Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
Freshwater salinization of seasonal ponds: High salinity and stratification threaten critical, overlooked habitats
Published: 2025-02-20
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Nearly a century of road salt use in the snowbelt region of North America has led to substantial increases in salinity levels in freshwater habitats (1, 2). Salt pollution in lakes and rivers is well characterized (3, 4). Lacking are broad insights for seasonal ponds. As critical habitats for many endemic species, these small and often poorly flushed surface waters are especially vulnerable to [...]
PoMELO Passive Blind Test Results: Emissions detection and quantification
Published: 2025-02-19
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
PoMELO Passive is a technology that combines vehicle-based pollution measurements from public roads with cloud-based software to: (i) detect emissions from oil and gas sites, and (ii) quantify emissions rates. Automated attribution and plume modeling algorithms provide results with little human intervention, facilitating large scale monitoring programs. PoMELO Passive is operationally deployed at [...]
Philadelphia and the Schuylkill under extreme hydrometeorological events
Published: 2025-02-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
The Schuylkill River, a lifeline for Philadelphia, faces intensifying stress from urbanization and increasingly severe extreme hydrometeorological events (EHMEs) driven by climate change. Understanding how urban estuarine rivers respond to EHMEs remains challenging due to limited high-resolution data and the complexness of human-modified landscapes. Here, we combine long-term hydrological [...]
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 [...]
Diverging trends in nitrate and phosphorus loads and yields across Illinois watersheds, 1997–2022
Published: 2025-01-08
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Water Resource Management
Illinois is a major contributor of nutrients to the northern Gulf of Mexico. As such, the State of Illinois initiated efforts to curb nutrient runoff over the last several decades. To evaluate progress towards these reductions, water-quality data were used to estimate incremental loads and yields of nitrate plus nitrite (NO3) and total phosphorus (TP) from 1997–2022 for 49 Illinois watersheds, [...]
Sea level rise submergence simulations suggest substantial deterioration of Indian River Lagoon ecosystem services by 2050, Florida, U.S.A.
Published: 2025-01-02
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The Indian River Lagoon is a 250-km long Estuary of National Significance located along the east central Florida coast of the USA. NOAA tidal records generated at a station located in the central reaches of the estuary indicate sea level rise has accelerated over the past 20 years to an average of 9.6 ± 1.6 mm yr−1 (2003–2022) and it is expected to continue accelerating over the duration of this [...]
Site Planning for a Network of Government-operated Weather Stations in the Dominican Republic Using Zonal Statistics from Geospatial Sources, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making, and Neighborhood Analysis
Published: 2024-12-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Many weather station networks lack sufficient representativeness, and their station density is often inadequate to capture spatial and climatic variability effectively. Optimal site selection is therefore essential to enhance spatial coverage and improve data quality. This study proposes a methodology for identifying optimal sites for a meteorological station network in the Dominican Republic, [...]
Beyond land surface temperature: identifying areas of daytime thermal discomfort in cities by combining remote sensing and field measurements.
Published: 2024-12-19
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 [...]
Projecting Global Changes in Land Use and Ecosystem Services Using SEALS (Spatial Economic Allocation Landscape Simulator)
Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Spatial Science, Statistical Models
Understanding how economic systems and ecosystems interact across space is crucial to ensure societal needs are met without compromising environmental quality. Spatially explicit economic models usually describe human activities and ensuing land-use dynamics at a resolution that this is too coarse (typically 10-1000 regions) to understand how these affect many biophysical processes, including [...]
Functional regression for space-time prediction of precipitation-induced shallow landslides in South Tyrol, Italy
Published: 2024-12-10
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Statistical Models
Shallow landslides are geomorphic hazards in mountainous terrains across the globe. Their occurrence can be attributed to the interplay of static and dynamic landslide controls. In previous studies, data-driven approaches have been employed to model shallow landslides on a regional scale, focusing on analyzing the spatial aspects and time-varying conditions separately. Still, the joint assessment [...]
Efficient Carbon Dioxide and Methane Flux Monitoring in Soil Microcosms Using an Automated Chamber with a Cartesian Robot
Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
1.Accurate measurement of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) emissions from soil is crucial for understanding carbon dynamics and developing strategies to mitigate climate change. Traditional chamber techniques and soil incubation experiments each have limitations that hinder their efficiency and accuracy. This study aims to overcome these challenges by integrating automated technologies [...]
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 [...]
A decadal survey of the near-surface seismic velocity response to hydrological variations in Utah, United States
Published: 2024-11-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology
Ongoing climate change leads to an increase in prolonged drought and severe weather events in the United States, particularly pronounced in semi-arid regions such as the western United States. It could have lasting social and environmental impacts. Continuous monitoring of near-surface hydrological processes and groundwater resources will provide helpful information for effective water resource [...]
Ocean and Coastal Acidification Monitoring Priorities for the Northeast US and Eastern Canada
Published: 2024-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geochemistry, Oceanography, Planetary Geochemistry
The Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification monitoring Prioritization Plan 2024 calls for Coastal Acidification Networks to identify the ocean and coastal acidification (OCA) monitoring needs most important for their regions. The Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN) organized a webinar series to study regional needs, which culminated with a workshop in November 2023. This [...]
Automated underwater image analysis reveals sediment patterns and megafauna distribution in the tropical Atlantic
Published: 2024-10-29
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The deep sea environment comprises diverse flora, fauna and habitats, whose characterisation is key towards our collective understanding of ocean health and resilience. Whereas direct sampling allows for detailed investigation of the vertical variability of seabed characteristics at small spatial scales, optical imaging is suitable for high-resolution assessment of the spatial distribution of [...]