Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
Contemporary and historical detection of small lakes using cross-sensor super resolution Landsat imagery
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Landsat is the longest-running environmental satellite program and has been used for surface water mapping of large water bodies since its launch in 1972. Remote sensing image resolution is increasingly being enhanced through single image super resolution (SR), a machine learning task typically performed by neural networks. Here, we show that a 10x SR model (Enhanced Super Resolution GAN, or [...]
The unknown fate of macroplastic in mountain rivers
Published: 2022-11-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Mountain rivers are typically seen as relatively pristine ecosystems, supporting numerous goods (e.g., water resources) for human populations living not only in the mountain regions but also downstream from them. Recent evidence suggests, however, that mountain river valleys in populated areas can be substantially polluted by macroplastic (plastic item > 5 mm). It is, however, unknown how [...]
Fisher Discriminant Analysis for Extracting Interpretable Phenological Information from Multivariate Time Series Data
Published: 2022-10-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing
For many applications in environmental remote sensing, the interpretation of a given measurement depends strongly on what time of year the measurement was taken. This is particularly the case for phenology studies concerned with identifying when plant developmental transitions occur, but it is also true for a wide range of applications including vegetation species classification, crop yield [...]
Seasonally-decomposed Sentinel-1 backscatter time-series are useful indicators of peatland wildfire vulnerability
Published: 2022-10-22
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences
Peatlands throughout the boreal forest are expected to experience changes in precipitation, evapotranspiration and temperature due to climate change. Correspondingly, changes in hydrologic regimes could lead to increased drought and occurrence of wildfire. Fire management agencies require information about near-real time wildfire vulnerability in boreal peatlands. Remote sensing tools (e.g., [...]
Geochemical mapping by unmixing alluvial sediments: An example from northern Australia
Published: 2022-10-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Natural Resource Economics, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Water Resource Management
Alluvial sediments have long been used in geochemical surveys as their compositions are assumed to be representative of areas upstream. Overbank and floodplain sediments, in particular, are increasingly used for regional to continental-scale geochemical mapping. However, during downstream transport, sediments from heterogeneous source regions are carried away from their source regions and mixed. [...]
Source location and wavefield characterization of river-induced seismic tremor
Published: 2022-09-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
River-induced seismic signal (tremor) recorded by deploying seismic stations close to the river can be used to obtain the flow characteristics of rivers indirectly. This task becomes challenging when the tremor is contaminated by strong cultural noise. We conducted an experiment next to Avoca River, County Wicklow, Ireland. We locate and characterize the river-induced tremor by combining the [...]
Locating Flowing Conduits in Karst Using Amplitude-based Passive Seismic Location Method
Published: 2022-09-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The aim of this study is to develop methods for directly detecting energetic groundwater flow in sub-surface conduits through passive seismic applications, by detecting the small ground vibrations (seismic microtremor) that flowing water in the sub-surface may generate. This is in contrast to the current ‘traditional’ approach of attempting to actively image the conduits using geophysical and [...]
Köppen meets Neural Network: Revision of the Köppen Climate Classification by Neural Networks
Published: 2022-08-23
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Categorical Data Analysis, Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Multivariate Analysis
Climate change and development of data-oriented methods are appealing for new climate classification schemes. Based on the most widely used Köppen-Geiger scheme, this article proposes a neural network based climate classification method from a data science perspective. In conventional schemes, empirically handcrafted rules are used to divide climate data into climate types, resulting in certain [...]
Improved estimation of phytoplankton abundance and fine-scale water quality features via simultaneous discrete and semi-continuous surveys
Published: 2022-08-06
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography, Water Resource Management
The abundance and distribution of phytoplankton is driven by light and nutrient availability which in turn is controlled by larger-scale regional processes such as climatic variability and global teleconnections. However, such estimates are largely built on evidence gathered from coarse (on the order of kilometers), discrete grab sampling networks where the overall set of measured parameters is [...]
Hybrid Machine Learning for Integrating Pedological Knowledge into Digital Soil Mapping to Advance Next-Generation Earth System Models
Published: 2022-07-22
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Soil Science, Statistical Models
Land surface and Earth System models require reliable soil maps to represent the influence of spatial variability of soil properties on ecosystem fluxes and storages. However, mapping soils using conventional in situ survey protocols is time-consuming and costly. We addressed the outdated spatial information on soil physico-chemical properties for a tropical region with a ~700-km longitudinal [...]
A Technical Overview of the North Carolina ECONet
Published: 2022-07-20
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Plant Sciences
Regional weather networks–also referred to as mesonets–are imperative for filling in the spatial and temporal data gaps between nationally supported weather stations. The North Carolina Environment and Climate Observing Network (ECONet) fills this regional role; it is a mesoscale network of 44 (as of 2023) automated stations collecting 12 environmental variables every minute across North [...]
Developing seagrass index for long term monitoring of Zostera japonica seagrass bed: a case study in Yellow River Delta, China
Published: 2022-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Seagrass beds offer unique and vital ecological services as an important blue carbon ecosystem in coastal wetlands. Zostera japonica is an intertidal seagrass species native to eastern Asia and is one of the most widely distributed seagrass species in China. However, little is known on the long-term variations of Z. japonica extents. Automatic mapping method for Z. japonica seagrass beds is in [...]
Towards Robust River Plastic Detection: Combining Lab and Field-based Hyperspectral Imagery
Published: 2022-06-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Statistical Models
Plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems has increased dramatically in the last five decades, with strong impacts on human and aquatic life. Recent studies endorse the need for innovative approaches to monitor the presence, abundance, and types of plastic in these ecosystems. One approach gaining rapid traction is the use of multi- and hyperspectral cameras. However, most experiments using this [...]
Robust Probabilities of Detection and Quantification Uncertainty for Aerial Methane Detection: Examples for Three Airborne Technologies
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Mechanical Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Thorough characterization of probabilities of detection (POD) and quantification uncertainties is fundamentally important to understand the place of aerial measurement technologies in alternative means of emission limitation (AMEL) or alternate fugitive emissions management programs (Alt-FEMP); monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) efforts; and surveys designed to support [...]
Contemporary Remote Sensing Tools for Integrated Assessment and Conservation Planning of Ice-free Antarctica
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Remote Sensing
Monitoring and understanding Antarctica is critical for conservation of its values. Remote sensing has been increasingly employed to observe large areas at higher frequency than traditional monitoring methods, enabling systematic assessments at low cost. However, currently there are limitations in the ability of the available remote sensing tools to answer the most pressing scientific, [...]