Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Sustainability
Beyond land surface temperature: identifying areas of daytime thermal discomfort in cities by combining remote sensing and field measurements.
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Satellite images of land surface temperatures (LST) are commonly used to identify areas within cities most prone to diurnal thermal discomfort, but they may not reflect the experiences of pedestrians. Here, we developed predictive statistical models for Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET), an indicator of thermal discomfort, with easily accessible spatial predictors. For this, we measured [...]
Impact of farm size on the function of landscape-level payments for ecosystem services: An agent-based model study
Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Reducing pesticide use and restoring biodiversity are among the most pressing environmental challenges. Enhancing natural pest control ecosystem services through the integration of non-crop habitats (NCH) offers promising potential, creating a positive feedback loop by harnessing insect biodiversity to reduce pesticide reliance. Policy support is needed at the landscape level to encourage [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Harnessing nature-based solutions for economic recovery: a systematic review
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
Nature-based solutions (NbS) involve working with nature to address societal challenges in ways that benefit communities and biodiversity locally. However, their role supporting economic recovery from crises, such as those arising from conflicts or pandemics remains underexplored. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic review of 66 reviews on the economic impact of nature-based [...]
A Novel Methodology to Map Hydrogen Storage Potential in Salt Caverns: A Case Study of the Midwestern and Appalachian Regions of the United States
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Sustainability
Hydrogen is widely understood to be critical for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors like heavy industry, and long-distance transportation as well as balancing a variable renewable energy dominated power grid. Here, we propose a methodology for evaluating the potential for hydrogen storage in geological salt resources. This methodology starts with a characterization of salt resources by [...]
Rising Temperatures Increase Risk of Soil Salinity and Land Degradation in Water-Scarce Regions
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Soil Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Climate change introduces significant uncertainty when assessing the risk of soil salinity in water-scarce regions. We combine a soil-water-salinity-sodicity model (SOTE) and a weather generator model (AWE-GEN) to develop a framework for studying salinity and sodicity dynamics under changing climate definitions. Using California’s San Joaquin Valley as a case study, we perform first-order [...]
Efficiency and heat transport processes of low-temperature aquifer thermal energy storage systems: new insights from global sensitivity analyses
Published: 2024-10-07
Subjects: Geology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) has great potential to mitigate CO2 emissions associated with the heating and cooling of buildings and offers wide applicability. Thick productive aquifer layers have been targeted first, as these are the most promising areas for ATES. Regardless, there is currently an increasing trend to target more complex aquifers such as low-transmissivity and alluvial [...]
The extended Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset: Extending the GLCP to include ice, snow, and radiation-related climate variables
Published: 2024-08-28
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 [...]
Climate equivalence metrics for airline contrail mitigation
Published: 2024-07-10
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
The aviation sector faces a significant challenge in mitigating climate change due to the dual impact of CO2 emissions and contrail formation. Contrails, which form under specific atmospheric conditions, contribute to global warming. Mitigating contrails, however, can require flight path diversions, leading to increased fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. This study evaluates various climate [...]
HarvestGRID: high-resolution harvested crop areas of the United States from 1981 to 2019
Published: 2024-05-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The United States is a major producer and exporter of agricultural goods, fulfilling global demands for food, fiber, and fuel while generating substantial economic benefits. Agriculture in the U.S. not only dominates land use but also ranks as the largest water-consuming sector. High-resolution cropland mapping and insights into cultivation trends are essential to enhance sustainable management [...]
Spatial Patterns of Urban Heat Islands and Green Space Cooling Effects in the Urban Microclimate of Karachi
Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
With rapid urbanization and the increasing threats of climate change, metropolitan cities like Karachi, Pakistan, are encountering greater challenges due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Understanding the cooling potential of urban green spaces (UGS) is crucial for mitigating heat stress and enhancing urban resilience. This study aims to analyze the thermal dynamics and cooling efficacy [...]
Limited role of discharge in global river plastic transport
Published: 2024-04-24
Subjects: Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
River plastic transport has been assumed to be driven by river discharge, although observational data does often not support this. We propose a new perspective that describes plastic transport as function of plastic availability and transport capacity. Plastic transport is under most circumstances driven by plastic availability, which is largely disconnected from river discharge. However, when [...]
Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions
Published: 2024-04-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resource Economics, Statistical Models, Sustainability
Rapid agriculture-driven deforestation raises significant concerns about achieving climate and biodiversity targets. Linking deforestation to food production is crucial for guiding the development, implementation, and evaluation of forest conservation and climate change mitigation efforts. However, the limited scope and comprehensiveness of available datasets restrict the effectiveness of these [...]
Estimating irrigation water use from remotely sensed evapotranspiration data: Accuracy and uncertainties at field, water right, and regional scales
Published: 2024-02-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Irrigated agriculture is the dominant user of water globally, but most water withdrawals are not monitored or reported. As a result, it is largely unknown when, where, and how much water is used for irrigation. Here, we evaluated the ability of remotely sensed evapotranspiration (ET) data, integrated with other datasets, to calculate irrigation water withdrawals and applications in an intensively [...]