Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Wind and rain compound with tides to cause frequent and unexpected coastal floods
Published: 2024-06-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
With sea-level rise, flooding in coastal communities is now common during the highest high tides. Floods also occur at normal tidal levels when rainfall overcomes stormwater infrastructure that is partially submerged by tides. Data describing this type of compound flooding is scarce and, therefore, it is unclear how often these floods occur and whether there are other non-tidal factors that [...]
HarvestGRID: High-resolution harvested crop areas of the United States from 1981 to 2019
Published: 2024-05-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The United States is a major producer and exporter of agricultural goods, fulfilling global demands for food, fiber, and fuel while generating substantial economic benefits. Agriculture in the U.S. not only dominates land use but also ranks as the largest water-consuming sector. High-resolution cropland mapping and insights into cultivation trends are essential to enhance sustainable management [...]
River Morphology Information System: A Web Cyberinfrastructure for Advancing River Morphology Research
Published: 2024-05-23
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Databases and Information Systems, Geographic Information Sciences, Software Engineering
The study and management of river systems are increasingly challenged by the complexity and volume of data required to understand and predict river morphology changes. The River Morphology Information System (RIMORPHIS) is introduced as a transformative solution to these challenges, serving as an open-access web-based cyberinfrastructure designed to enable advanced research in river morphology [...]
Projection of spatially explicit land use scenarios for the São Francisco River Basin, Brazil
Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Future land use change in the São Francisco River Basin (SFRB) is critical to the future of regional climate and biodiversity, given the large heterogeneity among the four climate types within the basin. These changes in SFRB depend on the link between global and national factors due to its role as one of the world's major exporters of raw materials and national to local institutional, [...]
Modeling heat flux in the Beaufort Gyre between 2016 and 2019.
Published: 2024-05-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Leads are a primary component of heat flux during polar night-time in the Arctic Ocean. During the winter, there is negligible shortwave radiation incident on the ice surface. Instead, open water and thin ice lead formations on the ice are the primary contributors of longwave radiation. In fact, open water leads produce turbulent heat flux up to 600 W.m-2 while multi-year ice is typically less [...]
Mapping microplastic movement: A phase diagram to predict microplastics modes of transport
Published: 2024-04-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Microplastics pose numerous threats to aquatic environments, yet general understanding of the mechanisms governing their transport remains limited. Drawing upon research on natural sediment provides a valuable resource to address this knowledge gap. One key dimensionless number used to describe sediment transport is the transport stage, referring to the ratio between the fluids shear velocity and [...]
Geo-WC: Custom Web Components for Earth Science Organizations and Agencies
Published: 2024-04-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Engineering Education, Hydraulic Engineering
The development of web technologies and their integration into various fields has allowed a new era in data-driven decision-making and public information accessibility, especially through their adoption of monitoring and quantification environmental data resources provided by governmental institutions. While the use of web technologies has given way to the creation of democratized applications, [...]
Field survey of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) usage for overcoming water scarcity on small islands in Indonesia
Published: 2024-04-11
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
The dry season impacts clean water availability in Indonesia, particularly on small islands; however, there are few comprehensive studies of water availability on small islands. The aim of this study was to assess clean water sources and the obstacles to accessing clean water on small islands. We used a combination of structured questionnaires and interviews along with direct observations on two [...]
Detection of sea ice floe flooding in the Southern Ocean using Sentinel-1 SAR imagery.
Published: 2024-04-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
During the summer months in the Antarctic, perennial and seasonal sea ice floes flood. Flooding is caused by snow at the surface weighing down the ice, causing a negative freeboard and flooding the basal snow layer with seawater. This creates a brine-slush layer. Alternatively, or simultaneously, meltwater can percolate through the snow and flood the surface of the ice floe. The appearance of [...]
A consistent terminology to communicate ground-related uncertainty
Published: 2024-03-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability
Engineering geology is highly affected by uncertainty related to the geology, geotechnical parameters, models used and methods. While the technical aspects of ground-related uncertainty are increasingly investigated, the terminology to communicate uncertainty (i.e. phrases such as “it is very likely that”) has not yet been unified and experts use it however they see fit. The problem [...]
Geospatial Modeling and Mapping of Soil Erosion in India
Published: 2024-03-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Soil erosion generally removes the topmost fertile layer of soil, affecting agricultural productivity on a larger scale. As a significant portion of the Indian economy depends on agricultural productivity, granular assessment of the impact of soil erosion becomes critical. However, a national-scale assessment of soil erosion and an impact classification system currently doesn’t exist over India. [...]
Fiber-based super-bridging agents improve flotation and settling during water treatment
Published: 2024-03-07
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Increasing demand for water poses a major challenge to the water treatment industry. To maintain their floc removal efficiency, water treatment plants are expected to require larger separation units and use more chemicals, namely, coagulants and flocculants. Conventional physicochemical treatments produce flocs that are limited in size, which limits floc removal efficiency via gravitation-based [...]
Exponentially cascaded cross-sectional volume estimates from elevation data
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
The relationship between discharges and flow heights is a critical component of hydraulic modelling, often carried out involving data on the elevation profiles of the river bed. However, obtaining and using cross-sectional profile data can be resource intensive. Methods for profile estimation from rasterized elevation and bathymetry can help overcome this. In this paper, an efficient algorithm [...]
Mechanisms and seismological signatures of rupture complexity induced by fault damage zones in fully-dynamic earthquake cycle models
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Damage zones are common around faults, but their effects on earthquake mechanics are still incompletely understood. Here, we investigate how damage affects rupture patterns, source time functions and ground motions in 2D fully-dynamic cycle models. We find that back-propagating rupture fronts emerge in large faults and can be triggered by residual stresses left by previous ruptures or by [...]
Natural occurrence of asbestos in serpentinite quarries from Southern Spain.
Published: 2024-01-29
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Public Health
The nevado-filábride complex (NFC) (southern Spain) is well known for its widespread mining and quarrying activities. Serpentinite and metabasite rocks are extracted, processed and traded as building and ornamental stones. Due to the possible presence of natural occurrence of asbestos (NOA) in these rocks, the aim of this paper is to conduct an in-depth characterisation of fibrous minerals. To [...]