Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Natural Resource Economics
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 [...]
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 [...]
Mapping the Landscape of Water and Society Research: Promising Combinations of Compatible and Complementary Disciplines
Published: 2023-10-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) [...]
Consolidated Geothermal Database UK (CGD-UK): A digital open license database for temperature and thermal conductivity in the UK.
Published: 2023-04-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Natural Resource Economics, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
Variations in subsurface heat flow within the upper crust control the distribution of geothermal resources. Development of a robust understanding of these variations requires reliable measurements of temperature and thermal conductivity. To date, measurements of temperature and conductivity onshore the UK have been unavailable in an accessible, clearly structured digital format. Here, we rectify [...]
The Dry Sky: Futures for Humanity’s Modification of the Atmospheric Water Cycle
Published: 2022-12-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Humanity is modifying the atmospheric water cycle, via land use, climate change, air pollution, and weather modification. Given the implications of this, we present a theoretical framing of atmospheric water as an economic good. Historically, atmospheric water was tacitly considered a ‘public good’ since it was neither actively consumed (rival) nor controlled (exclusive). However, given [...]
Geochemical mapping by unmixing alluvial sediments: An example from northern Australia
Published: 2022-10-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Natural Resource Economics, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Water Resource Management
Alluvial sediments have long been used in geochemical surveys as their compositions are assumed to be representative of areas upstream. Overbank and floodplain sediments, in particular, are increasingly used for regional to continental-scale geochemical mapping. However, during downstream transport, sediments from heterogeneous source regions are carried away from their source regions and mixed. [...]
Global dynamics of the offshore wind energy sector monitored with Sentinel-1: Turbine count, installed capacity and site specifications
Published: 2022-04-26
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Statistics and Probability
With the promotion of renewable energy production and a planned phaseout of fossil fuels until 2040, the offshore wind energy sector has started to expand and will continue to increase its capacity in the upcoming decades. This study presents how the installed capacity can be derived from radar imagery provided by the Sentinel-1 mission for all offshore wind turbines on the entire Earth. By [...]