Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
The quest for the missing plastics: Large uncertainties in river plastic export into the sea
Published: 2022-05-16
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Studies, Hydrology
Plastic pollution in the natural environment is causing increasing concern at both the local and global scale. Understanding the dispersion of plastic through the environment is of key importance for the effective implementation of preventive measures and cleanup strategies. Over the past few years, various models have been developed to estimate the transport of plastics in rivers, using limited [...]
Breaking the window of detection: Using multi-scale solute tracer studies to assess mass recovery at the detection limit
Published: 2022-05-05
Subjects: Hydrology
Stream solute tracers are commonly injected to assess transport and transformation in study reaches, but results are biased toward the shortest and fastest storage locations. While this bias has been understood for decades, the impact of an experimental constraint on our understanding has yet to be considered. Here, we ask how different our understanding of reach- and segment-scale transport [...]
Fluid-driven transport of round sediment particles: from discrete simulations to continuum modeling
Published: 2022-04-17
Subjects: Applied Mechanics, Geomorphology, Hydrology
Bedload sediment transport is ubiquitous in shaping natural and engineered landscapes, but the variability in the relation between sediment flux and driving factors is not well understood. At a given Shields number, the observed dimensionless transport rate can vary over a range in controlled systems and up to several orders of magnitude in natural streams. Here we (1) experimentally validate a [...]
Interactive Hydrological Modelling and Simulation on Client-Side Web Systems: An Educational Case Study
Published: 2022-04-14
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Water Resource Management
Computational hydrological models and simulations are fundamental pieces of the workflow of contemporary hydroscience research, education, and professional engineering activities. In support of hydrological modelling efforts, web-enabled tools for data processing, storage, computation, and visualization have proliferated. Most of these efforts rely on server resources for computation and data [...]
Groundwater connections and sustainability in social-ecological systems
Published: 2022-04-09
Subjects: Dynamical Systems, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater resources are connected with social, economic, ecological, and Earth systems. We introduce the framing of groundwater-connected systems to better represent the nature and complexity of these connections in data collection, scientific investigations, governance and management approaches, and groundwater education. Groundwater-connected systems are social, economic, ecological, or Earth [...]
Data from the drain: a sensor framework that captures multiple drivers of chronic coastal floods
Published: 2022-04-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Tide gauge water levels are commonly used as a proxy for flood incidence on land. These proxies are useful for projecting how sea-level rise (SLR) will increase the frequency of coastal flooding. However, tide gauges do not account for land-based sources of coastal flooding and therefore flood thresholds and the proxies derived from them likely underestimate the current and future frequency of [...]
Spatial scale evaluation of forecast flood inundation maps
Published: 2022-03-30
Subjects: Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Flood inundation forecast maps provide an essential tool to disaster management teams for planning and preparation ahead of a flood event in order to mitigate the impacts of flooding on the community. Evaluating the accuracy of forecast flood maps is essential for model development and improving future flood predictions. Conventional, quantitative binary verification measures typically provide a [...]
Late Glacial and Holocene Palaeolake History of the Última Esperanza Region of Southern Patagonia
Published: 2022-03-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
We undertook multiproxy analyses on two sediment cores from Lago Pato, a small lake basin at 51°S topographically separated from Lago del Toro in Torres del Paine (TdP), to provide insights into glacier dynamics and lake level change in the TdP and Última Esperanza region over the last ~30,000 cal a BP (30 ka). Lago Pato is situated in a region overridden by the Southern Patagonian Icefield [...]
Advancing Hydroinformatics and Water Data Science Instruction: Community Perspectives and Online Learning Resources
Published: 2022-03-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Education, Engineering, Hydrology, Science and Mathematics Education, Water Resource Management
Hydroinformatics and water data science topics are increasingly common in university graduate settings through dedicated courses and programs as well as incorporation into traditional water science courses. The technical tools and techniques emphasized by hydroinformatics and water data science involve distinctive instructional styles, which may be facilitated by online formats and materials. In [...]
The long-run welfare impact of hydrological extremes in sub-Saharan Africa
Published: 2022-03-25
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Hydrology
The economic impact of dry and wet spells is increasingly investigated, also relative to anthropogenic climate change. Combining high-resolution wealth estimates and long-run (1901-2018) hydrological records for nearly one million settlements , here we empirically estimate the long-run welfare impact of hydrological events in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To achieve causal identification, we adopt a [...]
Multilevel multifidelity Monte Carlo methods for assessing coastal flood risk
Published: 2022-03-14
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Risk Analysis, Statistical Methodology, Statistics and Probability
When choosing an appropriate hydrodynamic model, there is always a compromise between accuracy and computational cost, with high fidelity models being more expensive than low fidelity ones. However, when assessing uncertainty, we can use a multifidelity approach to take advantage of the accuracy of high fidelity models and the computational efficiency of low fidelity models. Here, we apply the [...]
Abrupt shift to El Niño-like mean state conditions in the tropical Pacific during the Little Ice Age
Published: 2022-03-11
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology
The mean state of the tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere climate, in particular its east-west asymmetry, has profound consequences for regional climates and for the El Niño/ Southern Oscillation variability. Here we present a new high-resolution paleohydrological record using the stable-hydrogen-isotopic composition of terrestrial-lipid biomarkers (δDwax) from a 1,400-year-old lake sedimentary [...]
Freshwater Suspended Particulate Matter – Key Components and Processes in Floc Formation and Dynamics.
Published: 2022-02-18
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Sedimentology
Freshwater suspended particulate matter (SPM) plays an important role in many biogeochemical cycles and serves multiple ecosystem functions. Most SPM is present as complex floc-like aggregate structures composed of various minerals and organic matter from the molecular to the organism level. Flocs provide habitat for microbes and feed for larger organisms. They constitute microbial bioreactors, [...]
Antecedent conditions control thresholds of tile-runoff generation and nitrogen export in intensively managed landscapes
Published: 2022-02-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Threshold changes in rainfall-runoff generation commonly represent shifts in runoff mechanisms and hydrologic connectivity controlling water and solute transport and transformation. In watersheds with limited human influence, threshold runoff responses reflect interaction between precipitation event and antecedent soil moisture. Similar analyses are lacking in intensively managed landscapes where [...]
Impact of hydropower reservoirs on floods: Evidence from large river basins in Austria
Published: 2022-02-04
Subjects: Hydrology
Dams and hydropower reservoirs constructed in the headwaters of river basins alter the hydrological characteristics as well as other physical and biological conditions of rivers downstream. In this study the impact of reservoirs on floods is systematically assessed for 8 heavily modified river basins in Austria. Since discharge data prior to the construction is not available the natural [...]