Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Tracking Drought Impacts from Texts: Towards AI-Assisted Drought Impact Detection
Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology
Drought is recognized for its extensive and varied impacts. Based on the drought-related textual datasets from the National Drought Mitigation Center, our research applies advanced artificial intelligence techniques, including deep learning and natural language processing, to enhance the monitoring of multifaceted drought impacts in the United States. This study also delves into predicting [...]
A Millimeter-Scale Change in Leaf Litter Placement Within Soil-Water Interfaces Alters Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emission
Published: 2024-12-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Soil Science, Sustainability
Flooded soils play a critical role in global carbon cycling, serving as significant reservoirs of soil organic carbon and sources of carbon emissions. Leaf litter, particularly from local vegetation, is a major contributor to soil organic carbon formation in these ecosystems, with its decomposition driving the production of carbon dioxide and methane. While numerous studies have investigated the [...]
Machine Learning Predicts Pedestrian Wind Flow from Urban Morphology and Prevailing Wind Direction
Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Pedestrian-level wind plays a critical role in shaping the urban microclimate and is significantly influenced by urban form and geometry. The most common method for determining spatial wind speed patterns in cities relies on numerical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, which resolve Navier-Stokes equations around buildings. While effective, these simulations are computationally [...]
The State of Global Catastrophic Risk Research: A Bibliometric Review
Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Geography, Other Life Sciences
The global catastrophic risk (GCR) and existential risk (ER) literature focuses on analysing and preventing potential major global catastrophes including a human extinction event. Over the past two decades, the field of GCR/ER research has grown considerably. However, there has been little meta-research on the field itself. How large has this body of literature become? What topics does it cover? [...]
Efficient Carbon Dioxide and Methane Flux Monitoring in Soil Microcosms Using an Automated Chamber with a Cartesian Robot
Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
1.Accurate measurement of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) emissions from soil is crucial for understanding carbon dynamics and developing strategies to mitigate climate change. Traditional chamber techniques and soil incubation experiments each have limitations that hinder their efficiency and accuracy. This study aims to overcome these challenges by integrating automated technologies [...]
Carbon dioxide removal could perpetuate community-scale inequalities of U.S. air pollution in net-zero scenarios
Published: 2024-11-28
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies
Pathways to net-zero reduce GHG emissions and improve air quality, but the magnitude and distribution of these improvements will depend on specific mitigation decisions, such as the amount of carbon dioxide removals (CDR). Here, we combine a series of models and datasets to analyze community-scale PM2.5 impacts across the contiguous U.S. of net-zero scenarios with different levels of CDR. Both [...]
Integration and Execution of Community Land Model Urban (CLMU) in a Containerized Environment
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
The Community Land Model Urban (CLMU) is a process-based numerical urban climate model that simulates the interactions between the atmosphere and urban surfaces, serving as a powerful tool for the convergence of urban and climate science research. Despite its advanced capabilities, CLMU presents significant challenges for users unfamiliar with numerical modeling due to the complexities of model [...]
Multiregional accounting of corporate carbon emissions
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Corporations routinely use environmentally-extended input-output models to estimate and report greenhouse gas emissions upstream in their supply chain. However, the most widely used of such models assume that the structure of supply chains and the emissions intensity of industries match those of a single region—usually the U.S. or the U.K. Here, we use a high-resolution multiregional input-output [...]
Microplastic transport and settling in the ocean: an interactive online teaching model to communicate scaling in environmental pollution
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Science and Mathematics Education
Microplastics pervade the sea surface, the water column, and the deep seafloor. They are vectors for other pollutants, such as heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants. A question remains as to how microplastics reach the seabed, over what time scales, and where they will end up. Many plastics initially float due to their low density, or to being incorporated into items with air cavities, [...]
Performance of a bioreactor using HCC fillers for sewage treatment
Published: 2024-11-12
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The experiments prepared bio-fillers using corn cobs as raw materials. Heat modification was identified as the optimal method by comparing the physical and chemical properties (roughness, porosity, water immersion stability, and compressive strength) of unmodified, acid modified, alkali modified, and heat modified corn cobs. Subsequently, the heat modification conditions were optimized, and the [...]
Sensing the dynamic nature of fragmented croplands in India through earth observation: a comprehensive review
Published: 2024-11-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Fragmentation or the breakdown of landholdings to smaller parcels has an adverse impact on crop yields and productivity because of its uneconomic operational sizes. This comprehensive review reflects the insights into the complex dynamics of small landholding (SLs) in India by leveraging earth observation (EO) based sensing technology through synthesizing existing literature, methodologies and [...]
Flood Resilience Assessment of Interconnected Critical Infrastructures
Published: 2024-11-07
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis, Systems Engineering, Water Resource Management
Undertaking systemic risk assessments of critical infrastructures (CIs) is necessary to improve understanding, mitigate impacts, and increase resilience to cascading effects of intensifying hydrometeorological hazards. This paper presents a novel quantitative approach for simulating local physical interdependencies between multiple infrastructure sectors that may be disrupted by floods. [...]
Global identification of solid waste methane super emitters using hyperspectral satellites
Published: 2024-11-01
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Solid waste is the third largest source of anthropogenic methane and mitigating emissions is crucial for addressing climate change. We combine three high-resolution (30–60 m) hyperspectral satellite imagers (EMIT, EnMAP, and PRISMA) to quantify emissions from 38 strongly-emitting disposal sites across worldwide urban methane hotspots. The imagers give consistent emission estimates, with EMIT and [...]
Geological and Environmental Implications of Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques: Balancing Efficiency with Sustainability
Published: 2024-10-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This research paper explores the geological and environmental impacts of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology, focusing on the balance between efficiency and sustainability in fossil fuel extraction. EOR methods, including thermal recovery, gas injection, and chemical flooding, are critical to maximizing reservoir recovery, especially as global energy demand increases and conventional reserves [...]
Automated underwater image analysis reveals sediment patterns and megafauna distribution in the tropical Atlantic
Published: 2024-10-29
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The deep sea environment comprises diverse flora, fauna and habitats, whose characterisation is key towards our collective understanding of ocean health and resilience. Whereas direct sampling allows for detailed investigation of the vertical variability of seabed characteristics at small spatial scales, optical imaging is suitable for high-resolution assessment of the spatial distribution of [...]