Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
Machine learning for understanding inland water quantity, quality, and ecology
Published: 2022-09-04
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology
This chapter provides an overview of machine learning models and their applications to the science of inland waters. Such models serve a wide range of purposes for science and management: predicting water quality, quantity, or ecological dynamics across space, time, or hypothetical scenarios; vetting and distilling raw data for further modeling or analysis; generating and exploring hypotheses; [...]
A Simple Framework for Calibrating Hydraulic Flood Inundation Models using Crowd-sourced Water Levels
Published: 2022-08-24
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Fluid Dynamics, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Floods are the most commonly occurring natural disaster, with the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters 2021 report on “The Non-COVID Year in Disasters” estimating economic losses worth over USD 51 million and over 6000 fatalities in 2020. The hydrodynamic models which are used for flood forecasting need to be evaluated and constrained using observations of water depth and extent. [...]
Double surface rupture and hydraulic recharge of a three-fault system during the Mw 4.9 earthquake of 11 November 2019 at Le Teil (France)
Published: 2022-08-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
The Mw 4.9 earthquake of 11 November 2019 at Le Teil (France) occurred at a very shallow depth (about 1 km) inducing the surface rupture of La Rouvière fault, nearby of a limestone quarry. Thanks to satellite differential interferometry, we detected the existence of the secondary surface rupture of the quasi-parallel Bayne Rocherenard fault. A newly processed seismic cross-section allowed us to [...]
MacroSheds: a synthesis of long-term biogeochemical, hydroclimatic, and geospatial data from small watershed ecosystem studies
Published: 2022-08-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
The U.S. Federal Government supports hundreds of watershed ecosystem monitoring efforts from which solute fluxes can be calculated. While details of instrumentation and sampling methods vary across these studies, the types of data collected and the questions that motivate their analysis are remarkably similar. Nevertheless, little effort toward the compilation of these datasets has previously [...]
Water discharge variations control fluvial stratigraphic architecture in the Middle Eocene Escanilla formation, Spain
Published: 2022-07-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Ancient fluvial deposits typically display repetitive changes in their depositional architecture such as alternating intervals of coarse-grained highly amalgamated (HA), laterally-stacked, channel bodies, and finer-grained less amalgamated (LA), vertically-stacked, channels encased in floodplain deposits. Such patterns are usually ascribed to slower, respectively higher, rates of base level rise [...]
Applying a science-forward approach to groundwater regulatory design
Published: 2022-07-14
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Hydrology, Nature and Society Relations
Groundwater sustainability is challenged by the difference between legal and scientific understanding of groundwater as well as the lack of focused attention to regulatory design in the literature on groundwater institutions, governance and management. The purpose of this paper is to use groundwater science to direct the necessary elements of regulatory design for the unique characteristics of [...]
Geochemical evidence for the nonexistence of supercritical geothermal fluids at the Yangbajing geothermal field, southern Tibet
Published: 2022-07-07
Subjects: Hydrology, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Exploring and exploiting high-temperature (even supercritical) geothermal resources are significant to meet energy demands and reduce carbon emissions. The Yangbajing geothermal field is the most exploited in China, with the currently highest temperature (329.8 °C) measured in a geothermal well. However, whether there are supercritical geothermal fluids beneath the deep parts of this geothermal [...]
Global water cycle shifts far beyond pre-industrial conditions – planetary boundary for freshwater change transgressed
Published: 2022-07-07
Subjects: Hydrology
Human actions compromise the many life-supporting functions provided by the freshwater cycle. Yet, scientific understanding of anthropogenic freshwater change and its long-term evolution is limited. Using a multi-model ensemble of global hydrological models, we estimate how, over a 145-year industrial period, streamflow and soil moisture have deviated from pre-industrial baseline conditions [...]
Towards Robust River Plastic Detection: Combining Lab and Field-based Hyperspectral Imagery
Published: 2022-06-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Statistical Models
Plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems has increased dramatically in the last five decades, with strong impacts on human and aquatic life. Recent studies endorse the need for innovative approaches to monitor the presence, abundance, and types of plastic in these ecosystems. One approach gaining rapid traction is the use of multi- and hyperspectral cameras. However, most experiments using this [...]
Groundwater resource allocation in British Columbia: challenges and ways forward
Published: 2022-06-24
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater allocation in British Columbia is facing a number of important challenges as groundwater is licensed under the Water Sustainability Act and potentially included in modern treaties. These challenges include acknowledging the importance of groundwater in supporting environmental flow needs and human water use, the uncertainty and irrelevance of annual recharge estimates, and the [...]
SAR and InSAR data linked to soil moisture changes on a temperate raised peatland subjected to a wildfire
Published: 2022-06-18
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Soil Science
Interferometry of Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) can potentially contribute to the cost-effective regional or global monitoring of the degradation and restoration of peatlands. However, there are uncertainties about the links between InSAR results and peatland ecohydrological parameters, especially soil moisture. Here, we analyse the relationships between the temporal evolutions of InSAR [...]
Validation of glacial-interglacial rainfall variations in southwest Sulawesi using Mg/Ca and δ18O in speleothems
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Speleology
The final version of this article is now published with Communications. Earth and Environment. To view this open access article, please use the Published Article DOI. Speleothem δ18O is widely used as a proxy for rainfall amount in the tropics on glacial-interglacial to interannual scales. However, uncertainties in the interpretation of this renowned proxy pose a vexing problem in tropical [...]
An Artificial Neural Network Emulator of the Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Dynamic Systems, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation
Machine learning (ML) is becoming an ever more important tool in hydrologic modeling. Many studies have shown the higher prediction accuracy of the ML models over traditional process-based ones. However, there is another advantage of ML which is its lower computer time of execution. This is important for the applications such as hydraulic soil erosion estimation over a large area and at a finer [...]
PING-Mapper: open-source software for automated benthic imaging and mapping using recreation-grade sonar
Published: 2022-06-14
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation
The characterization of benthic habitats is essential for aquatic ecosystem science and management, but is frequently limited by waterbody visibility and depth. Recreation-grade side scan sonar systems are increasingly used to aid scientific inquiries in shallow water due to their relative low-cost, ease of operation, low-weight, and ease of mounting on a variety of vessels. However, existing [...]
Mechanisms underlying the vulnerability of seasonally dry ecosystems to drought
Published: 2022-05-20
Subjects: Hydrology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Root-zone water storage (RWS) dynamics regulate when plants experience drought-related water stress and mortality. However, because RWS capacity (Smax) is poorly known, it remains challenging to translate variability in precipitation to water stress. Here, we investigate the relationship between precipitation variability and Smax and implement a framework for identifying the vulnerability of [...]