Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
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: 2025-04-24
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 [...]
Spatio-economic valuation of sand in the context of shoreline (in)stability in the Senegal estuary (West Africa), integrating DeltaDTM and LiDAR technology
Published: 2025-04-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Natural Resource Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Statistics and Probability
Coastal erosion is an increasing challenge in coastal management, resulting from complex interactions between geomorphological features, marine forcing, and anthropogenic interventions. The growing influence of human development and intervention on estuaries and coastal area evolution has led to a global sediment crisis, particularly in tropical or low-lying deltas (for example, Niger, Senegal, [...]
Impact of GHG mitigation measures in sanitation service chains: A focus on septic tanks and sewers
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability
Sanitation service chains (SSCs) often consist of a complex mix of different components, frequently involving the coexistence of non-sewered sanitation (e.g., septic tanks) and sewered sanitation. Poorly-maintained components within these chains can lead to substantial, yet potentially avoidable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this study, we developed a model for estimating the impact of GHG [...]
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 [...]
Climate Extremes at the City–River Interface: Insights from the Philadelphia-Schuylkill System
Published: 2025-02-07
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Hurricane Ida struck the U.S. East Coast in August 2021, pushing the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia to a record discharge nearly 100 times larger than its average flow. As one of the most severe disasters of the 21st century, Ida exemplifies the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme hydrometeorological events under climate change. Predicting urban flood pathways remains challenging due [...]
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: 2025-01-03
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 data generated at a station located in the central reaches of the estuary indicate sea level rise has accelerated over the duration of record to an average of 9.6 ± 1.6 mm year−1 (2003–2022). It is expected to continue accelerating over the duration of this [...]