Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Engineering
Emerging advanced oxidation processes for water and wastewater treatment – guidance for systematic future research
Published: 2022-09-09
Subjects: Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) for water treatment are a growing research field with a large variety of different concepts and materials being tested at laboratory scale. However, only few concepts have been translated into pilot- and full-scale operation recently. One major concern are the inconsistent experimental approaches applied across different studies that impede identification, [...]
HydroLang Markup Language: Community-Driven Web Components for Hydrological Analyses
Published: 2022-08-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Science and Mathematics Education
We introduce HydroLang Markup Language (HL-ML), a programming interface that uses markup language to perform environmental analyses using the hydrological and environmental framework HydroLang. The software acts as a self-contained interface that uses HTML tags powered by the web components specification to generate simple hydrological computations that enable data analysis, visualization and [...]
A new consistent framework for assignment of safe operating space to B2C and B2B industries for use in Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessments
Published: 2022-07-25
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sustainability
The planetary boundaries define a safe operating space for humanity to act within without potentially destabilizing the planet. The safe operating space is often used a sustainability reference in Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessments (AESAs) where a share of the safe operating space (SoSOS) is assigned to the assessed activity. An identified challenge, is that current methods are [...]
An adaptive auto-reduction solver for speeding up integration of chemical kinetics in atmospheric chemistry models: implementation and evaluation in the Kinetic Pre-Processor (KPP) version 3.0.0
Published: 2022-07-15
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
Kinetic integration of large and stiff chemical mechanisms is a computational bottleneck in models of atmospheric chemistry. It requires implicit solution of the coupled system of kinetic differential equations with time-consuming construction and inversion of the Jacobian matrix. We present here a new version of the Kinetic Pre-Processor (KPP 3.0.0) for fast integration of chemical kinetics [...]
Advecting Superspecies: Efficiently Modeling Transport of Organic Aerosol with a Mass-Conserving Dimensionality Reduction Method
Published: 2022-06-26
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The chemical transport model LOTOS-EUROS uses a volatility basis set (VBS) approach to represent the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the atmosphere. Inclusion of the VBS approximately doubles the dimensionality of LOTOS-EUROS and slows computation of the advection operator by a factor of two. This complexity limits SOA representation in operational forecasts. We develop a [...]
Groundwater resource allocation in British Columbia: challenges and ways forward
Published: 2022-06-24
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater allocation in British Columbia is facing a number of important challenges as groundwater is licensed under the Water Sustainability Act and potentially included in modern treaties. These challenges include acknowledging the importance of groundwater in supporting environmental flow needs and human water use, the uncertainty and irrelevance of annual recharge estimates, and the [...]
Methane Emissions from the Fossil Fuel Industries of the Russian Federation
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Methane is second only to carbon dioxide as a driver of human-induced climate change. Moreover, reducing the rate of methane emissions is the fastest and least disruptive way to moderate global temperature rise over the next several decades. The production of fossil fuels – principally coal, oil, and natural gas – is among the main sources of anthropogenic methane. As one of the world’s largest [...]
Interactive Hydrological Modelling and Simulation on Client-Side Web Systems: An Educational Case Study
Published: 2022-04-13
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 [...]
Automated machine learning to evaluate the information content of tropospheric trace gas columns for fine particle estimates over India: a modeling testbed
Published: 2022-03-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
India is largely devoid of high-quality and reliable on-the-ground measurements of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Ground-level PM2.5 concentrations are estimated from publicly available satellite Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) products combined with other information. Prior research has largely overlooked the possibility of gaining additional accuracy and insights into the sources of PM using [...]
Quantitative and distributive measurement of ambient air pollution for global burden of disease
Published: 2022-02-03
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Public Health
Air quality impacts human health from multiple perspectives. Ambient air pollution (AAP) exposure poses a great contribution to the global burden of disease (BoD). The United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to evaluate sustainability levels and improve human living environments. In particular, the two indicators 3.9.1 and 11.6.2, i.e. fine particulate matters (PM2.5 and [...]
Integrating Connectivity Into Hydrodynamic Models: An Automated Open-Source Method to Refine an Unstructured Mesh Using Remote Sensing
Published: 2022-01-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
Hydrodynamic models are an essential tool for studying the movement of water and other materials across the Earth surface. However, the possible questions which models can address remain limited by practical constraints on model size and resolution, particularly in fluvial and coastal environments in which hydrodynamically-relevant landscape features are topologically complex and span a wide [...]
Fully distributed rainfall-runoff modeling using spatial-temporal graph neural network
Published: 2022-01-15
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology
Recent studies using latest deep learning algorithms such as LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) have shown great promise in time-series modeling. There are many studies focusing on the watershed-scale rainfall-runoff modeling or streamflow forecasting, often considering a single watershed with limited generalization capabilities. To improve the model performance, several studies explored an integrated [...]
Towards Progressive Geospatial Information Processing on Web Systems: A Case Study for Watershed Analysis in Iowa
Published: 2021-12-26
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are available as stand-alone desktop applications as well as web platforms for vector- and raster-based geospatial data processing and visualization. While each approach offers certain advantages, limitations exist that motivate the development of hybrid systems that will increase the productivity of users for performing interactive data analytics using [...]
Copper availability governs nitrous oxide accumulation in wetland soils and stream sediments
Published: 2021-12-15
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geochemistry, Life Sciences
Denitrification is microbially-mediated through enzymes containing metal cofactors. Laboratory studies of pure cultures have highlighted that the availability of Cu, required for the multicopper enzyme nitrous oxide reductase, can limit N2O reduction. However, in natural aquatic systems, such as wetlands and hyporheic zones in stream beds, the role of Cu in controlling denitrification remains [...]
Components and Tidal Modulation of the Wave Field in a Semi-Enclosed Shallow Bay
Published: 2021-12-09
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Geomorphology, Oceanography
The wave field in coastal bays is comprised of waves generated by far-off storms and waves generated locally by winds inside the bay and regionally outside the bay. The resultant wave field varies spatially and temporally and is expected to control morphologic features, such as beaches in estuaries and bays (BEBs). However, neither the wave field nor the role of waves in shaping BEBs have been [...]