Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Mapping current and future European potential vegetation to support restoration planning
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
The extent and intactness of natural ecosystems is a key factor enabling species populations to thrive. However, the distribution of ecosystems is changing owing to both climatic and anthropogenic factors. Recently negotiated European policy directives, such as the Nature Restoration Law, argue for the restoration of natural ecosystems. Yet to determine what is to be restored the range of [...]
Half of anthropogenic warming now caused by fossil fuels
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Many human activities influence the climate, such as burning fossil fuels, clearing land, growing food, and using refrigerants. Among these, fossil fuels have long been considered the primary driver of global warming. Here, the impact of fossil fuels on historical warming is reassessed using a climate emulator ensemble that accounts for key uncertainties. This reveals that, until the 2020s, [...]
Elevated Methane in Massachusetts and Rhode Island Homes Using Fracked Gas
Published: 2024-09-11
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Public Health
We surveyed 197 Massachusetts and Rhode Island houses ranging in building style and age to test whether homes served by fracked gas have higher indoor methane concentrations ([CH4]) than in homes without gas. The answer is clearly “Yes”. From basements and single-floor slab homes to third floors of triple deckers, indoor [CH4] in households with gas service was significantly elevated over outdoor [...]
HarvestStat Africa – Harmonized Subnational Crop Statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa
Published: 2024-09-10
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Sciences
Sub-Saharan Africa faces severe agricultural data scarcity amidst high food insecurity and a large agricultural yield gap, making crop production data crucial for understanding and enhancing food systems. To address this gap, HarvestStat Africa presents the largest compilation of open-access subnational crop statistics and time-series across Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on agricultural statistics [...]
Whose Priorities? Examining Inequities in Earth Observation Advancements Across Africa
Published: 2024-08-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Earth Observation (EO) technology continues to gain momentum for applications like crop monitoring and food security mapping across Africa. However, the development of these systems and the direction of the sector, even for locally relevant datasets, applications, and solutions, has been and remains largely externally driven. We utilized a database of "leading organizations" in EO for Machine [...]
A 40-Year Remote Sensing Analysis of Spatiotemporal Temperature and Rainfall Patterns in Senegal
Published: 2024-08-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate change impacts manifest differently worldwide, with many African countries, including Senegal, being particularly vulnerable. The decline in ground observations and limited access to these observations continue to impede research efforts to understand, plan, and mitigate the current and future impacts of climate change. This occurs at a time of rapid growth in Earth observations (EO) [...]
A Phenology-Dependent Analysis for Identifying Key Drought Indicators for Crop Yield based on Causal Inference and Information Theory
Published: 2024-08-29
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Drought indicators, which are quantitative measurements of drought severity and duration, are used to monitor and predict the risk and effects of drought, particularly in relation to the sustainability of agriculture and water supplies. This research uses causal inference and information theory to discover the drought index, which is the most efficient indicator for agricultural productivity and [...]
The extended Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset: Extending the GLCP to include ice, snow, and radiation-related climate variables
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
A changing climate and increasing human population necessitate understanding global freshwater availability. To enable assessment of lake water variability from local-to-global and monthly-to-decadal scales, we extended the Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset, which contains monthly lake surface area for 1.42 million lakes with paired basin-level climate and population data [...]
Natural and human drivers of specific conductance and major ion composition in United States lakes
Published: 2024-08-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Specific conductance (SC) and major ion composition are important for understanding and predicting lake water quality and ecosystem responses to global changes and human disturbances. However, little is known about SC and ionic composition for populations of lakes at the continental scale, nor their relationships with natural and human factors operating at multiple spatial scales. We examined the [...]
Novel landforms: integrating people as key drivers of process and form in geomorphology
Published: 2024-08-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology
People alter the earth’s surface in diverse and prolific ways, from enhancing physical and chemical erosion to controlling water transport across drainage networks. These modifications are often faster, more extensive, and wholly novel when compared to natural landscape evolutionary processes. Existing literature largely portrays people as independent of a landscape’s geologic and climatic [...]
The influence of wildfire smoke on ambient chemical species concentrations in the contiguous US
Published: 2024-08-14
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Wildfires are a significant contributor to ambient air pollution and pose a growing public health threat in many parts of the world. Increased wildfire activity over the past few decades has exacerbated smoke exposure across the US, yet our understanding of how wildfire influences specific chemicals and their resulting concentration in smoke remains incomplete. We combine 15 years of daily [...]
A methodologically robust densification function for snow on multiyear Arctic sea ice
Published: 2024-08-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Intercomparison of satellite derived SST with logger data in the Caribbean – Implications for coral reef monitoring
Published: 2024-08-06
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Since the early 1980s measurements of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) derived from satellite-borne instruments have provided a wide range of global gridded products documenting changes in SST. However, there are many sources of uncertainty in these records and significant differences exist among them. One use of these products is identification of coral bleaching events, and the predictions of the [...]
Harmful Algal Bloom Prediction using Empirical Dynamic Modelling
Published: 2024-08-01
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) can originate from a variety of reasons, including water pollution coming from agriculture, effluent from treatment plants, sewage system leaks, pH and light levels, and the consequences of climate change. In recent years, HAB events have become a serious environmental problem, paralleling population growth, agricultural development, increasing air temperatures, and [...]
Towards automatic delineation of landslide source and runout
Published: 2024-07-26
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Mathematics
Mapping landslide-depleted source areas is pivotal for refining predictive models and volume estimations, yet these critical regions are often conflated with the landslide runouts, leading to sub-optimal assessments. The source areas are typically the regions where the actual failure occurs, providing crucial information on the initiation mechanisms and the nature of landslide propagation. [...]