Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Sustainability
Potential for Perceived Failure of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Deployment
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Sustainability
As anthropogenic activities warm the Earth, the fundamental solution of reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains elusive. Given this mitigation gap, global warming may lead to intolerable climate changes as adaptive capacity is exceeded. Thus, there is emerging interest in solar radiation modification, which is the process of deliberately increasing Earth's albedo to cool the planet. [...]
Exploration of urban sustainability of India through the lens of sustainable development goals
Published: 2022-05-23
Subjects: Sustainability
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) index is a recognized metric for measuring progress in the UN SDGs. However, national or multinational-level analyses are more prevalent than sub-national types. We analysed the performance of 14 SDGs for 56 Indian cities (grouped into 6 regions) with available 77 indicators (2020-2021). Pearson’s correlation, hierarchical clustering, data envelopment analysis [...]
Quantifying excess heavy metal concentrations in drainage basins using conservative mixing models
Published: 2022-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
High concentrations of heavy metals and other pollutants in river sediments can have detrimental effects on the ecosystem and humans. The composition of river sediments throughout drainage basins therefore provides important information for environmental monitoring. An obvious first step for using river sediment compositions for monitoring is to quantify natural baseline concentrations. Once [...]
Pipeline availability limits on the feasibility of global coal-to-gas switching in the power sector
Published: 2022-05-02
Subjects: Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Coal-to-gas switching in the power sector, as happened in the US, has been a key driver of near-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Can this success be replicated around the world? Here, we explore the limits of a global, plant-level, coal-to-gas transition arising from pipeline availability constraints. Globally, only 43% of coal capacity is within 14 km of a nearby pipeline, the median [...]
Groundwater connections and sustainability in social-ecological systems
Published: 2022-04-08
Subjects: Dynamical Systems, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater resources are connected with social, economic, ecological, and Earth systems. We introduce the framing of groundwater-connected systems to better represent the nature and complexity of these connections in data collection, scientific investigations, governance and management approaches, and groundwater education. Groundwater-connected systems are social, economic, ecological, or Earth [...]
Knowledge co-production reveals nuanced societal dynamics and sectoral connections in mapping sustainable human-natural systems
Published: 2022-04-08
Subjects: Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) encompass environmental, social, and economic dimensions which are linked to the characteristics of place and have a strong local dimension. They are interconnected at local scales in complex ways which makes progress towards them difficult to predict. To understand how these interconnections play out at the local scale, we used knowledge co-production [...]
Economic and biophysical limits to seaweed-based climate solutions
Published: 2022-02-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets are driving interest in opportunities for biomass-based negative emissions and bioenergy, including from marine sources such as seaweed. Yet the biophysical and economic limits to farming seaweed at scales relevant to the global carbon budget have not been assessed in detail. We use coupled seaweed growth and technoeconomic models to estimate the costs of [...]
Quantifying Streamflow Depletion from Groundwater Pumping: A Practical Review of Past and Emerging Approaches for Water Management
Published: 2022-01-07
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater pumping can cause reductions in streamflow (“streamflow depletion”) that must be quantified for conjunctive management of groundwater and surface water resources. However, streamflow depletion cannot be measured directly and is challenging to estimate because pumping impacts are masked by streamflow variability due to other factors. Here, we conduct a management-focused review of [...]
Evaluating essential features of proppant transport at engineering scales combining field measurements with machine learning algorithms
Published: 2021-12-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Hydraulic Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
The characterization of the proppant transport at a field-engineering scale is still challenging due to the lack of direct subsurface measurements. Features that control the proppant transport may link the experimental and numerical observations to the practical operations at a field scale. To improve the numerical and laboratory simulations, we propose a machine-learning-based workflow to [...]
Thresholds in road network functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf barrier islands
Published: 2021-12-04
Subjects: Analysis, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability
Barrier islands predominate the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines of the USA, where development exceeds national trends. Forward-looking models of barrier island dynamics often include feedbacks with management practices – particularly those aimed at mitigating damage to buildings from natural hazards – and how real estate markets may be linked to barrier island dynamics. However, models thus far do [...]
Can machine learning improve carbon storage? Synergies of deep learning, uncertainty quantification and intelligent process control
Published: 2021-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Sustainability
As we transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy, negative emission technologies, such ascarbon capture and storage (CCS), can help us reduce CO2 emissions. Effective CO2 storage requires: (1) detailed site characterization, (2) regular, integrated risk assessment, and (3) flexible design and operation. We believe that recent advances in machine learning coupled with uncertainty [...]
A review of model-based scenario analysis of poverty for informing sustainability
Published: 2021-11-22
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Dynamic Systems, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere is the first goal being targeted by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Poverty eradication is a long-term process that faces the challenges of many uncertainties and complex interactions with other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to better understand poverty and contribute to addressing poverty in a sustainable [...]
Geographically-resolved social cost of anthropogenic emissions accounting for both direct and climate-mediated effects
Published: 2021-11-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Sustainability
The magnitude and distribution of physical and societal impacts from long-lived greenhouse gases are insensitive to the emission source location; the same is not true for major co-emitted short-lived pollutants like aerosols. Here we combine novel global climate model simulations with established response functions to show that identical aerosols emitted from different regions (Brazil, China, [...]
Reproducibility in subsurface geoscience
Published: 2021-10-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Speleology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology, Water Resource Management
Reproducibility, the extent to which consistent results are obtained when an experiment or study is repeated, sits at the foundation of science. The aim of this process is to produce robust findings and knowledge, with reproducibility being the screening tool to benchmark how well we are implementing the scientific method. However, the re-examination of results from many disciplines has caused [...]
Efficiency improvement and technology choice for energy and emission reductions of the residential sector
Published: 2021-10-11
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
The residential sector currently accounts for one fifth of global energy use and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions, largely driven by increasing demand for space heating and cooling. Climate change mitigation action requires these to reduce, but the exact decarbonization strategies and their heterogeneity is unclear. We use a regional recursive dynamic energy system model with an explicit [...]