Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
Ordination analysis in sedimentology, geochemistry and paleoenvironment - background, current trends and recommendations
Published: 2021-02-01
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Multivariate Analysis, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Sedimentology
Ordination is the name given to a group of methods used to analyze multiple variables without preceding hypotheses. Over the last few decades the use of these methods in Earth science in general, and notably in analyses of sedimentary sources, has dramatically increased. However, with limited resources oriented towards Earth scientists on the topic, the application of ordination analysis is at [...]
Regional disparities and seasonal differences in climate risk to rice labour
Published: 2021-01-21
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
The 880 million agricultural workers of the world are especially vulnerable to increasing heat stress due to climate change, affecting the health of individuals and reducing labour productivity. In this study, we focus on rice harvests across Asia and estimate the future impact on labour productivity by considering changes in climate at the time of the annual harvest. During these specific times [...]
Temporal monitoring of vast sand mining in NW Turkey: Implications on environmental/social impacts
Published: 2021-01-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sedimentology
Loose sand has a wide variety (over 200) of industrial usage where most of the sand is used in infrastructure. Due to its low cost / high benefit nature and international high demand, worldwide examples of excessive sand mining caused complete destruction of habitats and forcing natives change living practices or even to migrate. Sand mining is one of the most controversial and rapidly growing [...]
International Meeting 40 years of the 1980 Azores Earthquake, 6th - 7th October 2020 - Conference Report
Published: 2020-11-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geophysics and Seismology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering
The main goal of the International Meeting “40 Years of the 1980 Azores Earthquake” was promoting a reflection of the earthquake of January 1st, 1980, and the advances since them on topics like seismology, seismic hazard, and risk, building rehabilitation and public policies. Nevertheless, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the organizing committee decided that the meeting should be online and [...]
Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: Supplementary method
Published: 2020-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis, Sustainability
The paper presents supplementary information about the framework and method for the socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation (STMCE) of spent fuel management strategies (Sci Total Environ, In press; Available on EarthArXiv at DOI:10.31223/X5459S). The STMCE approach consists of (i) a multi-criteria evaluation that provides an ordinal ranking of alternatives based on a list of criterion [...]
Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: A framework and method
Published: 2020-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
In the absence of a federal geologic repository or consolidated, interim storage in the United States, commercial spent fuel will remain stranded at some 75 sites across the country. Currently, these include 18 “orphaned sites” where spent fuel has been left at decommissioned reactor sites. In this context, local communities living close to decommissioned nuclear power plants are increasingly [...]
Closing the gap: Explaining persistent underestimation by US oil and natural gas production-segment methane inventories
Published: 2020-11-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Methane (CH4) emissions from oil and natural gas (O&NG) systems are an important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, recent synthesis studies of field measurements of CH4 emissions at different spatial scales are ~1.5x-2x greater compared to official greenhouse gas inventory (GHGI) estimates, with the production-segment as the dominant contributor to this divergence. [...]
A comprehensive study to understand the relationship of urbanization and population density with GRACE ΔTWS for selected study regions in India during 2003-2017
Published: 2020-10-24
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Planetary Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
This work investigates the relationship between urbanization, population density and meteorological variables (temperature & precipitation) on groundwater storage in India during the period January'2003 to January'2017. Variations in groundwater storage have been analysed using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) derived variations of Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS). In the first part [...]
Unequal anthropogenic enrichment of mercury in Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres
Published: 2020-08-16
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Remote northern (NH) and southern hemisphere (SH) lake sediment and peat records of mercury (Hg) deposition show a ×3 to ×5 Hg enrichment since pre-industrial times (<1880AD), leading to the common perception that global atmospheric Hg enrichment is moderate and uniform. Anthropogenic Hg emission in the NH is, however, approximately four times higher than in the SH. Here we reconstruct [...]
GeospatialVR: A Web-based Virtual Reality Framework for Collaborative Environmental Simulations
Published: 2020-08-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This research introduces GeospatialVR, an open-source collaborative virtual reality framework to dynamically create 3D real-world environments that can be served on any web platform and accessed via desktop and mobile devices and virtual reality headsets. The framework can generate realistic simulations of desired locations entailing the terrain, elevation model, infrastructures, dynamic [...]
Framework for consequential life cycle assessment of pyrolysis biorefineries: A case study for the conversion of primary forestry residues
Published: 2020-07-26
Subjects: Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
The development of bioeconomy needs to accelerate in order to get rid of fossil fuels and products. The production of bio-based products and renewable energy sources from the thermochemical conversion of biomass can be a sustainable alternative. Pyrolysis is one of the thermochemical processes that can convert biomass into liquid (bio-oil), solid (biochar) and gaseous (non-condensable gases) [...]
How Extreme Weather Events Are Attributed to Anthropogenic Global Warming
Published: 2020-07-19
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Many politicians and media personalities continue to cast doubt on the idea that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) – the primary driver of current global climate change – could possibly be behind the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events – the droughts, heatwaves, flooding, etc. that are every year breaking 100 year or greater historical records. This takes the form not just [...]
Climate has contrasting direct and indirect effects on armed conflicts
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability
There is an active debate regarding the influence that climate has on the risk of armed conflict, which stems from challenges in assembling unbiased datasets, competing hypotheses on the mechanisms of climate influence, and the difficulty of disentangling direct and indirect climate effects. We use gridded historical non-state conflict records, satellite data, and land surface models in a [...]
Surprising Changes in Aerosol Loading over India Amid COVID-19 Lockdown
Published: 2020-07-06
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Using ground-based and satellite observation along with aerosol reanalysis products, we show a widespread reduction in aerosol loading over the Indian subcontinent during the COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease 2019) lockdown. The pre-lockdown and lockdown period considered in the present study is 20th February–20th March 2020 and 24th March–22nd April 2020. In terms of aerosol optical depth (AOD), [...]
Methane concentrations in streams reveal gas leak discharges in regions of oil, gas, and coal development
Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
As natural gas has grown in importance as a global energy source, leakage of methane (CH4) from wells has sometimes been noted. Leakage of this greenhouse gas is important because it affects groundwater quality and, when emitted to the atmosphere, climate. We hypothesized that streams might be most contaminated by CH4 in the northern Appalachian Basin in regions with the longest history of [...]