response, operational requirements and decisions, site properties, and biological response. We apply the TEA to a Saccharina latissima farming operation at a 100m deep, 405 [...]
Microbial dynamics in an intertrappean lake during the terminal phase of Deccan volcanism
Published: 2025-06-11
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Biogeochemical changes associated with Deccan volcanism and their potential link to the K/Pg extinction event are still debated in Palaeoclimate research. Contemporary terrestrial organosedimentary deposits are important archives for understanding the perturbation in the biogeochemical cycling during this critical episode in Earth's history. Here, we report an intertrappean lacustrine carbonate [...]
Assessing the Efficacy and Climate Resilience of Traditional Water Harvesting Systems in Jodhpur District, Rajasthan: A Geospatial and Hydrological Modeling Approach
Published: 2025-06-09
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences
Traditional Water Harvesting Systems (TWHS) are critical for water security in arid regions like Jodhpur district, Rajasthan, India, yet their contemporary efficacy and climate resilience remain inadequately quantified. This study comprehensively assesses selected TWHS, primarily nadis and johads, by integrating geospatial analysis for inventory and characterization, hydrological modeling (SCS-CN [...]
Tropical Intertidal Microbiome Response to the 2024 Pasir Panjang Oil Spill
Published: 2025-05-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
Marine fuel oil (MFO) spills in tropical coastal environments are under-characterized despite increasing risk from maritime activities. Microbial and geochemical responses to the June 2024 Pasir Panjang MFO spill on Singapore’s intertidal sediments were analyzed in real time over 185 days. Using metagenomics and hydrocarbon profiling, microbial community shifts and hydrocarbon degradation were [...]