Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
Unveiling Year-Round Cropland Cover by Soil-Specific Spectral Unmixing of Landsat and Sentinel-2 Time Series
Published: 2024-09-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring
Croplands are essential for food security but also impact the environment, biodiversity, and climate. Understanding, monitoring, modeling, and managing these impacts require accurate, comprehensive information on cropland vegetation cover. This study aimed to continuously monitor the state and vegetative processes of cropland, focusing on the assessment of bare soil and its cover with [...]
High-resolution geophysical monitoring of moisture accumulation preceding slope movement – a path to improved early warning
Published: 2024-09-25
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology
Slope failures are an ongoing global threat leading to significant numbers of fatalities and infrastructure damage. Landslide impact on communities can be reduced using efficient early warning systems to plan mitigation measures and protect elements at risk. This manuscript presents an innovative geophysical approach to monitoring landslide dynamics, which combines Electrical Resistivity [...]
The extended Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset: Extending the GLCP to include ice, snow, and radiation-related climate variables
Published: 2024-08-27
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 [...]
How much is enough? Uncertainty aware sample mass determination of coarse-grained soils for particle size analyses
Published: 2024-08-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Probability, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Stratigraphy
Determining particle size distributions (PSD) of soils is a basic first step in many geotechnical analyses and guidance is given in different national standards. For ambiguous reasons, the recommended required minimum sample mass (m_min) for the PSD-analyses of soils with a main component of gravel or greater is always based on equations including the soil's maximum grain diameter (D_max). We [...]
An Integrated Framework for Actionable Flood Warnings on Road Structures Using High Resolution Satellite Imagery
Published: 2024-08-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Floods rank among the most devastating natural hazards globally. Unlike many other natural calamities, floods typically occur in densely populated regions, resulting in immediate and long-term adverse impacts on communities, including fatalities, injuries, health risks, and significant economic and environmental losses annually. Traditional flood models, while useful, are constrained by [...]
Sensitivities of soil respiration and heterotrophic respiration to temperature in a cool-temperate forest with sika deer-induced understory vegetation alteration
Published: 2024-08-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Soil Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Overpopulated ungulates reduce the biomass of understory vegetation and promote the expansion of unpalatable plants in world forests. These understory degradations possibly influence sensitivities of soil respiration (Rs) and heterotrophic respiration (Rh) to temperature and moisture. Here, we examined this possibility in a cool-temperate forest in southern Kyushu, Japan. At the study site, the [...]
Lidar-based snow monitoring: cable car deployment in the Austrian Alps
Published: 2024-06-26
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Water Resource Management
Traditional methods for surveying the spatial and temporal distribution of snow are often time-consuming, costly, and potentially hazardous. To address these challenges, we propose a novel approach utilizing a newly developed sensor system based on cost-effective industrial lidar sensors. This system is designed to be mounted on cable cars, enabling continuous envi- ronmental scanning during [...]
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 [...]
Detecting methane emissions from palm oil mills with airborne and spaceborne imaging spectrometers
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Water Resource Management
Methane (CH4) emissions from human activities are a major cause of global warming, necessitating effective mitigation strategies. In particular, the palm oil industry generates palm oil mill effluent (POME), which continuously emits methane into the atmosphere. Satellites are becoming a powerful tool to detect and quantify methane emissions, but there is no evidence of their ability to monitor [...]
Shifts in water supply and demand drive land cover change across Chile
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Water Resource Management
Globally, droughts are becoming longer, more frequent and more severe, and their impacts are multidimensional. The impacts of droughts typically extend beyond the water balance as they accumulate over time, and can lead to regime shifts in land use. Here, we assess the effects of temporal changes in water supply and demand on vegetation productivity and land cover change over multiple time scales [...]
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Multimodal Large Language Models in Hydrological Applications
Published: 2024-05-25
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Large Language Models (LLMs) combined with visual foundation models have demonstrated remarkable advancements, achieving a level of intelligence comparable to human capabilities. In this study, we conduct an analysis of the latest Multimodal LLMs (MLLMs), specifically Multimodal-GPT, GPT-4 Vision, Gemini and LLaVa, focusing on their application in the hydrology domain. The hydrology domain holds [...]
Land management controls on soil carbon fluxes in Asia’s largest tropical grassland
Published: 2024-05-17
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Life Sciences
Land management changes threaten the ecological functionality of grassland ecosystems worldwide, including the ability of these ecosystems to store carbon in their soils. The Banni grasslands, Asia’s largest tropical grassland, is no different in this regard. Despite being a highly biodiverse ecosystem with an extensive land use history, information on soil carbon fluxes in this ecosystem remains [...]
Spatial analysis of an elephant mass mortality event: investigating the role of cyanobacteria blooms in the Okavango's waterholes
Published: 2024-05-07
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The 2020 mass mortality of 350 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Okavango Delta, Botswana sparked global concern. These deaths have been tentatively linked to cyanotoxins in watering holes (pans), but evidence remains inconclusive. In this study, we used remote sensing in combination with spatial analysis to explore the relationship between the ecohydrology of ~3,000 pans and the [...]
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 [...]
Advancing forest aboveground biomass mapping by integrating GEDI with other Earth Observation data using a cloud computing platform: A case study of Alabama, United States
Published: 2024-04-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is a crucial indicator for monitoring carbon and requires accurate quantification. This study aimed to advance AGB estimation using open access Earth observation (EO) data and cloud computing, focusing on Alabama, USA. The specific objectives were to: (1) develop a workflow for creating a 30 m forest AGBD map with GEDI, using GEE, (2) evaluate and compare [...]