Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
PHOTOMOB: AUTOMATED GIS METHOD FOR ESTIMATION OF FRACTIONAL GRAIN DYNAMICS IN GRAVEL BED RIVERS. PART 1: GRAIN SIZE
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Particle entrainment intensity is spatially and temporally variable, making it a complex phenomenon to measure. This paper is the first of a pair, in which we present an automated image processing procedure (PhotoMOB) for monitoring the mobility/stability of gravel river beds. The method is based on local comparison of the shape of the grains identified at the same coordinates between successive [...]
PhotoMOB: Automated GIS method for estimation of fractional grain dynamics in gravel bed rivers. Part 2: Bed stability and fractional mobility
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Bed mobility and stability are spatially and temporally variable, making it a complex phenomenon to study. This paper is the second of a pair, in which we present an automated image processing procedure for monitoring the mobility/stability of gravel river beds. The method is based on local comparison of the shape of the grains identified at the same coordinates between successive photos to [...]
Systematic losses in tree-canopy cover over three decades revealed by integrating complementary data sources
Published: 2023-11-02
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability
Losses and gains in canopy cover of the world’s tree canopies affect carbon stocks, species habitats, water cycles, and human livelihoods. Consistent and multi-decadal global data on tree-canopy cover dynamics are needed for modelling climate scenarios, tracking progress towards restoration targets, and diverse other research, management and policy applications. However, most data only map binary [...]
A Portable low-cost Device to Quantify Advective Gas Fluxes from Mofettes into the Lower Atmosphere: First Application to Starzach Mofettes (Germany)
Published: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In this study, we introduce a portable low-cost device for in situ gas emission measurement from focused point sources of CO2, such as mofettes. We assess the individual sensors' precision with calibration experiments and perform an independent verification of the system's ability to measure gas flow rates in the range of liters per second. The results from one week of continuous CO2 flow [...]
Pacific shoreline erosion and accretion patterns controlled by El Niño/Southern Oscillation
Published: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In the Pacific Basin, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of interannual climate variability, driving substantial changes in oceanographic forcing and impacting Pacific coastlines. Yet, how sandy coasts respond to these basin-scale changes has to date been limited to a few long-term beach monitoring sites, predominantly on developed coasts. Here we use 38 years of Landsat [...]
Pygoda: a graphical interface to efficiently visualise and explore large sets of geolocated time series
Published: 2023-10-24
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Climate, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Fresh Water Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Statistics and Probability, Spatial Science
Modern-day data sets in geosciences may comprise hundreds or thousands of geolocated time series. Despite all the automated tools and new algorithms now available to process and prepare those data before using them in research projects, it can be useful or even necessary to visualise and investigate them manually. Whether it be for data quality assessment, for the preparation of a training data [...]
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 [...]
TROPOMI/S5P sensitivity limits with respect to detection of NO2 plumes from seagoing ships
Published: 2023-09-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring
The marine shipping industry is among the strong emitters of nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- a substance harmful to ecology and human health. Monitoring of emissions from shipping is a significant societal task. Currently, the only technical possibility to observe NO2 emission from seagoing ships on a global scale is using TROPOMI data. A range of studies reported that NO2 plumes from some individual [...]
SeisMIC - an Open Source Python Toolset to Compute Velocity Changes from Ambient Seismic Noise
Published: 2023-09-01
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present SeisMIC, a fast, versatile, and adaptable open-source software to estimate seismic velocity changes from ambient seismic noise. SeisMIC includes a broad set of tools and functions to facilitate end-to-end processing of ambient noise data, from data retrieval and raw data analysis via spectrogram computation, over waveform coherence analysis, to post-processing of the final velocity [...]
A Contemporary Systematic Review of Cyberinfrastructure Systems and Applications for Flood and Drought Data Analytics and Communication
Published: 2023-08-19
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Hydrometeorological disasters, including floods and droughts, have intensified in both frequency and severity in recent years. This trend underscores the critical role of timely monitoring, accurate forecasting, and effective warning systems in facilitating proactive responses. Today's information systems offer a vast and intricate mesh of data, encompassing satellite imagery, meteorological [...]
Ecosystem restoration can lead to carbon recovery in semi-arid savanna grasslands in India
Published: 2023-08-10
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Semi-arid savanna grasslands (SG) in India deliver enormous benefits to people and nature but are currently undergoing large-scale degradation. Soil carbon stocks in degraded SGs vary in response to a host of anthropogenic driving factors including agricultural expansion and industrial development. Although there is increasing support for restoring grasslands by planting native grass species, its [...]
A deep learning approach for deriving winter wheat phenology from optical and SAR time series at field level
Published: 2023-07-13
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring
Information on crop phenology is essential when aiming to better understand the impacts of climate and climate change, management practices, and environmental conditions on agricultural production. Today’s novel optical and radar satellite data with increasing spatial and temporal resolution provide great opportunities to provide such information. However, so far, we largely lack methods that [...]
An Artificial Neural Network to Estimate the Foliar and Ground Cover Input Variables of the Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model
Published: 2023-07-12
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Soil Science
Models like the Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM) are useful for estimating soil erosion, however, they rely on input parameters that are sometimes difficult or expensive to measure. Specifically, RHEM requires information about foliar and ground cover fractions that generally must be measured in situ, which makes it difficult to use models like RHEM to produce erosion or soil risk [...]
Comprehensive evaluation of aircraft-based methane sensing for greenhouse gas mitigation
Published: 2023-06-22
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Methane is a major contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Identifying large sources of methane, particularly from the oil and gas sector, will be essential for mitigating climate change. Aircraft-based methane sensing platforms can rapidly detect and quantify methane point-source emissions across large geographic regions, playing an increasingly important role in industrial [...]
A software tool for the estimation of uncertainties and spectral error correlation in Sentinel-2 Level-2A data products
Published: 2023-06-16
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 (S2) satellite mission acquires high spatial resolution optical imagery over land and coastal areas. Delivering uncertainty estimates and spectral error correlation alongside S2 data products facilitates the constrain of retrieval algorithms, propagate further downstream the retrieval uncertainty, and finally make informed decisions to end-users. This study presents a [...]