Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Education
Equality, diversity and inclusion recommendations and best practice from NERC Doctoral Training Partnerships & Centers for Doctoral Training: DEI Forum Report 2023
Published: 2024-07-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Higher Education
This report represents the collective voice of NERC DTPs & CDTs, demonstrating the reality of nurturing Diversity, Equality and Inclusion at the ground level from the perspectives of staff and students. Individually, we have faced common barriers towards improving DEI within our host universities and honed our expertise in realising DEI through extensive research and [...]
The Looming Crisis: Global Groundwater Depletion and its Unseen Impacts, Climate Change
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences
Groundwater depletion is a growing threat to global sustainability, impacting ecosystems, agriculture, and human populations. This viewpoint explores the causes and consequences of unsustainable groundwater extraction, highlighting its far-reaching effects on local and global climates. The paper examines specific examples from various regions worldwide, showcasing the widespread nature of this [...]
Towards an Open and Integrated Cyberinfrastructure for River Morphology Research in the Big Data Era
Published: 2024-02-16
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Computer Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Systems and Communications, Water Resource Management
The objective of this paper is to present the initial illustration of a cyberinfrastructure named the River MORPhology Information System (RIMORPHIS) that addresses the current limitations related to river morphology data and tools. A new specification for data and semantics on river morphology datasets has been developed to support the web-based platform for discovering and visualization of [...]
UMIS: An Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System for Water Quality Resources in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Systems and Communications, Water Resource Management
The Upper Mississippi Information System (UMIS) is a cyberinfrastructure framework designed to support large-scale real-time water quality data integration, analysis, and visualization for the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). UMIS is intended to directly address three of the Grand Challenges for Engineering including: 1) understanding access to clean drinking water, 2) management of the [...]
A Deep Learning framework to map riverbed sand mining budgets in large tropical deltas
Published: 2023-10-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Sedimentology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Rapid urbanization has dramatically increased the demand for river sand, leading to soaring sand extraction rates that often exceed natural replenishment in many rivers globally. However, our understanding of the geomorphic and social-ecological impacts arising from Sand Mining (SM) remains limited, primarily due to insufficient data on sand extraction rates. Conventionally, bathymetry surveys [...]
Mapping the Landscape of Water and Society Research: Promising Combinations of Compatible and Complementary Disciplines
Published: 2023-10-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) [...]
A Technical Overview of the North Carolina ECONet
Published: 2022-07-20
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Plant Sciences
Regional weather networks–also referred to as mesonets–are imperative for filling in the spatial and temporal data gaps between nationally supported weather stations. The North Carolina Environment and Climate Observing Network (ECONet) fills this regional role; it is a mesoscale network of 44 (as of 2023) automated stations collecting 12 environmental variables every minute across North [...]
Interactive Hydrological Modelling and Simulation on Client-Side Web Systems: An Educational Case Study
Published: 2022-04-13
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Water Resource Management
Computational hydrological models and simulations are fundamental pieces of the workflow of contemporary hydroscience research, education, and professional engineering activities. In support of hydrological modelling efforts, web-enabled tools for data processing, storage, computation, and visualization have proliferated. Most of these efforts rely on server resources for computation and data [...]
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 [...]
Safety and Belonging in the Field: A Checklist for Educators
Published: 2021-08-19
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Higher Education, Human Geography, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Outdoor Education, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Mineral Physics, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology, Remote Sensing, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Speleology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology, Water Resource Management
Ensuring taught fieldwork is a positive, generative, collective, and valuable experience for all participants requires considerations beyond course content. To guarantee safety and belonging, participants’ identities (backgrounds and protected characteristics) must be considered as a part of fieldwork planning and implementation. Furthermore, getting fieldwork right is an important step in [...]
Creating a climate changed future with the sea level rise interactive- fiction game ‘Lagos2199’
Published: 2021-07-26
Subjects: Climate, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Instructional Media Design, International and Area Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Story-based futures serve an important role in climate change scenario development. Stories are particularly useful in exploring sea level rise possibilities, since we know many coastal areas are specifically vulnerable to accelerating rises in sea level. This discrete change in coastline is different from most other climate change impacts, and offers a clear basis for scientifically-informed, [...]
Transitioning Machine Learning from Theory to Practice in Natural Resources Management
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Computer Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Advances in sensing and computation have accelerated at unprecedented rates and scales, in turn creating new opportunities for natural resources managers to improve adaptive and predictive management practices by coupling large environmental datasets with machine learning (ML). Yet, to date, ML models often remain inaccessible to managers working outside of academic research. To identify [...]
Serious Gaming for Water Resources Planning and Hazard Mitigation
Published: 2020-08-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Hydrological hazards lead to a broad range of socio-economic and environmental risks. The development of a resilient community and risk reduction heavily rely on the adoption of holistic watershed master planning whereby the adaptation options consider the risk associated with individual or multiple hydrological hazards occurring simultaneously at a specific location. Such planning approaches [...]
A Serious Gaming Framework for Decision Support on Hydrological Hazards
Published: 2020-03-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Software Engineering, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
In this study, a web-based decision support tool (DST) was developed for hydrological multi-hazard analysis while employing gamification techniques to introduce a competitive element. The serious gaming environment provides functionalities for intuitive management, visualization, and analysis of geospatial, hydrological, and economic data to help stakeholders in the decision-making process [...]
Policy Bridge: Air Quality Impacts from Oil and Natural Gas Development in Colorado
Published: 2019-12-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The rise of hydraulic fracturing techniques has fostered rapid growth of oil and natural gas extraction in areas across the United States. In the Denver-Julesburg Basin (DJB), which mostly overlaps with Weld County in the Northern Colorado Front Range (NCFR) north of the City of Denver Metropolitan Area (DMA), the well drilling has increasingly approached, and in many instances moved into urban [...]