Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
The Lock-Down Effects of COVID-19 on the Air Pollution Indices in Iran and Its Neighbors
Published: 2022-07-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Other Statistics and Probability, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Introduction The Covid-19 restrictions have a lot of various peripheral negative and positive effects like economic shocks and decreasing air pollution, respectively. Many studies showed NO2 reduction in most parts of the world. Method Iran and its land and maritime neighbors have about 7.4% of the world population and 6.3% and 5.8% of World COVID-19 cases and deaths, respectively. The air [...]
Developing seagrass index for long term monitoring of Zostera japonica seagrass bed: a case study in Yellow River Delta, China
Published: 2022-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Seagrass beds offer unique and vital ecological services as an important blue carbon ecosystem in coastal wetlands. Zostera japonica is an intertidal seagrass species native to eastern Asia and is one of the most widely distributed seagrass species in China. However, little is known on the long-term variations of Z. japonica extents. Automatic mapping method for Z. japonica seagrass beds is in [...]
Towards Robust River Plastic Detection: Combining Lab and Field-based Hyperspectral Imagery
Published: 2022-06-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Statistical Models
Plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems has increased dramatically in the last five decades, with strong impacts on human and aquatic life. Recent studies endorse the need for innovative approaches to monitor the presence, abundance, and types of plastic in these ecosystems. One approach gaining rapid traction is the use of multi- and hyperspectral cameras. However, most experiments using this [...]
Advecting Superspecies: Efficiently Modeling Transport of Organic Aerosol with a Mass-Conserving Dimensionality Reduction Method
Published: 2022-06-26
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The chemical transport model LOTOS-EUROS uses a volatility basis set (VBS) approach to represent the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the atmosphere. Inclusion of the VBS approximately doubles the dimensionality of LOTOS-EUROS and slows computation of the advection operator by a factor of two. This complexity limits SOA representation in operational forecasts. We develop a [...]
Bioenergy with or without carbon dioxide removal: influence of functional unit choice and parameter variability
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
PURPOSE. Bioenergy with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly presented as an efficient way to mitigate climate change. This study set out to determine under which circumstances and methodological choices CDR bioenergy systems are preferable over a reference bioenergy system from a climate change mitigation perspective. In addition, the CDR systems investigated were compared to each [...]
High resolution assessment of coal mining methane emissions by satellite in Shanxi, China
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Accurate assessment of coal mine methane (CMM) emissions is a prerequisite for defining baselines and assessing the effectiveness of mitigation measures. Such an endeavor is jeopardized however by large uncertainties in current CMM estimates. Here, we assimilated images of methane column atmospheric mixing ratios observed by the TROPOMI space borne instrument in a high-resolution regional [...]
The historical impact of anthropogenic air-borne sulphur on the Pleistocene rock art of Sulawesi
Published: 2022-05-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Natural Resources and Conservation
The Maros-Pangkep karst in southwest Sulawesi, Indonesia, contains some of the world’s oldest rock art. However, the Pleistocene images survive only as weathered patches of pigment on exfoliated limestone surfaces. Salt efflorescence underneath the case-hardened limestone substrate causes spall-flaking, and it has been proposed that the loss of artwork has accelerated over recent decades. Here, [...]
Paleoclimate controls on lithium enrichment in Great Basin Pliocene-Pleistocene lacustrine clays
Published: 2022-05-29
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences, Sedimentology
Terminal lakes are important archives of continental hydroclimate and in some cases contain important economic resources. Here, we present an ∼2.9 m.y. lacustrine carbonate carbon and oxygen stable isotope record from a Great Basin continental drill core. We paired these measurements with bulk lithium concentrations to reveal a relationship between past climate and lithium enrichment in [...]
Retrieving Chl-a and total suspended solids in in-land waters using EnMAP simulated data
Published: 2022-05-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences
The Environmental Mapping and analysis program (EnMAP) is a new Earth observation satellite which will use imaging spectroscopy to obtain a diagnostic characterisation of the Earth's surface and record changes. Since we hypothesis that imaging spectroscopy can significantly improve the accuracy of predicting and assessing water quality traits of small in-land waters, our study investigates the [...]
Centering Equity in the Nation's Weather, Water and Climate Services
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Water, weather, and climate affect everyone. However, their impacts on various communities can be very different based on who has access to essential services and environmental knowledge. At the same time, structural discrimination, including racism and other forms of privileging and exclusion, affects people's lives and health, with ripples across all sectors of society. In the United States, [...]
A Generalized Natural Hazard Risk Modelling Framework for Infrastructure Failure Cascades
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis
Critical infrastructures are more exposed than ever to natural hazards in a changing climate. To understand and manage risk, failure cascades across large, real-world infrastructure networks, and their impact on people, must be captured. Bridging established methods in both infrastructure and risk modelling communities, we develop an open-source modelling framework which integrates a [...]
Defining renewable groundwater use and its relevance to sustainable groundwater management
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater systems are commonly, but variously, defined as renewable or non-renewable based on natural fluxes of recharge or on estimates of aquifer storage and groundwater residence time. However, we show here that the principle of capture challenges simple definitions so that a groundwater system cannot be renewable or non-renewable in and of itself, but only with reference to how the [...]
Sorption vs Adsorption: the words they are a-changin', not the phenomena
Published: 2022-05-17
Subjects: Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
In this discussion, we highlight that the terms sorption and adsorption are often confused and misused in many articles. Even if one thought their formal definition is well known, this does not appear to be the case. We recommend encouragement to adopt the word adsorption only when fully supported by appropriate data and using the sorption terminology when it is more speculative, typically in [...]
Quantifying excess heavy metal concentrations in drainage basins using conservative mixing models
Published: 2022-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
High concentrations of heavy metals and other pollutants in river sediments can have detrimental effects on the ecosystem and humans. The composition of river sediments throughout drainage basins therefore provides important information for environmental monitoring. An obvious first step for using river sediment compositions for monitoring is to quantify natural baseline concentrations. Once [...]
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 [...]