Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Global decline of deep water formation with increasing atmospheric CO2
Published: 2020-10-24
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Deep water formation is not only the driver of the global ocean circulation; by sending heat and carbon to the deep ocean, it is also crucial for climate change mitigation. Yet its future is uncertain: will it slow down as stratification increases, emerge in polar regions as the wind starts blowing over previously ice-covered waters, or intensify with increased evaporation? Here we present the [...]
Transitioning Machine Learning from Theory to Practice in Natural Resources Management
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Computer Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Advances in sensing and computation have accelerated at unprecedented rates and scales, in turn creating new opportunities for natural resources managers to improve adaptive and predictive management practices by coupling large environmental datasets with machine learning (ML). Yet, to date, ML models often remain inaccessible to managers working outside of academic research. To identify [...]
Grain Size and Beach Face Slope on Paraglacial Beaches of New England, USA
Published: 2020-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Approximately 100 paired summer and winter transects of beach face slope and intertidal grain size were examined from 18 separate beaches in southern New England that span meso- and micro- tidal regimes. Paraglacial materials provide the principal local sediment source to beaches in this region and grain-size distribution of beaches corresponds to adjacent surficial geology. Stratified glacial [...]
A continental-scale assessment of density, size, distribution, and historical trends of Australian farm dams
Published: 2020-09-01
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Australia is the second driest continent on Earth and freshwater is, therefore, a critical policy concern. Farm dams are ubiquitous and drive AU$17.7 billion of agricultural value, yet there has never been a formal census of Australian dams. In this study, we present a continental-scale assessment on density, distribution, and historical trends of farm dams in each State and Territory of [...]
What does the NDVI really tell us about crops? Insight from proximal spectral field sensors
Published: 2020-09-01
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The use of remote sensing in agriculture is expanding due to innovation in sensors and platforms. Drones, high resolution instruments on CubeSats, and robot mounted proximal phenotyping sensors all feature in this drive. Common threads include a focus on high spatial and spectral resolution coupled with the use of machine learning methods for relating observations to crop parameters. As the [...]
Structure and age relationship of joint sets on the Lilstock Benches, UK, based on mapping a full resolution UAV-based image
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Outcrop studies of fracture networks are important to understand such networks in the subsurface, but complete maps of all fractures in large outcrops are rare due to limitations of outcrop and image resolution. We present the first full-resolution UAV-based, Gigapixel dataset and DEM of the wave-cut Lilstock Benches in the southern Bristol Channel basin, a classic outcrop of layer-bound fracture [...]
Mercury stable isotopes constrain atmospheric sources to the Ocean
Published: 2020-08-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Human exposure to toxic mercury (Hg) is dominated by the consumption of seafood1,2. Earth system models suggest that Hg in marine ecosystems is supplied by atmospheric wet and dry Hg(II) deposition, with a 3 times smaller contribution from gaseous Hg(0) uptake3,4. Observations of marine Hg(II) deposition and Hg(0) gas exchange are sparse however5, leaving the suggested importance of Hg(II) [...]
An Integrated Flood Risk Assessment and Mitigation Framework: Middle Cedar River Basin Case Study
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Property buyout is one of the most frequently preferred flood mitigation applications by decision-makers for long-term risk reduction. Due to its high-level funding requirements as a mitigation solution, it requires extensive benefits and costs analysis for the selected region. Many communities in the State of Iowa experienced flood events (i.e. 1993, 2008, 2014, 2019) which resulted in a heavy [...]
Comment: The effect of post-conflict transition on deforestation in protected areas in Colombia
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A recent study on Colombian protected areas has found an increase in deforestation after ending armed conflict. The authors propose several drivers behind this trend and take their findings as proof of how these drivers specifically affect protected areas and render them particularly vulnerable to deforestation during post-conflict transition. However, after conducting an extended analysis of the [...]
Citizen science reveals the population exposure to air pollution
Published: 2020-08-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Air pollution remains a key environmental problem in an increasingly urbanized world. To quantify health impacts and support informed policies, the population exposure needs to be accurately monitored. However, the inherent spatial variability of air quality poses a tenacious challenge to this. While concentrations of traffic-related pollutants like nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are known to vary over [...]
Resolving the Kinematics and Moment Release of Early Afterslip within the First Hours following the 2016 Mw 7.1 Kumamoto Earthquake: Implications for the Shallow Slip Deficit and Frictional Behavior of Aseismic Creep
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Continuous measurements of postseismic surface deformation provide insight into variations of the frictional strength of faults and the rheology of the lower crust and upper mantle as stresses following rupture are dissipated. However, due to the difficulty of capturing the earliest phase of afterslip, most analyses have focused on understanding postseismic processes over timescales of [...]
Unequal anthropogenic enrichment of mercury in Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres
Published: 2020-08-16
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Remote northern (NH) and southern hemisphere (SH) lake sediment and peat records of mercury (Hg) deposition show a ×3 to ×5 Hg enrichment since pre-industrial times (<1880AD), leading to the common perception that global atmospheric Hg enrichment is moderate and uniform. Anthropogenic Hg emission in the NH is, however, approximately four times higher than in the SH. Here we reconstruct [...]
Fernandes and Roberts (2020) - preprint
Published: 2020-08-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
There are many geoscience problems for which constraining histories of uplift or subsidence of Earth’s surface is of direct or indirect importance, for example reconstructing tectonics, mantle convection, geomorphology, sedimentary and chemical flux, biodiversity, glacio-eustasy and climate change. The least equivocal constraints on timing and amplitude of vertical motions on geological [...]
A Comprehensive Flood Event Specification and Inventory: 1930-2020 Turkey Case Study
Published: 2020-08-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Flooding is one of the most frequent natural disasters that have significant impact on communities in terms of loss of life, direct and indirect economic losses, and disruption of daily life. Decision makers often consult flood data inventories to make more informed decisions on the development of flood mitigation plans to protect flood prone communities. A comprehensive inventory that covers [...]
Bridging the gap between geophysics and geology with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
Published: 2020-08-16
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Natural Resource Economics, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Inverse mapping from geophysics to geology is a difficult problem due to the inherent uncertainty of geophysical data and the spatially heterogeneous patterns (structure) in geology. We describe GANSim, a type of generative adversarial networks (GANs) that discovers the mapping between remotely-sensed geophysical information and geology with realistic patterns, with a specially designed loss [...]