Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
Assessing the potential of the MTG-FCI geostationary mission for the detection of methane plumes
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring
The Flexible Combined Imager on the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG-FCI) provides geostationary observations over Europe and Africa, the Middle East, and parts of South America, and the surrounding waters. The FCI samples the visible, near-infrared and shortwave infrared spectral windows with a spatial resolution at nadir between 500 and 1000 m, and a 10-min temporal sampling. This configuration [...]
Extrapolation Approaches for Creating Comprehensive Operator-level Measurement-Based Methane Emissions Inventories
Published: 2025-06-07
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Measurement-based methane emissions inventories are essential for U.S. oil and natural gas operators to track their progress toward emissions targets and to demonstrate the impact of improved operational and monitoring practices. However, translating raw emission measurement data, whether from continuous monitoring systems, aerial flyovers, or operational cause analyses, into emissions [...]
High-Resolution Methane Detection with the GHGSat Constellation
Published: 2025-05-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Monitoring
GHGSat operates a constellation of small satellites designed to detect and quantify methane emissions with high sensitivity compared with existing satellite technologies. An important feature of GHGSat measurements is the high spatial resolution (~25m), which enables attribution of emissions to specific facilities and subsequent corrective action from the operator. The GHGSat constellation [...]
Mapping the health harm of Bangladeshi brick kilns
Published: 2025-05-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Bangladesh suffers from poor air quality, with brick kilns as major contributors that remain difficult to regulate. We combine remotely-sensed data, machine learning, and air-quality models to locate 9,187 clay brick kilns (2014–2024), estimating their technology, activity status, and health effects. Active kilns peaked in 2019 and have since declined by 4% annually. Kiln emissions cause [...]
The Interplay of Vegetation and Land-Atmosphere Feedbacks in Flash Drought Prediction
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Monitoring
Flash droughts, known for their rapid onset and intensification, pose a significant threat to agriculture and water resources. The 2011 Texas flash drought, with its widespread agricultural losses exceeding $7.6 billion and severe ecological consequences, was a stark demonstration of their devastating impacts. This study investigates the crucial role of vegetation in numerical modeling of flash [...]
From natural variability to flow homogenisation: how dams, water diversions, and climate change reduced seasonal flows in Australia’s Murrumbidgee River
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
River regulation and climate change have profoundly altered seasonal flow dynamics globally, with cascading ecological impacts on freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. Magnitude and timing are key components of the flow regime, connecting rivers with floodplains and driving feeding and breeding cues for aquatic organisms. We investigated the separate and combined effects of water resource [...]
Enhancing and Interpreting Deep Learning for Sea Ice Charting using the AutoICE Benchmark
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Analysis, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Oceanography
Accurate mapping of sea ice is crucial for marine navigation and monitoring climate change. Automating sea ice mapping remains challenging due to remotely-sensed signal ambiguity, the dynamic nature of sea ice, and limited field measurements. The AutoICE challenge recently introduced a benchmark to advance deep learning for sea ice mapping. Top-performing solutions used the U-Net architecture [...]
Impact of GHG mitigation measures in sanitation service chains: focusing on septic tanks and sewers
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability
Sanitation service chains (SSC) in many cities in low- and middle-income countries are complex and comprise poorly managed non-sewered and sewered sanitation technologies that emit greenhouse gases (GHG). In this study, we aimed to estimate the impact of GHG mitigation measures along SSCs where both non-sewered and sewered sanitation were widely used, and to account for the interdependencies of [...]
Enhancing the Normalized Difference Water Index for Improved Urban Flood Detection
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Accurate urban flood detection is crucial for effective disaster management and urban planning. Traditional indices like the Normalized Difference Water Index and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index often produce inaccurate results due to spectral confusion in urban areas and sensitivity to shadows. Moreover, MNDWI's reliance on the Shortwave Infrared band limits its use with certain [...]
Mercury budget in global rivers at present-day: impacts from reservoirs and dams
Published: 2025-03-14
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
Many world rivers are currently polluted by mercury (Hg) compounds, leading to the bioaccumulation of methylmercury (MeHg) in the food web, which poses potential health risks to humans. However, the riverine Hg budgets of global scale remain poorly understood due to limited observations, complicating efficient environmental governance. Here, we employ a process-driven Hg model to track its [...]
Modern Cave Monitoring Informs Interpretations of Past Climate Change: Applications to Titan Cave, Wyoming
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Speleology
Monitoring of cave environments is an essential process for deciphering records of past climate change preserved in the geochemical composition of speleothems, or mineral cave deposits. This study presents data from a multi-year monitoring effort in Titan Cave, Wyoming, a site of interest due to the abundance of speleothems suitable for paleoclimate reconstruction. Titan Cave exhibits annual cave [...]
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: 2025-02-07
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: 2025-02-01
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 [...]