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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Hydrology

An overview of the evolving jurisdictional scope of the U.S. Clean Water Act for hydrologists

Riley Walsh, Adam Scott Ward

Published: 2021-04-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management

The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal mechanism by which the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of streams, lakes, and wetlands are protected in the U.S. The CWA has evolved considerably since its initial passage in 1948, including explicit expansions and contractions of jurisdictional scope through a series of legislative actions, court decisions, and agency rules. Here, we [...]

A Regional Semi-Distributed Streamflow Model Using Deep Learning

Zhongrun Xiang, Ibrahim Demir, Ricardo Mantilla, et al.

Published: 2021-03-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydrology

Recent studies have shown that deep learning models in hydrological applications significantly improved streamflow predictions at multiple stations compared to traditional machine learning approaches. However, most studies lack generalization; i.e. researchers are training separate models for each location. The spatial and temporal generalization ability of deep learning models in hydrology that [...]

New insight into post-seismic landslide evolution processes in the tropics

Hakan Tanyas, Dalia Kirschbaum, Tolga Gorum, et al.

Published: 2021-03-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology

Earthquakes do not only trigger landslides in co-seismic phases but also elevate post-seismic landslide susceptibility either by causing a strength reduction in hillslope materials or by producing co-seismic landslide deposits, which are prone to further remobilization under the external forces generated by subsequent rainfall events. However, we still have limited observations regarding the [...]

Crisis at the Salton Sea: The Vital Role of Science

Marilyn Fogel, Hoori Ajami, Emma Aronson, et al.

Published: 2021-03-04
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Chemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Medicine and Health Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Salton Sea—a hypersaline, terminal lake in southern California—is in crisis. A combination of mismanagement and competition among federal, state and local agencies has hindered efforts to address declining lake levels and unstable water chemistry. This delay has heightened the public health threat to regional communities as retreating shorelines expose dry lakebed— a source of potentially [...]

Hydro-Meteorological Aspects of the 2021 South Kalimantan Flood: Topography, Tides, and Precipitation

Munawir Bintang Pratama, Rafida Multazima Withono, Ismail Naufal Azkiarizqi

Published: 2021-03-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Meteorology

The 2021 South Kalimantan flood was recorded as the most serious ever to have taken place in the province. It occurred due to high-intensity rain during the period 10-19 January, accompanied by a spring tide. This study provides an overview of the disaster, with reference to the hydro-meteorological conditions (topography, tides, and precipitation). The method used was the analysis of the [...]

An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories

Gijs De Cort, Manuel Chevalier, Sallie L. Burrough, et al.

Published: 2021-03-01
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Other Earth Sciences, Sedimentology, Statistical Methodology, Stratigraphy

Changes in lake status are often interpreted as palaeoclimate indicators due to their dependence on precipitation and evaporation. The Global Lake Status Database (GLSDB) has since long provided a standardised synopsis of qualitative lake status over the last 30,000 14C years. Potential sources of uncertainty however are not recorded in the GLSDB. Here we present an updated and improved [...]

Simulating fully-integrated hydrological dynamics in complex Alpine headwaters: potential and challenges

James Matthew Thornton, René Therrien, Grégoire Mariéthoz, et al.

Published: 2021-02-26
Subjects: Hydrology

Highly simplified approaches continue to underpin hydrological climate change impact assessments across the Earth’s mountainous regions. Fully-integrated surface-subsurface models may hold far greater potential to represent the distinctive regimes of steep, geologically-complex headwater catchments. However, their utility has not yet been tested across a wide range of mountainous settings. Here, [...]

Global climate-driven trade-offs between the water retention and cooling benefits of urban greening

Mark Olaf Cuthbert, Gabriel Rau, Adam Bates, et al.

Published: 2021-02-23
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Construction Engineering and Management, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management

Heat-related mortality and flooding are pressing challenges for the >4 billion urban population worldwide, exacerbated by increasing urbanization and climate change. Urban greening, such as green roofs and parks, can potentially help address both problems, but the geographical variation of the relative hydrological and thermal performance benefits of such interventions are unknown. Here we [...]

Numerical modeling of Earth's dynamic surface: a community approach

Gregory E Tucker, Eric Hutton, Mark Piper, et al.

Published: 2021-02-14
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Stratigraphy

Computational modelling occupies a unique niche in Earth environmental sciences. Models serve not just as scientific technology and infrastructure, but also as digital containers of the scientific community's understanding of the natural world. As this understanding improves, so too must the associated software. This dual nature---models as both infrastructure and hypotheses---means that [...]

Why do we have so many different hydrological models? A review based on the case of Switzerland

Pascal Horton, Bettina Schaefli, Martina Kauzlaric

Published: 2021-02-02
Subjects: Hydrology, Water Resource Management

Hydrology plays a central role in applied and fundamental environmental sciences, but it is well known to suffer from an overwhelming diversity of models, particularly to simulate streamflow. We discuss here in detail how such diversity did arise based on the example of Switzerland. The case study's relevance stems from the fact that Switzerland, despite of being a small country, shows a variety [...]

Towards underwater plastic monitoring using echo sounding

Sophie Broere, Tim van Emmerik, Daniel González-Fernández, et al.

Published: 2021-01-25
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology

Plastics originating from land are mainly transported to the oceans by rivers. The total plastic transport from land to seas remains uncertain because of difficulties in measuring and the lack of standard observation techniques. A large focus in observations is on plastics floating on the water surface. However, an increasing number of observations suggest that large quantities of plastics are [...]

Plastic plants: Water hyacinths as driver of plastic transport in tropical rivers

Louise Schreyers, Tim van Emmerik, Thanh Luan Nguyen, et al.

Published: 2021-01-14
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science

Recent studies suggest that water hyacinths play an important role in the transport of macroplastics in freshwater ecosystems. Forming large patches of several meters at the water surface, water hyacinths tend to entrain and aggregate large amounts of floating debris, including plastic items. Research on this topic is still novel and few studies have quantified the role of the water hyacinths in [...]

Assessing erosion and flood risk in the coastal zone through the application of the multilevel Monte Carlo method

Mariana C A Clare, Matthew Piggott, Colin J Cotter

Published: 2021-01-07
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability

The risk from erosion and flooding in the coastal zone has the potential to increase in a changing climate. The development and use of coupled hydro-morphodynamic models is therefore becoming an ever higher priority. However, their use as decision support tools suffers from the high degree of uncertainty associated with them, due to incomplete knowledge as well as natural variability in the [...]

LakeEnsemblR: An R package that facilitates ensemble modelling of lakes

Tadhg N. Moore, Jorrit Padric Mesman, Robert Ladwig, et al.

Published: 2021-01-06
Subjects: Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Water Resource Management

Model ensembles have several benefits compared to single-model applications but are not frequently used within the lake modelling community. Setting up and running multiple lake models can be challenging and time consuming, despite the many similarities between the existing models (forcing data, hypsograph, etc.). Here we present an R package, LakeEnsemblR, that facilitates running ensembles of [...]

Multi-decadal improvement in U.S. lake water clarity

Simon Nemer Topp, Tamlin M. Pavelsky, Emily H. Stanley, et al.

Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Hydrology, Water Resource Management

Across the globe, recent work examining the state of freshwater resources paints an increasingly dire picture of degraded water quality. However, much of this work either focuses on a small subset of large waterbodies or uses in situ water quality datasets that contain biases in when and where sampling occurred. Using these unrepresentative samples limits our understanding of landscape level [...]

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