Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Assessing the Impact of Storm Drains at Road Embankments on Diffuse Particulate Phosphorus Emissions in Agricultural Catchments
Published: 2019-01-22
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
This study presents a simple mapping key suitable for quick and systematic assessments of the types of agricultural and civil engineering structures present in a certain agricultural catchment as well as the impact they may have on the spatial distribution of critical source areas. An application of this mapping key to three small sub-catchments of a case study catchment with an area of several [...]
Interactions between glacier dynamics, ice structure, and climate at Fjallsjökul, south-east Iceland
Published: 2019-01-16
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Over recent decades, the number of outlet glaciers terminating in lakes in Iceland has increased in line with climate warming. The mass-balance changes of these lake-terminating outlet gla-ciers are sensitive to rising air temperatures, due to altered glacier dynamics and increased surface melt. This study aims to better understand the relationship between proglacial lake development, climate, [...]
A test case for application of convolutional neural networks to spatio-temporal climate data: Re-identifying clustered weather patterns
Published: 2019-01-01
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can potentially provide powerful tools for classifying and identifying patterns in climate and environmental data. However, because of the inherent complexities of such data, which are often spatio-temporal, chaotic, and non-stationary, the CNN algorithms must be designed/evaluated for each specific dataset and application. Yet to start, CNN, a supervised [...]
Differential Depletion-Induced 3D Stress Modification in Fault-Bounded Reservoirs and Implications for Fault Stability in Three Faulting Regimes
Published: 2019-01-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Depletion-induced faulting has been documented in a number of hydrocarbon reservoirs. This type of faulting has mostly been attributed to poroelastic effects: in-situ horizontal stresses are coupled with a pore pressure change according to a certain coupling coefficient (known as the stress path), which is generally less than 1. For faults with certain orientations, if the stress path is [...]
Report for the Yujiang Government on the China-UK Knowledge Exchange Project for the Red Soil Critical Zone
Published: 2018-12-19
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Knowledge exchange (KE) has been increasingly used to translate the scientific findings to produce outputs that inform land users and policy makers to lead to the sustainable environmental management. As part of the wider China-UK Critical Zone (CZ) programme, a KE research project was conducted to help ensure research results can be more effectively delivered to those who need them. Following on [...]
Intensity-Duration-Frequency curves at the global scale
Published: 2018-12-18
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves usefully quantify extreme precipitation over various durations and return periods for engineering design. Unfortunately, sparse, infrequent or short observations hinder the creation of robust IDF curves in many locations. This paper presents the first global, multi-temporal (1 to 360 hours) dataset of Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) parameters at 31 km [...]
Report for the Puding Government on the China-UK Karst Knowledge Exchange Project
Published: 2018-12-14
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Water Resource Management
The report summaries the first stage output from the Knowledge Exchange (KE) research carried out in one of China’s rural areas in the karst landscape, aiming to understand the local knowledge sharing dynamic and learning preference of stakeholders. A social science survey was carried out in November 2016 in 7 villages of Puding County to 15 county leaders, 8 town leaders and 24 village leaders [...]
Summary Report of China-UK Knowledge Exchange Project for Their Critical Zone Programme
Published: 2018-12-12
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Water Resource Management
Global to local environmental policy-making is increasingly evidenced-based. Knowledge exchange (KE) is increasingly used by environmental scientists and policymakers, to deliver evidence-based policy and practice. This study presents the output from the KE research project within the China-UK Critical Zone (CZ) programme in China from 2016 to 2018, focussing on understanding: (i) the key issues [...]
Critical Review of Polyphosphate and Polyphosphate Accumulating Organisms for Agricultural Water Quality Management
Published: 2018-12-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science, Water Resource Management
Despite ongoing management efforts, phosphorus (P) loading from agricultural landscapes continues to impair water quality. Wastewater treatment research has enhanced our knowledge of microbial mechanisms influencing P cycling, especially regarding microbes known as polyphosphate accumulating organisms (PAOs) that store P as polyphosphate (polyP) under oxic conditions and release P under anoxic [...]
Changes in global groundwater organic carbon driven by climate change and urbanization
Published: 2018-11-21
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Rapid urban growth is increasing demand for potable groundwater. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a major control of groundwater potability and treatment costs. We hypothesize that climate change and urbanization will not only decrease groundwater availability, but also its quality. Here, we summarize global groundwater DOC data (n = 6781) to identify its drivers and predict future changes. Our [...]
Simulated environmental photo- and auto-oxidation of ambrein
Published: 2018-11-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In alcoholic solutions (tinctures), the tricyclic triterpenoid alcohol, ambrein, which is usually the main ingredient of the natural product ambergris, undergoes photo-oxidation to a number of odorous products. Such tinctures are valuable in perfumery. Similar reactions are thought to occur in the marine environment, when flotsam and jetsam ambergris are exposed to sunlight. However, [...]
Rapid and accurate estimates of streamflow depletion caused by groundwater pumping using analytical depletion functions
Published: 2018-11-13
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Reductions in streamflow due to groundwater pumping (‘streamflow depletion’) can negatively impact water users and aquatic ecosystems but are challenging to estimate due to the time and expertise required to develop numerical models often used for water management. Here, we develop analytical depletion functions, which are simpler approaches consisting of (i) stream proximity criteria which [...]
A Small Scale Study of the Weathering Rates of Marble Gravestones Dated from 1958-1962
Published: 2018-11-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Marble is known to weather quicker when exposed to air pollution. This has led to the suggestion that gravestones could be used to study the long term degradation of marble and be used as indicators of past pollution levels. This small scale study examined the weathering rates of a group of marble gravestones of similar age and location. The study found no evidence to suggest that these [...]
Spatial variability of late Holocene and 20th century sea-level rise along the Atlantic coast of the United States
Published: 2018-11-07
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Accurate estimates of global sea-level rise in the pre-satellite era provide a context for 21st century sea-level predictions, but the use of tide-gauge records is complicated by the contributions from changes in land level due to glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). We have constructed a rigorous quality-controlled database of late Holocene sea-level indices from the U.S. Atlantic coast, [...]
A Sensitivity Analysis Study of the SPITFIRE Fire Model
Published: 2018-10-31
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This MS describes a sensitivity analysis of the SPITFIRE fire model coupled to the Lund-Potsdam-Jena (LPJ) dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM). The study aims to investigate the parameters that control how the fire model calculates burnt area across different ecosystems. In different fire systems, different parameters are found to have higher sensitivity to burnt area, but in general, [...]