Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
A systematic review of the state of knowledge on environment and the Belt and Road Initiative
Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a China-led global initiative that was officially launched in 2013. The wealth of research available on the BRI has been subject to few comprehensive reviews to date, reviews including both English and Chinese language research are even rarer still. In addition, many of the projects associated with the BRI involve infrastructure development, power generation [...]
Drivers of fire regimes in the Brazilian Amazon from 2011-2020
Published: 2022-10-18
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Over the last decade, carbon emissions due to forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon, linked mainly to logging and wildfires, became larger than carbon emissions due to deforestation. Climatic and ecological processes affect the landscape’s flammability, while socio-economic processes influence the use of fire for deforestation and agricultural land management. However, a comprehensive [...]
Fighting symptom or root cause? - The need for shifting the focus in climate politics from greenhouse gases to environmental protection
Published: 2022-08-16
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
Addressing the environmental crisis requires a substantial change of our current lifestyle. Yet, in media coverage and political communication, climate change has taken the lead over other aspects such as biodiversity loss and one may sometimes get the impression that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is fighting the root cause itself. The atmosphere, however, does not respond linearly to our [...]
Consumption Ozone-Depleting Substances Impact in Central American GDAP: An Input Oriented Malmquist DEA Index
Published: 2022-08-15
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This study measures the impact of consumption Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS) on the Gross Domestic Agricultural Product (GDAP) of the Central American Countries. The methodology used is a non-parametric program under Data Envelopment Analyze (DEA) with the Malmquist indices methods. The DEA methodology permits defining the technology bound or performance. It discomposes the total factor [...]
Notes from the Oil Patch: Planning for a Worker-Focused Transition in the Oil and Gas Industry
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Engineering
The energy transition portends major disruption to livelihoods of oil and gas workers and communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry. Managing this transition smoothly will require coordinated policy planning, community and place-based incentives, and structural reforms and support structures that carefully map the skills of the worker to opportunities in the clean energy economy.
Gender Equity in Oceanography
Published: 2022-05-20
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Gender equity, providing for full participation of people of all genders in the oceanographic workforce, is an important goal for the continued success of the oceanographic enterprise. Here we describe historical obstructions to gender equity, assess recent progress and the current status of gender equity in oceanography by examining quantitative measures of participation, achievement, and [...]
Centering Equity in the Nation's Weather, Water and Climate Services
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Water, weather, and climate affect everyone. However, their impacts on various communities can be very different based on who has access to essential services and environmental knowledge. At the same time, structural discrimination, including racism and other forms of privileging and exclusion, affects people's lives and health, with ripples across all sectors of society. In the United States, [...]
Global biomass fires and infant mortality
Published: 2022-04-16
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Global outdoor biomass burning is a major contributor to air pollution, especially in low and middle-income countries. Recent years have witnessed substantial changes in the extent of biomass burning, including large declines in Africa. However, direct evidence on the contribution of biomass burning to global health outcomes remains limited. Here we use georeferenced data on more than 2 million [...]
Place-level urban-rural indices for the United States from 1930 to 2018
Published: 2022-02-28
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Rural-urban classifications are essential for analyzing geographic, demographic, environmental, and social processes across the rural-urban continuum. Most existing classifications are, however, only available at relatively aggregated spatial scales, such as at the county scale in the United States. The absence of rurality or urbanness measures at high spatial resolution poses significant [...]
Estimating a social cost of carbon for global energy consumption
Published: 2022-02-09
Subjects: Oil, Gas, and Energy, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Estimates of global economic damage caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can inform climate policy. The social cost of carbon (SCC) quantifies these damages by characterizing how additional CO2 emissions today impact future economic outcomes through altering the climate. Previous estimates suggest that large, warming-driven increases in energy expenditures could dominate the SCC, but they [...]
A scalable framework for quantifying field-level agricultural carbon outcomes
Published: 2022-01-01
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Agriculture contributes nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is motivating interest in certain farming practices that have the potential to reduce GHG emissions or sequester carbon in soil. The related GHG emission (including N2O and CH4) and changes in soil carbon stock are defined here as “agricultural carbon outcomes”. Accurate quantification of agricultural carbon [...]
Unusual Suspects: “Allies in the Park, Are Closer Than They Appear”
Published: 2021-12-06
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
One season, 1039 hours, as a Park Ranger at Mesa Verde National Park. Interps we are called, observing, telling stories, being stewards of the past, present and future of wildness. Wildness in the animal world is reserved to only 4% of the planets millions of animals, Wildness is why people come to the National Parks, they are the last stronghold of beauty that bears presence in each of our [...]
Optimizing nature-based solutions by combining social equity, hydro-environmental performance, and economic costs through a novel Gini coefficient
Published: 2021-11-15
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Engineering
A robust multi-functional framework for widespread planning of nature-based solutions (NBS) must incorporate components of social equity and hydro-environmental performance in a cost-effective manner. NBS systems address stormwater mitigation by increasing on-site infiltration and evaporation through enhanced greenspace while also improving various components of societal well-being, such as [...]
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities Under SSP/RCP Scenarios, 1990 to 2100
Published: 2021-10-28
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Projections of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are critical to better understanding and anticipating future climate change under different socio-economic conditions and mitigation strategies. The climate projections and scenarios assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, following the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP)-Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) framework, have [...]
Forest data to insights and experiences using gamification
Published: 2021-10-22
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences