Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Earth Sciences
Glacial hydroclimate of western North America: insights from proxy-model comparison and implications for Lake Bonneville
Published: 2018-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Decades of paleoclimate research have helped to bring the pattern of hydroclimatic change across North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) into ever sharper focus. Despite these advances, the drivers of LGM hydroclimatic variability continue to be debated at the continental to basin scale. To explore the driving mechanisms behind LGM hydroclimatic change, we compare an updated network [...]
Mapping and Monitoring Rice Agriculture with Multisensor Temporal Mixture Models
Published: 2018-08-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rice feeds more humans than any other crop on Earth. Accurate prediction of the timing and volume of rice harvests therefore has considerable global importance for food security and economic stability, especially in the developing world. Optical and thermal satellite imagery can provide critical constraints on the spatial extent of rice planting and the timing of rice phenology. We present a [...]
Wildlife Crime: The application of forensic geoscience to assist with criminal investigations
Published: 2018-06-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Wildlife crime is a growing problem in many rural areas. However, it can often be difficult to determine exactly what had happened and provide evidential Court material, especially where evidence is ephemeral. This paper presents a case study where a badger sett had been illegally filled and evidence was rapidly required to support a prosecution. A topographic surface survey was undertaken, [...]
Geophysical Investigations of WW2 UK air-raid shelters
Published: 2018-05-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Just before WW2, the British government prepared for an aerial onslaught that was predicted to raze cities and cause mass casualties. By 1938, the Air Raid Precautions Act officially stated that population protection would be through dispersal, meaning evacuation and small-scale protection, local authority responsibility often devolving to householders. Archaeological records of remaining [...]
Regional-scale paleobathymetry controlled location, but not magnitude, of tidal dynamics in the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, USA.
Published: 2018-05-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Despite extensive outcrop and previous sedimentologic study, the role of tidal processes along sandy, wave- and river-dominated shorelines of the North American Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway remains uncertain, particularly for the extensive mid-Campanian (c. 75-77.5 Ma) tidal deposits of Utah and Colorado, USA. Herein paleotidal modelling, paleogeographic reconstructions, and interpretation [...]
The Mesozoic and Palaeozoic granitoids of north-western New Guinea
Published: 2018-05-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
A large portion of the Birds Head Peninsula of NW New Guinea is an inlier that reveals the pre-Cenozoic geological history of the northern margin of eastern Gondwana. The peninsula is dominated by a regional basement high exposing Gondwanan (Australian) Palaeozoic metasediments intruded by Palaeozoic and Mesozoic granitoids. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of these granitoids, [...]
Combined geophysical measurements provide evidence for unfrozen water in permafrost in the Adventdalen valley in Svalbard
Published: 2018-05-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Quantifying the unfrozen water content of permafrost is critical for assessing impacts of surface warming on the reactivation of groundwater flow and release of greenhouse gasses from degrading permafrost. Unfrozen water content was determined along a ~12 km transect in the Adventdalen valley in Svalbard, an area with continuous permafrost, using surface nuclear magnetic resonance and controlled [...]
Plants and Drought in a Changing Climate
Published: 2018-04-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Purpose of review: Climate is changing in response to rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and it is commonly asserted that this will cause droughts to become more frequent and severe. However, different metrics of drought give diverging estimates of future impacts. I present a summary of the significant yet underappreciated influence that plant stomatal and growth responses to CO2 have on [...]
Stratigraphy of Aeolis Dorsa, Mars: stratigraphic context of the great river deposits
Published: 2018-04-02
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, The Sun and the Solar System
Unraveling the stratigraphic record is the key to understanding ancient climate and past climate changes on Mars (Grotzinger et al. 2011). Stratigraphic records of river deposits hold particular promise because rain or snowmelt must exceed infiltration plus evaporation to allow sediment transport by rivers. Therefore, river deposits when placed in stratigraphic order could constrain the number, [...]
Multi-scale segmentation algorithm for pattern-based partitioning of large categorical rasters
Published: 2018-01-28
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Geography, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Analyzing large Earth Observation (EO) data on the broad spatial scales frequently involves regionalization of patterns. To automate this process we present a segmentation algorithm designed specifically to delineate segments containing quasi-stationary patterns. The algorithm is designed to work with patterns of a categorical variable. This makes it possible to analyze very large spatial [...]
High Resolution, Millennial-Scale Patterns of Bed Compensation on a Sand-Rich Intraslope Submarine Fan, Western Niger Delta Slope
Published: 2018-01-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Near-seafloor core and seismic-reflection data from the western Niger Delta continental slope document the facies, architecture, and evolution of submarine channel and intraslope submarine fan deposits. The submarine channel enters an 8 km long x 8 km wide intraslope basin, where more than 100 m of deposits form an intraslope submarine fan. Lobe deposits in the intraslope submarine fan show no [...]
Protected Places: A Survey of Laws on Archaeological Site and Cave Location Confidentiality and Their Potential Impact on Library Reference Policies and Services
Published: 2018-01-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Library and Information Science, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Librarians who work with maps and other forms of spatial information are often asked for information about the location of a place. These questions can range from the location of a village or farm where an ancestor lived to more cryptic questions, such as the location of the Garden of Eden based on its Biblical description. Most librarians will attempt to answer locational questions by directing [...]
Tropical cyclones shift poleward more over Land than over Ocean
Published: 2017-12-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The latitudes of all Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclones (TCs) from the National Hurricane Center (NHC)/Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) best track data are used to investigate their poleward migration from 1970 to 2017. The annual means of the track latitudes are calculated for tropical storms, hurricanes/typhoons, and all storms over land and ocean, respectively. The analysis of the annual [...]
How, where and when do radial faults grow near salt diapirs?
Published: 2017-11-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
We examine 3-D seismic reflection data from the Santos Basin, offshore Brazil to determine how, where and when do radial faults grow near a sub-circular salt diapir (stock). We show roof stretching alone cannot account for the large heights and lengths of the kilometre-scale radial faults, suggesting stock widening (‘stem push’), a mechanism implied in numerical models but not yet documented in [...]
Temperatures recorded by cosmogenic noble gases since the last glacial maximum in the Maritime Alps
Published: 2017-11-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
While proxy records have been used to reconstruct late Quaternary climate parameters throughout the European Alps, our knowledge of deglacial climate conditions in the Maritime Alps is limited. Here, we report temperatures recorded by a new and independent geochemical technique—cosmogenic noble gas paleothermometry—in the Maritime Alps since the last glacial maximum. We measured cosmogenic 3He in [...]