Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Sustainability
Agri-food corporations’ role in water sustainability and water resilience of global supply chains
Published: 2025-05-23
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Agriculture is both a major contributor to water scarcity and highly vulnerable to it. The agri-food sector accounts for approximately 70% of global human water abstraction and 90% of water consumption, with irrigation practices leading to detrimental effects such as reduced streamflow, groundwater depletion, and environmental degradation. As water stress impacts crop and livestock productivity, [...]
Time shift: The peak reduction potential of demand response with simple time-of-use pricing
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Increasing electrification of energy systems, required for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, poses challenges for electricity systems from increased peak demand. Demand response can reduce peak demand, but acceptability is limited by consumer concerns about effort, complexity, and lack of control. This study assesses the potential of simple demand response programs using existing electricity [...]
Peak loads, health, and energy equality: The effects of demand-side electricity efficiency interventions
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Electrification is key for climate change mitigation but, if unmanaged, risks increasing energy poverty, inequalities, and peak electricity demand. While demand response to reduce peak electricity demand has been the subject of extensive research, the effects of energy efficiency interventions for wider health system and socioeconomic outcomes are less studied. This study assesses the impact of [...]
Peak demand, consumer costs, and socioeconomic effects: Considerations for distributed generation and energy storage
Published: 2025-05-15
Subjects: Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Electrification is a key approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but will increase peak demand, challenging electricity systems. Distributed generation (DG) from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and battery storage are often offered as potential solutions. This study uses a previously validated agent-based model of residential electricity demand to assess the impact of solar DG on peak [...]
Decision-making under uncertainty for shallow geothermal systems in complex subsurface settings: application to a low-transmissivity aquifer
Published: 2025-05-08
Subjects: Geology, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
Excess thermal energy can be stored in the subsurface and recovered when needed to heat and cool buildings sustainably. Aquifer thermal energy storage systems (ATES) are gaining popularity worldwide. Most operational systems are located in thick productive aquifers. Their efficiency and wide applicability have been proven and there is now a tendency to explore more complex settings. Aquifers with [...]
Temporal convolutional networks for subsidence prediction in snowy regions
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Sustainability
This paper introduces a model based on a temporal convolutional network (TCN) for predicting future land subsidence caused by groundwater pumping for snow melting. Developed using historical snowfall and cumulative subsidence data from Joetsu City, Japan, the model demonstrates satisfactory performance in predicting observed land subsidence. The results suggest that TCNs are effective for [...]
From natural variability to flow homogenisation: how dams, water diversions, and climate change reduced seasonal flows in Australia’s Murrumbidgee River
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
River regulation and climate change have profoundly altered seasonal flow dynamics globally, with cascading ecological impacts on freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. Magnitude and timing are key components of the flow regime, connecting rivers with floodplains and driving feeding and breeding cues for aquatic organisms. We investigated the separate and combined effects of water resource [...]
Mapping Responsible AI Workflows for Geospatial Data Science: Developing the I-GUIDE Data Ethics Toolkit
Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Library and Information Science, Sustainability
AI workflows in geospatial data science promise substantial societal benefits yet pose persistent challenges of ethical risk, transparency, and reproducibility. Current guidance, ranging from high‑level principles to isolated documentation templates, remains difficult to translate into day‑to‑day research practice, especially for teams operating under tight deadlines. This paper reports the [...]
A realistic climate strategy
Published: 2025-04-12
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
The international climate strategy is failing. Current policies will act too slowly to prevent rising temperatures from crossing critical climate tipping points. IPCC assessments underestimate the non-linear risks and catastrophic costs of overshooting Paris Agreement targets. Opponents of solar geoengineering cite concerns about moral hazard and other potential risks; however, at this juncture [...]
Assessing the effectiveness of irrigator-driven groundwater conservation programs to drought: a case study of the northwestern Kansas Local Enhanced Management Areas
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater pumping for irrigation has led to significant decreases in groundwater levels in agricultural areas around the world, including the U.S. High Plains Aquifer. Here, we used a process-based corn and sorghum crop model, AquaCrop, to assess the effectiveness of different irrigation management strategies during a synthetic multi-year drought. We focused on the Groundwater Management [...]
Salinas Valley Integrated Hydrologic and Reservoir Operations Models, Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties, California Pre-Print
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The area surrounding the Salinas Valley groundwater basin in Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties of California is a highly productive agricultural area, contributes significantly to the local economy, and provides a substantial portion of vegetables and other agricultural commodities to the Nation. This region of California provides about half of the Nation’s lettuce, celery, broccoli, and [...]
Impact of GHG mitigation measures in sanitation service chains: focusing on septic tanks and sewers
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability
Sanitation service chains (SSC) in many cities in low- and middle-income countries are complex and comprise poorly managed non-sewered and sewered sanitation technologies that emit greenhouse gases (GHG). In this study, we aimed to estimate the impact of GHG mitigation measures along SSCs where both non-sewered and sewered sanitation were widely used, and to account for the interdependencies of [...]
Enhancing the Normalized Difference Water Index for Improved Urban Flood Detection
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Accurate urban flood detection is crucial for effective disaster management and urban planning. Traditional indices like the Normalized Difference Water Index and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index often produce inaccurate results due to spectral confusion in urban areas and sensitivity to shadows. Moreover, MNDWI's reliance on the Shortwave Infrared band limits its use with certain [...]
Rewetting drained boreal peatland forests does not mitigate climate warming in the 21st century
Published: 2025-02-08
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Rewetting of drained peatland forests restores ecosystem functions and improves peatland ecological status. It is also considered to mitigate climate change, yet some studies challenge this view Recently, Laine et al. (2024, Restoration Ecology, 32(7), p.e14213) considered feasible restoration outcomes of boreal forestry drained peatlands and proposed that rewetting nutrient-rich peatland forests [...]
Predicting Land Surface Temperature With Uncertainty Estimation Using a Community Sensor Network and Machine Learning
Published: 2025-01-31
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability
Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) are areas in cities that experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas due to construction features such as buildings, roads, and a general lack of vegetation. UHIs, which pose a threat to public health while also increasing energy usage, are often defined using land surface temperatures. Our study demonstrates how a community sensor network from the Baltimore [...]