Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Wind tunnel tests inform Ammophila planting spacing for dune management
Published: 2018-09-24
Subjects: Biology, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Coastal dunes are invaluable natural resources that bu er upland areas. Vegetation is key in dune development and stabilization. Dunes form with sufficient wind, sand source, and obstruction; plants are the ideal obstruction. Storms o en erode foredunes and coastal managers replant vegetation to re-establish the necessary obstruction for sand accretion and dune growth. We used a wind tunnel to [...]
Reactionary fence installation for post-Superstorm Sandy dune recovery
Published: 2018-09-24
Subjects: Biology, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Sustainability
Dunes are invaluable to coastal areas as dynamic buffers to erosion during high tides and storms, but do not accrue naturally in developed areas without assistance. Wood paling fencing is commonly used to cultivate dune development and thereby increase the protection afforded to coastal areas. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy devastated the mid-Atlantic, especially New Jersey where many areas are still [...]
Scoping the potential usefulness of seasonal climate forecasts for solar power management
Published: 2018-09-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Solar photovoltaic energy is widespread worldwide and particularly in Europe, which became in 2016 the first region in the world to pass the 100 GW of installed capacity. As for all the renewable energy sources, for an intelligent management of solar power, it is essential to have reliable and accurate information about weather/climate conditions that affect the production of electricity. This [...]
GLOBAL WATER TRANSFER MEGAPROJECTS: A SOLUTION FOR THE WATER-FOOD-ENERGY NEXUS?
Published: 2018-09-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Globally, freshwater is unevenly distributed, both in space and time. Climate change, land use alteration, and increasing human exploitation will further increase the pressure on water as a resource for human welfare and on inland water ecosystems. Water transfer megaprojects (WTMP), i.e. large-scale engineering interventions to divert water within and between catchments, represent an approach in [...]
Mapping and Monitoring Rice Agriculture with Multisensor Temporal Mixture Models
Published: 2018-08-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rice feeds more humans than any other crop on Earth. Accurate prediction of the timing and volume of rice harvests therefore has considerable global importance for food security and economic stability, especially in the developing world. Optical and thermal satellite imagery can provide critical constraints on the spatial extent of rice planting and the timing of rice phenology. We present a [...]
A mathematical morphology approach to the identification of drought events in space and time
Published: 2018-08-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Drought events occur worldwide and possibly incur severe consequences. Trying to understand and characterizing drought events is of primordial importance in order to improve the preparedness for coping with future events. In this paper, drought events are characterized by exploiting their spatio-temporal nature. Operators borrowed from mathematical morphology are applied to represent drought [...]
Mechanistic coupling of social and biophysical models of water management through agent typologies
Published: 2018-08-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Modeling the coupled social and biophysical dynamics of water resource systems is increasingly important due to expanding population, fundamental transitions in the uses of water, and changes in global and regional water cycling driven by climate change. Models that explicitly represent the coupled dynamics of biophysical and social components of water resource systems are challenging to design [...]
Diatom community responses to long-term multiple stressors at Lake Gusinoye, Siberia
Published: 2018-08-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Global freshwater systems are threatened by multiple anthropogenic stressors via impacts on ecological structure and function necessary to maintain their health. In order to properly manage freshwater ecosystems, we must have a better understanding of the ecological response to human‐induced stressors, especially in multiple stressor environments. When long‐term observational records are scarce [...]
Powers of 10: cross-scale optimization of social agencies for rapid climate and sustainability action
Published: 2018-08-27
Subjects: Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, International and Area Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and related sustainability initiatives will require halving of greenhouse gas emissions each decade from now on through to 2050, when net zero emissions should be achieved. To reach such significant reductions requires a rapid and strategic scaling of existing and emerging technologies and practices, coupled with economic and social transformation and [...]
Higher potential compound flood risk in Northern Europe under anthropogenic climate change
Published: 2018-07-18
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Statistics and Probability
The published version of this article is available at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw5531. Compound flooding (CF) is an extreme event taking place in low-lying coastal areas as a result of co-occurring high sea level and large amounts of runoff, caused by precipitation. The impact from the two hazards occurring individually can be significantly lower than the result of their [...]
Historical trajectories of disaster risk in Dominica
Published: 2018-07-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science, Tectonics and Structure, Water Resource Management
The calamitous consequences of Hurricane Maria (2017) for the Caribbean island of Dominica highlighted the acute and increasing susceptibility of the region to hazard events. Despite the increasing international attention given to disaster risk reduction, recovery from hazard events can be especially lengthy and difficult for Small Island Developing States. In this paper we build on existing [...]
Uncertainties of sandy shoreline change projections as sea level rises
Published: 2018-07-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Sandy shorelines are constantly evolving, threatening frequently human assets such as buildings or transport infrastructures. In these environments, sea level rise will exacerbate coastal erosion to an amount which remains uncertain. Sandy shoreline change projections inherits the uncertainties of future mean sea level changes, of vertical ground motions, and of other natural and anthropogenic [...]
The impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation on European hydro-power generation
Published: 2018-07-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
In this paper we analyse and quantify the impact of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on the daily hydropower generation in the European countries. We create a consistent dataset of hydropower generation using a machine- learning methodology, this activity is an output of the Copernicus Climate Change Service ECEM contract. The model is set up using generation data on 2015-2016, and then an [...]
Cyclic CO2 – H2O injection and residual trapping: implications for CO2 injection efficiency and storage security
Published: 2018-06-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
To meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 2ºC or below it is widely accepted that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will have to be deployed at scale. The influence of residual trapping on CO2 well injectivity and its response over time has a major impact on the injection efficiency and storage capacity of CO2 storage sites. For the first time, experiments have been [...]
Micromorphological report of Hof ter Coign
Published: 2018-06-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Geology, Life Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science
Micromorphological report of the Hof ter Coign site (Belgium)