Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
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 [...]
The Looming Crisis: Global Groundwater Depletion and its Unseen Impacts, Climate Change
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences
Groundwater depletion is a growing threat to global sustainability, impacting ecosystems, agriculture, and human populations. This viewpoint explores the causes and consequences of unsustainable groundwater extraction, highlighting its far-reaching effects on local and global climates. The paper examines specific examples from various regions worldwide, showcasing the widespread nature of this [...]
Modeling the Impact of Storm Surge Flooding and Associated Costs on North Carolina Coastal Region Corn and Soybean Fields via Remote Sensing
Published: 2024-06-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hurricane and tropical storm-driven storm surge flooding places coastal farmlands at high risk of crop damage and soil salinization. The damage can total to millions of dollars in costs and force farmers to abandon coastal fields. Additionally, many agricultural, and often rural, areas are unable to access accurate and reliable flood-risk projection maps and analyses that can inform prevention [...]
An Immersive Hydroinformatics Framework with Extended Reality for Enhanced Visualization and Simulation of Hydrologic Data
Published: 2024-06-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology
This study introduces a novel framework, with the use of Extended Reality (XR) systems in hydrology, particularly focusing on immersive visualization of hydrologic data for enhanced environmental planning and decision-making. The study details the shift from traditional two-dimensional data visualization methods in hydrology to more advanced XR technologies, including virtual and augmented [...]
Evaluating estimation methods for wildfire smoke and their implications for assessing health effects
Published: 2024-06-13
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Public Health
Growing wildfire smoke represents a substantial threat to air quality and human health in the US and across much of the globe. However, the impact of wildfire smoke on human health remains imprecisely understood, due to uncertainties in both the measurement of population wildfire smoke exposure and dose-response functions linking exposure to health. Here, we compare daily wildfire smoke-related [...]
Exploring coastal climate adaptation through storylines: Insights from Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Coastal settlements, facing increasing flood risk from Tropical Cyclones (TCs) under climate change, need local and detailed climate information for effective adaptation. Analysis of historical events and their impacts provides such information. This study uses storylines to evaluate adaptation strategies, focusing on Cyclone Idai’s impact on Beira, Mozambique, under different climate [...]
Mitigating marine plastic debris in Hong Kong: an action plan
Published: 2024-05-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The impact of marine debris ranges from ecological and social to economic, including ingestion by wildlife, loss of tourist potential and high costs of clean-ups and reallocation of collected litter. In Hong Kong, an astounding amount of litter is collected annually, encompassing plastic food packaging, bottles and bottle caps. With over 60% of discarded items originating from shoreline [...]
Opening Doors to Physical Sample Data Discovery, Integration, and Credit
Published: 2024-05-31
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Systems Biology
Physical samples and their associated (meta)data underpin scientific discoveries across disciplines, and can enable new science when appropriately archived. However, there are significant gaps in community practices and infrastructure that currently prevent accurate provenance tracking, reproducibility, and attribution. For the vast majority of samples, descriptive metadata is often sparse, [...]
Spatial Patterns of Urban Heat Islands and Green Space Cooling Effects in the Urban Microclimate of Karachi
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
With rapid urbanization and the increasing threats of climate change, metropolitan cities like Karachi, Pakistan, are encountering greater challenges due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Understanding the cooling potential of urban green spaces (UGS) is crucial for mitigating heat stress and enhancing urban resilience. This study aims to analyze the thermal dynamics and cooling efficacy [...]
Global mercury records from natural archives reveal ecosystem responses to changing atmospheric deposition
Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography
Global ecosystems face mercury contamination, yet long-term data is scarce, hindering understanding of ecosystem responses to atmospheric Hg input changes and policy evaluation. To address this gap, this study compiled a global mercury accumulation flux database using 221 cores from peat, lake, ice, and marine deposits. From 1700 to 2012, global averaged fluxes in peat, lake, ice, and marine [...]
Misconceptions in the application of the Arrhenius equation to plastics - environmental degradation of plastics unlikely below their glass transition temperature
Published: 2024-05-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The term ‘’plastic’’ is derived from the Greek word ''plastikos'', meaning fit for moulding, highlighting the main feature that makes plastics so useful, i.e., their malleability during manufacture, allowing plastics to be formed into a variety of shapes such as bottles, bags and straws1. However, this malleability is temperature-dependent requiring the constituent polymers to be in the molten [...]
Modeling of Harmful Algal Bloom Dynamics and Integrated Web Framework for Inland Waters in Iowa
Published: 2024-05-02
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are one of the major environmental concerns, as they have various negative effects on public health, recreational services, ecological balance, wildlife, fisheries, microbiota, water quality, and economics. HABs are caused by many sources, such as water pollution based on agricultural activities, wastewater treatment plant discharges, leakages from sewer systems, [...]
GeoAI and the Future of Spatial Analytics
Published: 2024-05-01
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Library and Information Science, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This chapter discusses the challenges of traditional spatial analytical methods in their limited capacity to handle big and messy data, as well as mining unknown or latent patterns. It then introduces a new form of spatial analytics – geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) - and describes the advantages of this new strategy in big data analytics and data-driven discovery. Finally, a [...]
Advancing forest aboveground biomass mapping by integrating GEDI with other Earth Observation data using a cloud computing platform: A case study of Alabama, United States
Published: 2024-04-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is a crucial indicator for monitoring carbon and requires accurate quantification. This study aimed to advance AGB estimation using open access Earth observation (EO) data and cloud computing, focusing on Alabama, USA. The specific objectives were to: (1) develop a workflow for creating a 30 m forest AGBD map with GEDI, using GEE, (2) evaluate and compare [...]
Using mixed siliciclastic-bioclastic sediments as a natural analogue for plastic-rich systems
Published: 2024-04-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Sedimentology
Mixed siliciclastic-bioclastic sediments and systems represent an analogue to understanding the behaviour and impact of plastic sediments in natural environments. The integration of knowledge derived from different mixed systems can enhance our comprehension of depositional processes, bedform morphology, and plastic distribution as well as assess the potentiality of siliciclastic-bioclastic [...]