Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
A Spatially Explicit Satellite-Derived Surface Urban Heat Island Database for Urbanized Areas in the United States: Characterization, Uncertainties, and Possible Applications
Published: 2020-03-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The urban heat island (UHI) effect is strongly modulated by urban-scale changes to the aerodynamic, thermal, and radiative properties of the Earth’s land surfaces. Interest in this phenomenon, both from the climatological and public health perspectives, has led to hundreds of UHI studies, mostly conducted on a city-by-city basis. These studies, however, do not provide a complete picture of the [...]
Early evidence that COVID-19 government policies reduce urban air pollution
Published: 2020-03-31
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Governments have a solemn responsibility to ensure the health and well-being of the populations they govern. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals just how serious governments take this responsibility and that restricting activity to limit pathogen spread can have other public health repercussions. Comparisons between February 2019 and 2020 air quality measures reveal that six cities that were impacted [...]
Saturation excess overland flow accelerates the spread of a generalist soil-borne pathogen
Published: 2020-03-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Plant pathogens are a major agent of disturbance in ecosystems worldwide. Disturbance by disease can alter the hydrological function of affected ecosystems. However, many plant pathogens are also sensitive to soil moisture and can be propagated by the transport of infectious tissue or reproductive structures in surface flow, so that hydrological processes can drive pathogen infection. These [...]
Streamflow depletion estimation for conjunctive water management in a heavily-stressed aquifer using analytical depletion functions
Published: 2020-03-26
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater pumping can lead to reductions in streamflow (‘streamflow depletion’) and estimating streamflow depletion is critical for conjunctive groundwater-surface water management. Streamflow depletion can be quantified using either analytical models, which have low data requirements but many simplifying assumptions, or numerical models, which represent physical processes more realistically [...]
Toward stable, general machine-learned models of the atmospheric chemical system
Published: 2020-03-24
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Chemistry, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Atmospheric chemistry models—used as components in models that simulate air pollution and climate change—are computationally expensive. Previous studies have shown that machine-learned atmospheric chemical solvers can be orders of magnitude faster than traditional integration methods but tend to suffer from numerical instability. Here, we present a modeling framework that reduces error [...]
Evaluating the capabilities of optical/TIR imagine sensing systems for quantifying soil water content
Published: 2020-03-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) is a key parameter of the global energy and water cycle and knowing its spatio-temporal variability is of key importance in an array of research topics and in several practical applications alike. Recent developments in Earth Observation (EO) have indicated that SSM can be retrieved from different regions of electromagnetic spectrum and numerous approaches have been [...]
Rapid Tidal Marsh Development in Anthropogenic Backwaters
Published: 2020-03-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Tidal marsh restoration and creation has been proposed as a tool to build coastal resilience in the face of rising sea level and increasing intensity of coastal storms. However, it is unclear what conditions within constructed settings will lead to the successful establishment of tidal marsh. We used sediment cores and historical geospatial data in the tidal freshwater Hudson River to identify [...]
A Serious Gaming Framework for Decision Support on Hydrological Hazards
Published: 2020-03-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Software Engineering, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
In this study, a web-based decision support tool (DST) was developed for hydrological multi-hazard analysis while employing gamification techniques to introduce a competitive element. The serious gaming environment provides functionalities for intuitive management, visualization, and analysis of geospatial, hydrological, and economic data to help stakeholders in the decision-making process [...]
Reply to “Global coastal wetland expansion under accelerated sea-level rise is unlikely”
Published: 2020-03-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
We thank Törnqvist et al. for engaging with our modelling study on the future response of global coastal wetlands to sea-level rise (SLR) and their careful and critical discussion of the presented methods and results. However, we disagree with their suggestion that our modelling approach is inadequate, a claim which relies on two arguments: (1) they argue that our results are inconsistent with [...]
Use of geochemical fingerprints to trace sediment sources in an agriculture catchment of Argentina
Published: 2020-03-04
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil erosion and associated sediment redistribution are key environmental problems in Central Argentina. Specific land uses and management practices, such as intensive grazing and crop cultivation, are considered significantly driving and accelerating these processes. This research focuses on the identification of suitable soil tracers from hot spots of land degradation and sediment fate in an [...]
Crop residue burning practices across north India inferred from household survey data: bridging gaps in satellite observations
Published: 2020-03-03
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In north India, agricultural burning adversely affects local and regional air quality during the post-monsoon season (October to November), when the prevailing meteorology is favorable for smog and haze formation. Quantifying the contribution of smoke to air pollution in this region, however, is challenging. While the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), aboard NASA’s Terra and [...]
Mapping invasive Lupinus polyphyllus Lindl. in semi-natural grasslands using object-based analysis of UAV-borne images
Published: 2020-02-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences
Knowledge on the spatio-temporal distribution of invasive plant species is vital to maintain biodiversity in grasslands which are threatened by the invasion of such plants and to evaluate the effect of control activities conducted. Manual digitising of aerial images with field verification is the standard method to create maps of the invasive Lupinus polyphyllus Lindl. (Lupine) in semi-natural [...]
Kinetics and Products of Chromium(VI) Reduction by Iron(II/III)-Bearing Clay Minerals
Published: 2020-02-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hexavalent chromium is a water-soluble pollutant, the mobility of which can be controlled by reduction of Cr(VI) to less soluble, environmentally benign Cr(III). Iron(II/III)-bearing clay minerals are widespread potential reductants of Cr(VI), but the kinetics and pathways of Cr(VI) reduction by such clay minerals are poorly understood. We reacted aqueous Cr(VI) with two abiotically reduced clay [...]
Tracking Flooding Phase Transitions and Establishing a Passive Hotline with AI-Enabled Social Media Data
Published: 2020-02-21
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Flooding management requires collecting real-time onsite information widely and rapidly. As an emerging data source, social media demonstrates an advantage of providing in-time, rich data in the format of texts and photos and can be used to improve flooding situation awareness. The present study shows that social media data, with additional information processed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) [...]
Iron mineral dissolution releases iron and associated organic carbon during permafrost thaw
Published: 2020-02-08
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
It has been shown that reactive soil minerals, specifically iron(III) (oxyhydr)oxides, can trap organic carbon in soils overlying intact permafrost, and may limit carbon mobilization and degradation as it is observed in other environments. However, the use of iron(III)-bearing minerals as terminal electron acceptors in permafrost environments and thus their stability and capacity to prevent [...]