Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Enhancing Global-scale Urban Land Cover Representation Using Local Climate Zones in the Community Earth System Model
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Urban areas are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, necessitating accurate simulations of urban climates in Earth system models (ESMs) in support of large-scale urban climate adaptation efforts. ESMs underrepresent urban areas due to their small spatial extent and the lack of detailed urban landscape data. To enhance the accuracy of urban representation, this study [...]
Freshwater salinization of seasonal ponds: High salinity and stratification threaten critical, overlooked habitats
Published: 2025-02-20
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Nearly a century of road salt use in the snowbelt region of North America has led to substantial increases in salinity levels in freshwater habitats (1, 2). Salt pollution in lakes and rivers is well characterized (3, 4). Lacking are broad insights for seasonal ponds. As critical habitats for many endemic species, these small and often poorly flushed surface waters are especially vulnerable to [...]
Quantifying the contributions of climate change and adaptation to mortality from unprecedented extreme heat events
Published: 2025-02-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding the mortality effects of the most extreme heat events is central to climate change risk analysis and adaptation decision-making. Accurate representation of these impacts requires accounting for the effects of prolonged sequences of hot days on mortality, the change in that mortality due to anthropogenic forcing, and the potential compensating effects of adaptation to heat. Here, we [...]
Removal of Cd (II) and Zn (II) ions from Aqueous Solutions using Carbonized and Functionalized Persea americana Root Stem Powder
Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The ability of carbonized and modified avocado (Persea americana) root stem powder (C-PA and M-PA) to remediate Cadmium (Cd (II)) and Zinc (Zn (II)) contamination in aqueous solution was studied by varying the carbonization temperature, particle size of the adsorbent, adsorption temperature, pH of the solution, contact time, adsorbent dose and adsorbate concentration. Scanning electron microscopy [...]
Estimating the contribution of vacant land in mitigating flooding in the Neuse Basin
Published: 2025-01-30
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Flooding in the United States results in economic losses amounting to tens of billions of dollars annually, with urbanization and development in floodplains serving as key drivers of increased flood risk. This study explores the flood retention potential of vacant lands within current and projected landcover scenarios in the Neuse River Basin, a rapidly urbanizing region prone to significant [...]
SpartANN - Spectral Pattern Analysis and Remote-sensing Tool with Artificial Neural Networks
Published: 2025-01-28
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Geography, Remote Sensing, Software Engineering
Remote sensing, particularly from satellite observation, has become the standard tool for monitoring the planet with a steady increase of data production, and has seen wide application in ecosystem services analysis and management. Many remote sensing applications involve image classification, using methods from simple regressions to complex machine learning approaches that require advanced user [...]
Interpretable biome-aligned temperature zones for climate classification via average monthly temperatures
Published: 2025-01-25
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
We introduce temperature zones based on average monthly temperatures that closely align with biome boundaries, intended for use in climate classification. This new system retains the simplicity and interpretability of existing classifications, such as those of Köppen-Geiger and Trewartha, while providing an improved fit to biome boundaries. Unlike previous classifications, we developed our system [...]
Enhanced Oil Recovery using carbon dioxide directly captured from air does not enable carbon-neutral oil
Published: 2025-01-24
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study evaluates the feasibility of producing carbon neutral oil via CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR) coupled with direct air capture. Existing analyses often provide case-specific insights based on short-term operations that do not encompass the full life cycle of reservoir exploitation. In contrast, we propose a novel, top-down approach based on mass and volume conservation, expanding [...]
2027: Waking the AKU-- A Cosmic Hyperobject View of the Ancient Giant Palm Forest on Rapa Nui
Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Other Astrophysics and Astronomy, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences, The Sun and the Solar System
Can a repeating climate event be termed as a cosmic hyperobject? Even if it is dynamically changing within hundreds of thousands of years? At the center of this paper is the science: observable data, 15,000 years of climate change on Rapa Nui. Reaching into the past however we begin with a much broader mathematical view from the eyes of Milankovitch theories of the cosmos that stretches a million [...]
Sea level rise submergence simulations suggest substantial deterioration of Indian River Lagoon ecosystem services by 2050, Florida, U.S.A.
Published: 2025-01-03
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The Indian River Lagoon is a 250-km long Estuary of National Significance located along the east central Florida coast of the USA. NOAA tidal records generated at a station located in the central reaches of the estuary indicate sea level rise has accelerated over the past 20 years to an average of 9.6 ± 1.6 mm yr−1 (2003–2022) and it is expected to continue accelerating over the duration of this [...]
Chromium Isotopes: A Window into Atmospheric Oxygenation
Published: 2024-12-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Chromium (Cr) isotopes are pivotal proxies for understanding Earth’s atmospheric oxygenation history. This review highlights δ53Cr signatures as tools for reconstructing redox dynamics during events like the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) and the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event (NOE). Advances in analytical techniques, particularly multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry [...]
Site Planning for a Network of Government-operated Weather Stations in the Dominican Republic Using Zonal Statistics from Geospatial Sources, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making, and Neighborhood Analysis
Published: 2024-12-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Many weather station networks lack sufficient representativeness, and their station density is often inadequate to capture spatial and climatic variability effectively. Optimal site selection is therefore essential to enhance spatial coverage and improve data quality. This study proposes a methodology for identifying optimal sites for a meteorological station network in the Dominican Republic, [...]
Efficacy of Recent Prescribed Burning and Land Management on Wildfire Burn Severity and Smoke Emissions in the Western United States
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Prescribed fire is increasingly proposed as a policy strategy to reduce wildfire risks, but evidence of its effectiveness in lowering fire severity and smoke emissions remains limited in the western US. We empirically demonstrate that areas treated with prescribed fire and subsequently burned during California’s extreme 2020 wildfire season showed a -14% net reduction in smoke emissions, though [...]
Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Forests are in decline worldwide due to human activities such as agricultural expansion, urbanization, and mineral extraction. Forest loss due to generally temporary causes, such as wildfire and forest management, is important to distinguish from permanent land use conversion due to the differing ecological and climate impacts of these disturbances and for the purposes of developing effective [...]
A Novel Model to Assess the Greenhouse Effect
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The greenhouse effect is the warming of the earth's surface due to the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is said to be 33 °C, but we cannot measure this value because we cannot create the state “without greenhouse gases”. We therefore have to rely on calculations, although these are controversial. In the climate debate, this lack of measurements is often denoted as a major [...]