Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Sustainability
Matrix-based Methods for Regionalized Life Cycle Assessment
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Sustainability
We develop a comprehensive computational framework for matrix-based regionalized life cycle assessment (LCA). When life cycle inventories and impact assessment methods have different spatial scales, spatial allocation is needed to map inventory locations to impact assessment spatial units. We review spatial allocation based on intersected areas and existing background emissions, and propose using [...]
Revisiting the Climate Narrative
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Management, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Environmental Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is chiefly tied to land stewardship. Farmers and loggers have removed the plants that, until the industrial era, kept the soil fungi alive, kept soil emissions nearby by breaking the wind, and soaked those up. The result is plumes of carbon dioxide. Putting plants back in would curb these emissions. Farmers and loggers could address biodiversity loss [...]
Mitigating risk of exceeding environmental limits requires ambitious food system interventions
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Transforming the global food system is necessary to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries. A robust evidence base is crucial to assess the scale and combination of interventions required for a sustainable transformation. We developed a risk assessment framework, underpinned by a meta-regression of 60 global food system modeling studies, to quantify the potential of individual and combined [...]
Data, knowledge and modeling challenges for science-informed management of river deltas
Published: 2023-03-16
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
450 million people live on river deltas and thus on land that is precariously low above the sea level and sinking because of human activities and natural processes. Although global debates around coastal risk typically focus on sea level rise, it is sinking lands and rising seas that together endanger lives and livelihoods in river deltas. However, the ability to quantify and address those risks [...]
The Digital Environmental Footprint - a holistic framework of Digital Sustainability
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
This paper examines the different ways in which the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector negatively affects the environment. To capture environmental externalities beyond the common but limited carbon footprint, a novel holistic framework of digital sustainability was created - the Digital Environmental Footprint (DEF). To apply and test the DEF, the ICT sector was evaluated [...]
Rapid seaward expansion of seaport footprints worldwide
Published: 2023-02-25
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Geographic Information Sciences, Geomorphology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Sustainability
As global maritime traffic increases, seaports grow to accommodate and compete for higher volumes of trade throughput. However, growth trajectories of seaport footprints around the world have gone unmeasured, likely because of a lack of readily available spatio-temporal data. Here, we use geospatial analysis of global satellite imagery from 1990–2020 to show that 65 seaports among the world's top [...]
Considerable gaps in our global knowledge of potential groundwater accessibility
Published: 2023-02-11
Subjects: Geology, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
At what depth groundwater can be found below the land surface is key to understanding whether it is potentially accessible to ecosystems and humans, or what role it plays in the water cycle. Knowledge of ground-water table depth (WTD) exists at regional scales in many places, but a bottom-up knowledge aggregation to obtain a coherent global picture is exceptionally challenging. Uncertainty in [...]
Uncertainties in Water Scarcity Index due to water use and climate changes: Case of two Legal Amazon watersheds
Published: 2022-12-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Water scarcity is a major global problem with the potential to impact socioeconomic development and the environment. Currently, mitigating issues related to the lack of water has become an aim for the public and private sectors. Water scarcity can be estimated by the ratio between water use (withdrawal or consumption) and water availability (a minimum discharge), named Water Stress Index (WSI). [...]
The Dry Sky: Futures for Humanity’s Modification of the Atmospheric Water Cycle
Published: 2022-12-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Humanity is modifying the atmospheric water cycle, via land use, climate change, air pollution, and weather modification. Given the implications of this, we present a theoretical framing of atmospheric water as an economic good. Historically, atmospheric water was tacitly considered a ‘public good’ since it was neither actively consumed (rival) nor controlled (exclusive). However, given [...]
Standardised indices to monitor energy droughts
Published: 2022-11-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
To mitigate the effects of climate change, energy systems are becoming increasingly reliant on renewable energy sources. Since these energy sources are typically dependent on the prevailing weather, renewable energy systems are susceptible to shortages during certain weather conditions. As renewable sources become larger contributors to the energy mix, the risks associated with these shortages, [...]
How reproducible and reliable is geophysical research? A review of the availability and accessibility of data and software for research published in journals
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Geophysical research frequently makes use of agreed methodologies, formally published software, and bespoke code to process and analyse data. The reliability and repeatability of these methods is vital in maintaining the integrity of research findings and thereby avoiding the dissemination of unreliable results. In recent years there has been increased attention on aspects of reproducibility, [...]
The unknown fate of macroplastic in mountain rivers
Published: 2022-11-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Mountain rivers are typically seen as relatively pristine ecosystems, supporting numerous goods (e.g., water resources) for human populations living not only in the mountain regions but also downstream from them. Recent evidence suggests, however, that mountain river valleys in populated areas can be substantially polluted by macroplastic (plastic item > 5 mm). It is, however, unknown how [...]
Air Quality-Related Equity Implications of U.S. Decarbonization Policy
Published: 2022-10-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
We quantify potential air pollution exposure reductions resulting from U.S. federal carbon policy, and consider the implications of resulting health benefits for exposure disparities across racial/ethnic groups. We assess reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 50% in 2030 relative to 2005 levels, comparable in magnitude to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Using energy-economic scenarios [...]
Trait-based modeling revealed higher microbial diversity leads to greater ecological resilience in response to an ecosystem disturbance
Published: 2022-10-14
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Microbiology, Oceanography, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
To quantitatively understand the ecological resilience of an ecosystem with specialized habitats, we focused on deep-sea microbial communities and simulated the response of diverse microbes in specialized habitats to a pulse ecosystem disturbance - the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Two microbial communities with equivalent metabolic libraries were acclimated to the presence [...]
Plant Breeding Biomolecular Classification in Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) Physics-Informed Neural Network Architecture
Published: 2022-08-31
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Climate, Other Statistics and Probability, Plant Sciences, Probability, Quantum Physics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, Sustainability, Systems Biology
In this brief communication, biomolecular plant breeding multi-classification inference is discussed when leveraging the advantages of Physics-informed Neural Network (PiNN) architecture. Albeit, the expected utility of Partial Differential Equation (PDE) inspired neural networks resides in its performance under limited data availability; a variety of neural network configurations result from PDE [...]