Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Evolution of normal fault displacement and length as the continental lithosphere stretches
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Continental rifting is accommodated by the development of normal fault arrays. Fault growth patterns control their related seismic hazards, as well as influencing the tectonostratigraphic evolution, resource extraction and CO2 storage potential of rifts. Our understanding of fault evolution is largely derived by observing the final geometry and displacement (D)-length (L) characteristics of [...]
Crop residues are a key feedstock to bioeconomy but available methods for their estimation are highly uncertain
Published: 2020-07-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Crop residues are acknowledged as a key biomass resource to feed tomorrow’s sustainable bioeconomy. Yet, the quantification of these residues at large geographical scales is primarily reliant upon generic statistical estimations based on empirical functions linking the residues production to the primary crop yield. These useful yet unquestioned functions are developed either using direct evidence [...]
Contributions of paleoecology to Easter Island’s prehistory: a thorough review
Published: 2020-07-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Sustainability
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is well known for the enigmas surrounding its unique megalithic statues, the moai, and the prehistoric (i.e., pre-European contact) Rapanui society that built them. These enigmas include, among others, the time of the island’s settlement, the geographical origin of the first settlers, the technology associated with moai transportation and emplacement, the occurrence (or [...]
What Controls Salt‐Detached Contraction in the Translational Domain of the Outer Kwanza Basin, Offshore Angola?
Published: 2020-07-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
It is now well‐established that base‐salt relief drives complex deformation patterns in the mid‐slope domain of salt‐bearing passive margins, in a location classically thought to be dominated by simple horizontal translation. However, due to a lack of detailed studies drawing on high‐quality, 3D seismic reflection data, our understanding of how base‐salt relief controls four‐dimensional patterns [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Suitability Analysis of Remote Sensing Techniques for Shoreline Extraction of Global River Deltas
Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
High frequency flooding, sea level rise and changes to riverine sediment fluxes have threatened the habitable land area of river deltas, where close to half a billion people live, globally. Understanding shoreline positions is important for overall sustainable planning of deltaic communities and delta evolution predictive modeling. However, a gap in literature is recognized where there is a) no [...]
SARS-CoV-2 COVID 19 SPIKES CHEMICAL REACTION WITH CLIMATE HUMIDITY
Published: 2020-06-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
The analysis consists of daily monitoring of pandemic fluctuations and climatic fluctuations over a period of two months in France. A comparative analysis survey in 27 European countries determined the effect of climatic conditions, temperature and humidity on differences in the extent of the disease. From the molecular composition of Spikes, we established their hygroscopic property and showed [...]
Global wave-driven beach evolution; consequences for observation strategies
Published: 2020-06-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
It is an illusion to think that one can observe monthly beach behaviour with monthly surveys. Current coastal observation strategies restrict understanding of beach evolution, preventing effective risk mitigation. In this article, we quantify the global spatiotemporal scales of coastal wave changes, which are the known dominant driver of beach evolution. Consequences and recommendations for beach [...]
Description of the continuous nature of organic matter in models of soil carbon dynamics
Published: 2020-05-28
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Geochemistry, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
The understanding of soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics has considerably advanced in recent years. It was previously assumed that most SOM consisted of recalcitrant compounds, whereas the emerging view considers SOM as a range of polymers continuously processed into smaller molecules by decomposer enzymes. Mainstreaming these new insights in current models is challenging because of their [...]
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 [...]
Shining light on priming in euphotic sediments: Nutrient enrichment stimulates export of stored organic matter
Published: 2020-05-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Estuarine sediments are important sites for the interception, processing and retention of organic matter, prior to its export to the coastal oceans. Stimulated microbial co-metabolism (priming) potentially increases export of refractory organic matter through increased production of hydrolytic enzymes. By using the microphytobenthos community to directly introduce a pulse of labile carbon into [...]
An open, scalable, and flexible framework for automated aerial measurement of field experiments
Published: 2020-05-24
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Life Sciences, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Unoccupied areal vehicles (UAVs or drones) are increasingly used in field research. Drones capable of routinely and consistently capturing high quality imagery of experimental fields have become relatively inexpensive. However, converting these images into scientifically useable data has become a bottleneck. A number of tools exist to support this workflow, but there is no framework for making [...]