Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
GIS-Based Modelling of Soil Erosion Risk categories County Antrim, Northern Ireland
Published: 2023-06-08
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil erosion is one of the major global concerns. Such a process can occur naturally, at different rates. However, under extreme conditions, soil erosion can accelerate and present a risk to ecosystems, loss of food supply (loss of agricultural lands), and lead to episodic landslides. The present study employs Geographic Information Systems and functions to predict possible risks connected to [...]
Is Snow Drought a Messenger for the Upcoming Severe Drought Period? A Case Study in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
The exacerbation of floods and the extension of droughts, attributed to climate change and other human-induced factors, are posing a substantial risk to communities by causing water scarcity and insecurity. The significance of safeguarding water resources and managing them is increasingly gaining prominence. Snow is an efficient source of water for recharging groundwater compared to rainfall. [...]
A city-wide emissions inventory of plastic pollution
Published: 2023-06-02
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
A global agreement on plastic should have quantitative reduction targets for emissions of plastic pollution and regular measurements to track success. Here, we present a framework for measuring plastic emissions, akin to greenhouse gas emissions, and demonstrate its utility by calculating a baseline measurement for the city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. We identify relevant sources of plastic [...]
California margin temperatures modulate regional circulation and extreme summer precipitation in the desert Southwest
Published: 2023-06-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
In August 2022, Death Valley, the driest place in North America, experienced record flooding from summertime rainfall associated with the North American monsoon (NAM). Given the socioeconomic cost of these type of events, there is a dire need to understand their drivers and future statistics. Existing theory predicts that increases in the intensity of precipitation is a robust response to [...]
Listening to Manchester: Using citizen science Raspberry Shake seismometers to quantify road traffic
Published: 2023-05-31
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Human Geography
Road traffic is a major contributor to greenhouse gases in our cities. This study has been designed to test whether low-cost citizen science seismometers (Raspberry Shakes) can be used to quantify temporal and spatial variations in road traffic. I used a network of seismometers installed around Greater Manchester to record signals in the frequency range 1-50 Hz. Data were processed using the open [...]
Impacts of Carbonate Buffering on Atmospheric Equilibration of CO2, δ13CDIC, and Δ14CDIC in Rivers and Streams
Published: 2023-05-28
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology
Rivers and streams play an important role within the global carbon cycle, in part through emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere. However, the sources of this CO2 and their spatiotemporal variability are difficult to constrain. Recent work has highlighted the role of carbonate buffering reactions that may serve as a source of CO2 in high alkalinity systems. In this study, we seek to develop a [...]
Maxar’s WorldView-3 Enables Low-Concentration Methane Detection from Space
Published: 2023-05-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Methane is large contributor to climate change; for this reason, detecting and eliminating sources of methane emissions is a key element to minimizing the effects of on-going climate change. While there are a variety of methods currently used to detect methane emissions, ranging from ground-based sensors to aerial sensors like drones and aircraft, satellite detections provide a broad-area [...]
GOES-R land surface products at Western Hemisphere eddy covariance tower locations
Published: 2023-05-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
The terrestrial carbon cycle varies dynamically over short periods that can be difficult to observe. Geostationary (“weather”) satellites like the Geostationary Environmental Operational Satellite - R Series (GOES-R) deliver near-hemispheric imagery at a ten-minute cadence, and its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) measures visible and near-infrared spectral bands that can be used to estimate land [...]
Carbon Utilization and Storage through Rehabilitation of Groundwater Wells
Published: 2023-05-20
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations (UN), rise in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) due to anthropogenic factors is considered as the primary driver for global climate change. With almost every major corporation around the world working towards their “net-zero goals”, it is becoming increasingly important to have more [...]
Environmental controls on the brGDGT and brGMGT distributions across the Seine River basin (NW France): Implications for bacterial tetraethers as a proxy for riverine runoff
Published: 2023-05-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) are bacterial lipids that have been largely used as environmental proxies in continental paleorecords. Another group of related lipids, branched glycerol monoalkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGMGTs), has recently been proposed as a potential paleotemperature proxy. Nevertheless, the sources and environmental dependencies of both brGDGTs and [...]
Tracing isotope precipitation patterns across Mexico
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Mexico encompasses a large spectrum of landscapes with topographic, geographic, and climatic factors interacting in a complex ecohydrological setting. For decades, isotope hydrogeological tools have been applied in Mexico using short-term or seasonal local meteoric water lines as valid input functions. Yet, a systematic evaluation of meteoric isotope characteristics is still lacking. Here we [...]
Calling for a National Model Benchmarking Facility
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Biology, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Life Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Systems Biology
The modern world uses predictive computer models for many important purposes, including weather predictions, epidemic management, flood forecasting and warnings, and economic policymaking. We need to know how much we can trust the projections of these models, not only to achieve more accurate projections for systems, but also to undertake scientific learning about systems by incrementally testing [...]
Daily stream temperature predictions for free-flowing streams in the Pacific Northwest, USA
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Supporting sustainable lotic ecosystems and thermal habitats for cold-water species like salmonids requires estimates of stream temperature that are high in scope and resolution across space and time. We combined and enhanced elements of existing stream temperature models to produce a new statistical model to address this need. This model reflects mechanistic processes using publicly available [...]
The Effect of Preferential Nucleation Sites on the Distribution of Secondary Mineral Precipitates
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
In the process of mineral nucleation and growth, substrate surface properties and substrate types introduce favorable areas where nucleation events are more likely to occur. The preferential sites for mineral nucleation exist because of the lower interfacial free energy between the precipitating phase and the substrate. In this work, we used a pore-scale Lattice Boltzmann (LB)-based reactive [...]
Precipitation-induced Geometry Evolution during Reactive Transport: Experimental and Numerical Insights into Stochastic Dynamics of Mineral Growth
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Crystal nucleation, precipitation, and growth during a reactive fluid flow and solute transport are critical in many natural and industrial systems. Mineral growth is a prime example where (geo)chemical reactions give rise to geometry evolution in porous media. Motivated by the importance of incorporating stochastic dynamics of nucleation, crystallization, and growth kinetics in studying a [...]