Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Natural Resources Management and Policy
Agri-food corporations’ role in water sustainability and water resilience of global supply chains
Published: 2025-05-23
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Agriculture is both a major contributor to water scarcity and highly vulnerable to it. The agri-food sector accounts for approximately 70% of global human water abstraction and 90% of water consumption, with irrigation practices leading to detrimental effects such as reduced streamflow, groundwater depletion, and environmental degradation. As water stress impacts crop and livestock productivity, [...]
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 [...]
Assessing the effectiveness of irrigator-driven groundwater conservation programs to drought: a case study of the northwestern Kansas Local Enhanced Management Areas
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater pumping for irrigation has led to significant decreases in groundwater levels in agricultural areas around the world, including the U.S. High Plains Aquifer. Here, we used a process-based corn and sorghum crop model, AquaCrop, to assess the effectiveness of different irrigation management strategies during a synthetic multi-year drought. We focused on the Groundwater Management [...]
Catastrophic “Hyperclustering” and Recurrent Losses: Diagnosing U.S. Flood Insurance Insolvency Triggers
Published: 2025-03-28
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Risk Analysis, Systems Engineering
Although a cornerstone of U.S. flood risk preparedness since 1968, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), is burdened by insolvency. Despite pricing and risk assessment reforms, systemic failures persist, resulting in accumulation of billions in federal debt. This study presents an interdisciplinary framework integrating qualitative synthesis, unsupervised machine learning, and game theory [...]
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 [...]
Rewetting drained boreal peatland forests does not mitigate climate warming in the 21st century
Published: 2025-02-07
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Rewetting of drained peatland forests restores ecosystem functions and improves peatland ecological status. It is also considered to mitigate climate change, yet some studies challenge this view Recently, Laine et al. (2024, Restoration Ecology, 32(7), p.e14213) considered feasible restoration outcomes of boreal forestry drained peatlands and proposed that rewetting nutrient-rich peatland forests [...]
Sea level rise submergence simulations suggest substantial deterioration of Indian River Lagoon ecosystem services by 2050, Florida, U.S.A.
Published: 2025-01-02
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 [...]
Exploring coastal climate adaptation through storylines: Insights from Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique
Published: 2024-06-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Coastal settlements, facing increasing flood risk from Tropical Cyclones (TCs) under climate change, need local and detailed climate information for effective adaptation. Analysis of historical events and their impacts provides such information. This study uses storylines to evaluate adaptation strategies, focusing on Cyclone Idai’s impact on Beira, Mozambique, under different climate [...]
LAND-USE REQUIREMENTS OF SOLAR AND WIND POWER
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Rising shares of wind power and solar power in energy systems raises concerns over their land-use requirements (LURs) and associated impacts. Although abundant literature is available on LURs of solar and wind power, existing estimates exhibit a large variance, if not even inconsistency. This systematic review therefore evaluates published LURs for these technologies in the English scientific [...]
UMIS: An Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System for Water Quality Resources in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Systems and Communications, Water Resource Management
The Upper Mississippi Information System (UMIS) is a cyberinfrastructure framework designed to support large-scale real-time water quality data integration, analysis, and visualization for the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). UMIS is intended to directly address three of the Grand Challenges for Engineering including: 1) understanding access to clean drinking water, 2) management of the [...]
A Deep Learning framework to map riverbed sand mining budgets in large tropical deltas
Published: 2023-10-19
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 [...]
Mapping the Landscape of Water and Society Research: Promising Combinations of Compatible and Complementary Disciplines
Published: 2023-10-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) [...]
Understanding Europe’s forest harvesting regimes
Published: 2023-08-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations
The functioning and structure of most European forests are actively shaped by intensive human use. Harvesting of wood is one of the key processes of forest management, making it a crucial element to include in any large-scale analysis of forest ecosystems. Yet, our understanding of how forests are harvested across Europe is limited, as the true harvest regimes – a realisation of decisions made by [...]
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 [...]
Spatial optimality and temporal variability in Australia's wind resource
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Climate, Natural Resources Management and Policy
To meet electricity demand using renewable energy supply, wind farm locations should be chosen to minimise variability in output, especially at night when solar photovoltaics cannot be relied upon. Wind farm location must balance grid-proximity, resource potential, and wind correlation between farms. A top-down planning approach for farm locations can mitigate demand unmet by wind supply, yet the [...]