Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
The off-fault deformation on the North Anatolian Fault Zone and assessment of slip rate from carbonate veins
Published: 2020-05-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
In the easternmost segment of the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) zone there are discrepancies in earthquake characteristics arising from differences between geodetically determined and geologically observed slip rates. We investigated the spatial distribution of deformation across a NAF fault segment, Turkey. Field observations were conducted on the offset of physiographic features along the [...]
Same but different: A framework to design and compare riverbank plastic monitoring strategies
Published: 2020-05-25
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Plastic pollution in rivers negatively impacts human livelihood and aquatic ecosystems. Monitoring data are crucial for a better understanding of sources, sinks and transport mechanisms of riverine macroplastics. In turn, such understanding is key to develop effective plastic pollution prevention, mitigation and removal strategies. Riverine plastic has been observed in all compartments, of which [...]
Probabilistic soil moisture dynamics of water- and energy-limited ecosystems
Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
This paper presents an extension of the stochastic ecohydrological model for soil moisture dynamics at a point of Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1999) and Laio et al. (2001). In the original model, evapotranspiration is a function of soil moisture and vegetation parameters, so that the model is suitable for water-limited environments. Our extension introduces a dependence on maximum evapotranspiration [...]
Lower air pollution during COVID-19 lock-down: improving models and methods estimating ozone impacts on crops (accepted 01.07.2020)
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences
We suggest that the unprecedented and unintended decrease of emissions of air pollutants during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 could lead to declining seasonal ozone concentrations, and positive impacts on crop yields. An initial assessment of the potential effects of COVID-19 emission reductions was made using a set of six scenarios that variously assumed annual European and global emission [...]
Predicting outbreak-level tornado counts and casualties from environmental variables
Published: 2020-04-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Environmental variables are used routinely in forecasting when and where an outbreak of tornadoes are likely to occur, but more work is needed to understand how characteristics of severe weather outbreaks vary with the larger scale environmental factors. Here the authors demonstrate a method to quantify `outbreak-level tornado and casualty counts with respect to variations in large-scale [...]
Using large-scale NO2 data from citizen science for air quality compliance and policy support
Published: 2020-04-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Citizen science projects that monitor air quality have recently drastically expanded in scale. Projects involving thousands of citizens generate spatially dense datasets using low-cost passive samplers for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which complement data from the sparse reference network operated by environmental agencies. However, there is a critical bottleneck in using these citizen-derived [...]
Lockdown caused by COVID-19 pandemic reduces air pollution in cities worldwide
Published: 2020-04-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Drastic measures such as lockdown taken by countries worldwide to contain spread of COVID-19 have influenced air pollution dynamics substantially, at a planetary scale. Several media reported the lockdown induced air pollution reduction based on quickly assembled satellite observations. However, a global-scale analysis of such reduction in air pollution backed by quality data collected from [...]
Do atmospheric plastics act as fomites for novel viruses?
Published: 2020-04-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Plastic particles are ubiquitous in various environmental compartments, the atmosphere being the least explored compartment in terms of plastic pollution. The way that atmospheric plastics affect the biological systems has not yet been explored when compared to aquatic ecosystems. There are many speculated human health impacts, one definite and direct impact of atmospheric plastics would be [...]
Impact of climate change in West Africa on cereal production per capita in 2050
Published: 2020-04-14
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences
Food security is a crucial issue in the Sahel and could be endangered by climate change and demographic pressure during the 21st century. Indeed, people in rural areas mainly practice rainfed agriculture for subsistence during the monsoon rainfall season. Higher temperatures and changes in rainfall induced by global warming are threatening food production systems in this region while the [...]
Success at the farm-level in payments for ecosystem services: monetary incentives, participatory processes and institutional adaptation all matter
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
While payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes are increasingly common, in most cases, their effectiveness has lagged behind initial expectations. A major debate exists around whether performance can be improved by prioritising project design features that align with the theoretical, economistic model of PES, or whether, where necessary, it is more important for projects to depart from this [...]
Social as much as environmental: the drivers of tree biomass in smallholder forest landscape restoration programmes
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A major challenge for forest landscape restoration initiatives is the lack of quantitative evidence on how social factors drive environmental outcomes. Here we conduct a transdisciplinary quantitative analysis of the environmental and social drivers of tree biomass accumulation across 639 smallholder farms restoring native tree species in Mexico, Uganda and Mozambique. We use environmental and [...]
Weak influence of paleoenvironmental conditions on the subsurface biosphere of lake Ohrid in the last 515 ka
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Earth Sciences, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding the response of geo- and biosystems to past climatic disturbance is primordial to assess the short to long terms effects of current global change. Lacustrine sediments are commonly used to investigate the impact of climatic change on biogeochemical cycling. In these sediments, subsurface microbial communities play a primordial role in nutrient, organic matter and elemental cycling, [...]
Concepts of space, time and scale
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Concepts of space, time and scale as well as their underpinning theories are crucial for understanding geospatial data. Space can be defined as a boundless, three-dimensional (3D) extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Space has been considered to be absolute, meaning that it exists permanently and independently regardless of any matter in space. [...]
Fundamental laws and principles in geoinformation science
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Scientific laws are empirical statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. There are scientific laws and law-like statements also in the field of geoinformation sciences. Based on the Tobler’s first law of geography, “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. This first law [...]
Individual tree detection and characterization using 3D remote sensing
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Here, we will cover individual tree detection and characterization using 3D remote sensing. Simply, it means that point clouds are collected over a forested area using airborne laser scanning (ALS) or created using photogrammetric image interpretation and further used to detect individual trees using different algorithms. After the tree detection, the attributes of interest are predicted for each [...]