Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
Social Vulnerability and Climate Risk Assessment for Agricultural Communities in The United States
Published: 2023-08-18
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geographic Information Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Risk Analysis, Spatial Science
Floods and droughts significantly affect agricultural activities and pose a threat to food security by subsequently reducing agricultural production. The impact of flood events is distributed disproportionately among agricultural communities based on their socio-economic fabric. Understanding climate-related hazards is critical for planning mitigation measures to secure vulnerable communities. [...]
Heuristic Data-inspired Scheme to Characterize Meteorological and Groundwater Droughts in Semi-arid Karstic Region under Warming Climate
Published: 2023-07-08
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Hydrology
Study region The Edwards Aquifer Region is located in south-central Texas, United States. Study focus The paper focuses on the development and implementation of a data-inspired heuristic drought identification scheme to (i) quantify the intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation deficit- and high temperature-driven meteorological droughts (PMet- and TMet-droughts), and (ii) link [...]
Impacts of Climate Change on Various Sectors in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan; A Review
Published: 2023-06-24
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies
Introduction: Day to day atmospheric conditions of an area is referred to as weather, whereas, the statistical expression of weather events in an area over a period of minimum 30 years is called climate. Due to the global warming, weather across the globe has started changing from time to time. As a result, the climate change in different areas have taken rise. Pakistan is amongst the top ten [...]
Enhancing Flood Risk Assessment Through Machine Learning and Open Data
Published: 2023-06-02
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring
Urban flooding causes billions of dollars in damages annually, with severe flood events becoming more frequent and destructive as our climate changes. While extreme weather is a primary driver of flooding, its consequences depend on the interconnectedness of urban systems - referred to as the Urban Multiplex, which includes the power grid, transportation network, natural surface water and [...]
Macroplastic fragmentation in rivers
Published: 2023-05-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Sedimentology
The process of macroplastic (>0.5 cm) fragmentation results in the production of smaller plastic particles (micro- and nanoplastics), which threaten biota and human health and are difficult to remove from the environment. The global coverage and long retention times of macroplastic waste in fluvial systems (ranging from years to centuries) create long-lasting and widespread potential for its [...]
Mitigating risk of exceeding environmental limits requires ambitious food system interventions
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Transforming the global food system is necessary to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries. A robust evidence base is crucial to assess the scale and combination of interventions required for a sustainable transformation. We developed a risk assessment framework, underpinned by a meta-regression of 60 global food system modeling studies, to quantify the potential of individual and combined [...]
Greenhouse gas intensity of geologic hydrogen produced from subsurface deposits
Published: 2023-03-23
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Geologic hydrogen (H2) deposits could be a source of climate friendly energy. In this work, we perform a prospective life cycle assessment of a generic geologic hydrogen production and processing system. While it is still too early in the development cycle to estimate precise life-cycle carbon intensities (CI) we can use fundamental engineering physics and chemistry to estimate CI. Our baseline [...]
Addressing Tidal Flooding Induced uncertainties in Satellite Derived Global Salt Marsh Change Studies: Impact on Blue Carbon Monitoring
Published: 2023-03-04
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Other Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
In the past few years, it has been established that remote sensing of wetlands change analysis studies would require careful examination of tidal flooding produced uncertainties in satellite datasets. Tide flagging and filtering mechanisms are required to reduce per-pixel variabilities and errors in change detection. We present a technical note summarizing the potential impact of a lack of tide [...]
The Digital Environmental Footprint - a holistic framework of Digital Sustainability
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
This paper examines the different ways in which the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector negatively affects the environment. To capture environmental externalities beyond the common but limited carbon footprint, a novel holistic framework of digital sustainability was created - the Digital Environmental Footprint (DEF). To apply and test the DEF, the ICT sector was evaluated [...]
The unknown fate of macroplastic in mountain rivers
Published: 2022-11-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Mountain rivers are typically seen as relatively pristine ecosystems, supporting numerous goods (e.g., water resources) for human populations living not only in the mountain regions but also downstream from them. Recent evidence suggests, however, that mountain river valleys in populated areas can be substantially polluted by macroplastic (plastic item > 5 mm). It is, however, unknown how [...]
Air Quality-Related Equity Implications of U.S. Decarbonization Policy
Published: 2022-10-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
We quantify potential air pollution exposure reductions resulting from U.S. federal carbon policy, and consider the implications of resulting health benefits for exposure disparities across racial/ethnic groups. We assess reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 50% in 2030 relative to 2005 levels, comparable in magnitude to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Using energy-economic scenarios [...]
Köppen meets Neural Network: Revision of the Köppen Climate Classification by Neural Networks
Published: 2022-08-23
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Categorical Data Analysis, Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Multivariate Analysis
Climate change and development of data-oriented methods are appealing for new climate classification schemes. Based on the most widely used Köppen-Geiger scheme, this article proposes a neural network based climate classification method from a data science perspective. In conventional schemes, empirically handcrafted rules are used to divide climate data into climate types, resulting in certain [...]
Field’s Spatial Variation Influenced Outcomes more so than N-fertiliser, FYM, Cover Crops or Their Legacy Effects Following Conversion to a No-till Arable System
Published: 2022-08-04
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Soil Science, Sustainability
No-till in agricultural arable systems is a practice that offers benefits to soil health. Combined with methods such as the incorporation of crop residues and manures, no-till can influence the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) and organic matter (SOM), crop productivity and nutrient status. These turnovers are shaped by spatial and temporal factors and associated microbial mineralisation [...]
Bioenergy with or without carbon dioxide removal: influence of functional unit choice and parameter variability
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
PURPOSE. Bioenergy with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly presented as an efficient way to mitigate climate change. This study set out to determine under which circumstances and methodological choices CDR bioenergy systems are preferable over a reference bioenergy system from a climate change mitigation perspective. In addition, the CDR systems investigated were compared to each [...]
The historical impact of anthropogenic air-borne sulphur on the Pleistocene rock art of Sulawesi
Published: 2022-05-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Natural Resources and Conservation
The Maros-Pangkep karst in southwest Sulawesi, Indonesia, contains some of the world’s oldest rock art. However, the Pleistocene images survive only as weathered patches of pigment on exfoliated limestone surfaces. Salt efflorescence underneath the case-hardened limestone substrate causes spall-flaking, and it has been proposed that the loss of artwork has accelerated over recent decades. Here, [...]