Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Natural Resource Economics
Methane by the Numbers: The Need for Clear and Comparable Methane Intensity Metrics
Published: 2025-10-20
Subjects: Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Global efforts to track methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations have recently converged around measures of methane emissions intensity, including emergent requirements for reporting as part of import standards. However, multiple definitions of methane intensity have led to conflicting approaches that hinder clear comparisons among regions and obstruct the development of effective [...]
Dense neural network outperforms other machine learning models for scaling-up lichen cover maps in Eastern Canada
Published: 2025-10-12
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Lichen mapping is vital for caribou management plans and sustainable land conservation. Previous studies have used random forest, dense neural network, and convolutional neural network models for mapping lichen coverage. However, to date, it is not clear how these models rank in this task. In this study, these machine learning models were evaluated on their ability to predict lichen percent [...]
Understanding and addressing temperature impacts on mortality
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Climate, Natural Resource Economics
A large literature documents how ambient temperature affects human mortality. Using decades of detailed data from 30 countries, we revisit and synthesize key findings from this literature. We confirm that ambient temperature is among the largest external threats to human health, and is responsible for a remarkable 5-12% of total deaths across countries in our sample, or hundreds of thousands of [...]
Exploration of Gold, Copper, Magnetite, Hematite, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromite, Antimony, Bauxite, Industrial soils, Nickel, Cobalt, Lead, Lithium minerals using Landsat8 satellite
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Geophysics and Seismology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
In this study, we provided an accurate and complete method for exploration and analysis of Gold, Copper, Magnetite, Hematite, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromite, Antimony, Bauxite, Industrial soils, Nickel, Cobalt, Lead and Lithium minerals in the desired area. Mineral exploration can be done using the seven bands from Landsat8 satellite images, through combination of different maps, a specific color [...]
Comprehensive quantification of production costs for large-scale kelp aquaculture and cost reduction opportunities
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A highly realistic techno-economic analysis (TEA) was developed to assess the cost of production (COP, US $ per fresh tonne kelp) for large-scale kelp aquaculture. The TEA resolves feedbacks across structural design and response, operational requirements and decisions, site properties, and biological response. We apply the TEA to a Saccharina latissima farming operation at a 100m deep, 405 [...]
Quantifying sulfur speciation in magmatic-hydrothermal fluids
Published: 2025-06-11
Subjects: Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Inorganic Chemistry, Natural Resource Economics, Physical Chemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Quantitative knowledge of sulfur speciation in the fluid phase is key to understanding sulfur degassing from magmas and its transfer along with metals by fluids across the lithosphere. Farsang and Zajacz(1) recently reported new sulfur speciation data using Raman spectroscopy measurements on aqueous H2SO4-NaCl(-KCl) solutions trapped as synthetic fluid inclusions in quartz at 875 °C and 2 kbar [...]
Valuation of Ecosystem Services Amidst Land Use Land Cover Change Dynamics in Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, Uttarakhand
Published: 2025-06-10
Subjects: Natural Resource Economics
The Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, situated in Uttarakhand, India, is a critical hub of ecological diversity and ecosystem services. However, rapid land use and land cover (LULC) transitions in the region have raised concerns regarding the sustainability of these services. This study presents a comprehensive assessment and quantification of ecosystem services in response to LULC changes over a [...]
Spatio-economic valuation of sand in the context of shoreline (in)stability in the Senegal estuary (West Africa), integrating DeltaDTM and LiDAR technology
Published: 2025-04-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Natural Resource Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Statistics and Probability
Coastal erosion is an increasing challenge in coastal management, resulting from complex interactions between geomorphological features, marine forcing, and anthropogenic interventions. The growing influence of human development and intervention on estuaries and coastal area evolution has led to a global sediment crisis, particularly in tropical or low-lying deltas (for example, Niger, Senegal, [...]
Enhancing the Normalized Difference Water Index for Improved Urban Flood Detection
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Accurate urban flood detection is crucial for effective disaster management and urban planning. Traditional indices like the Normalized Difference Water Index and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index often produce inaccurate results due to spectral confusion in urban areas and sensitivity to shadows. Moreover, MNDWI's reliance on the Shortwave Infrared band limits its use with certain [...]
Divergent Paradigms of Porphyry Cu Deposits in Subduction and Collision Zones
Published: 2025-01-09
Subjects: Geochemistry, Geology, Natural Resource Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The prevailing view suggests that the formation of porphyry Cu deposits involves differentiation of water-rich, metal-bearing juvenile magmas, with subduction of oceanic slabs supplying the necessary volatiles. However, the occurrence of significant porphyry Cu deposits in continental collision zones, where such volatile sources are absent, challenges this paradigm. We analyze a global dataset of [...]
The Socioeconomic Impacts of Sea Level Rise and Phragmites australis in the New Jersey Meadowlands
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Geography, Natural Resource Economics, Nature and Society Relations, Plant Sciences
Sea level rise is one of the most alarming impacts of climate change and is projected to have devastating economic consequences for coastal communities such as increased flood damage, lost economic productivity, and decreased property values. To measure this impact in the New Jersey Meadowlands, an urban estuary ecosystem, I used a digital elevation model (DEM) to create inundation maps modeling [...]
The extended Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset: Extending the GLCP to include ice, snow, and radiation-related climate variables
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
A changing climate and increasing human population necessitate understanding global freshwater availability. To enable assessment of lake water variability from local-to-global and monthly-to-decadal scales, we extended the Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset, which contains monthly lake surface area for 1.42 million lakes with paired basin-level climate and population data [...]
One Belt, Many Roads: Investigating China’s Foreign Investment and Land-use Impacts in Southeast Asia
Published: 2024-06-22
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resource Economics
Foreign direct investment (FDI) can reshape landscapes in developing countries, but its impact remains unclear. This study examines how China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) FDI impacts land-cover and land-use change in Southeast Asia, a key trade partner receiving significant Chinese infrastructure investments. Focusing on areas with BRI investments from 2008 to 2018, we utilize satellite data [...]
Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions
Published: 2024-04-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resource Economics, Statistical Models, Sustainability
Rapid agriculture-driven deforestation raises significant concerns about achieving climate and biodiversity targets. Linking deforestation to food production is crucial for guiding the development, implementation, and evaluation of forest conservation and climate change mitigation efforts. However, the limited scope and comprehensiveness of available datasets restrict the effectiveness of these [...]
A Deep Learning framework to map riverbed sand mining budgets in large tropical deltas
Published: 2023-10-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Sedimentology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Rapid urbanization has dramatically increased the demand for river sand, leading to soaring sand extraction rates that often exceed natural replenishment in many rivers globally. However, our understanding of the geomorphic and social-ecological impacts arising from Sand Mining (SM) remains limited, primarily due to insufficient data on sand extraction rates. Conventionally, bathymetry surveys [...]