Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Inequities in Indoor Exposure to Wildfire-Related PM2.5 Across the Contiguous United States
Published: 2025-04-04
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Exposure to wildfire smoke has been recognized as a major public health concern, but existing studies have focused on outdoor air, despite the fact that most people spend the majority of their time indoors, especially during wildfires. Here, we estimated indoor wildfire-related fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations across 72,537 census tracts in the contiguous United States for the year [...]
Unprecedented Social-Ecological Impacts of the 2023 Extreme Drought in the Central Amazon
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While the 2023 record-breaking drought led to widespread social-ecological impacts across Amazonia, local impacts of such extreme events are rarely described in detail. Here we leverage a large interdisciplinary data collection related to social and ecological impacts in the Central Amazon. Compound hazards (reduced river water levels, lack of rainfall, high water/air temperatures, river erosion [...]
Anticipatory skill and structural biases of a major global risk assessment
Published: 2025-03-19
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Calls to navigate the global polycrisis have multiplied, yet one of the most visible systemic risk assessments—the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Reports (GRRs)—has not been evaluated, particularly with regard to their predictive value. We analyse all GRRs from 2006–2024 by reconstructing and comparing survey-based risk likelihoods with a multi-decadal database of national shocks, and by [...]
From Rainfall to Rumors: Interpreting the 2024 Bangladesh Floods Through Numbers, Narratives, and Information Gaps
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
When severe floods struck southeastern Bangladesh in August 2024, competing explanationsemerged. Meteorological analysis revealed that extreme precipitation was exacerbated by the Madden‐JulianOscillation and jet stream dynamics. However, alternative narratives proliferated on social media, particularlyclaims that India deliberately released water from upstream dams. This study synthesizes [...]
Aligning science, rulemaking, and practice to strengthen carbon crediting
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Results-based climate finance mobilizes private capital for climate mitigation by paying for verified outcomes [1]. Multiple independent evaluations have shown that credited reductions routinely overstate actual ones—by 3x to 14x across sectors [2–8]—but understanding of why or what to do about it is highly variable. To guide effective policy response, we develop a framework that decomposes the [...]
Thirty Years of the Open Geospatial Consortium - History, Present, and Future
Published: 2025-02-22
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
For 30 years, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has advanced geospatial interoperability through continuous innovation. The OGC provides strategies and Standards that promote adoption, increase efficiencies, create new opportunities, and transform our relationship with the dynamic planet we inhabit. It has fostered global collaborations among companies, governments, academic institutions, and [...]
Managing Smoke Risk from Wildland Fires: Northern California as a Case Study
Published: 2025-02-10
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from increasing wildfires in the western United States threatens public health. While land managers often prioritize reducing wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface, the impact on regional air quality from mitigating wildfire spread is less explored. We develop a framework to quantify wildfire contributions to smoke exposure and assess targeted land [...]
Philanthropy’s Role in Supporting Community-Level Climate Action in Atlantic Canada: Opportunities and Challenges
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
This review explores how philanthropy contributes to climate action in Atlantic Canada, a region facing threats from extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and scarcity of resources that impact local communities. While public and private sector funding is vital, philanthropy offers unique opportunities to support localized, innovative climate solutions. This review explores the current [...]
Exploring the Impact of Climate Change on Community Sustainability in Atlantic Canada: A Transdisciplinary Approach
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Education, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This paper examines the significant impacts of climate change on community sustainability in Atlantic Canada, particularly for vulnerable populations. Rising temperatures and sea levels threaten livelihoods, infrastructure, and ecosystems, necessitating a transformative approach to avoid maladaptation. Current strategies primarily rooted in natural sciences and economic models lack the [...]
XAI and Sustainability: Unifying Regulatory Standards and Solutions for the Future of Environmental Management
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
This study explores the integration of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) into environmental governance, addressing critical challenges in transparency, public trust and regulatory compliance. As AI technologies increasingly influence decision-making in environmental management, ensuring equitable and ethical practices has become paramount. By examining key regulatory frameworks, including [...]
ml4xcube: Machine Learning Toolkits for Earth System Data Cubes
Published: 2024-10-09
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Computer Engineering, Engineering, Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Rapidly changing climate conditions and the increase in extreme events are posing severe challenges to human life and infrastructure, requiring sophisticated analytical capabilities for hazard prediction and disaster risk management. Earth System Data Cubes (ESDCs) have become an essential tool in Earth System Sciences (ESS) by organizing large-scale, multivariate environmental datasets into a [...]
Dynamics of the polycrisis: temporal trends, spatial distribution and co-occurrences of national shocks (1970-2019)
Published: 2024-09-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Polycrisis has emerged as a new property of the Anthropocene. Although sector-specific studies offer insights into the changing frequency and intensity of these disruptions, a comprehensive analysis remains absent, limiting a more integrated understanding of the polycrisis phenomenon. Addressing this gap, we develop and analyse a harmonized database capturing the occurrence of six categories of [...]
Private protected areas exhibit greater bias towards unproductive land compared to public protected areas
Published: 2024-09-13
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Globally, private protected areas (PPAs) have become an important tool for biodiversity conservation. While they are expanding in size and number, there is limited evidence on their potential impact on avoiding biodiversity loss, and how this impact compares to the public protected areas (PAs). The impact of protection is measured as the actual biodiversity outcome within the area protected [...]
Heatwaves and Hostilities - Can rising temperatures lead to lasting peace?
Published: 2024-09-13
Subjects: Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, International and Area Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In this paper, we are going to explore the complex relationship between climate change and global peace. Climate change and wars have a reciprocal relationship. As the war fuels climate change, the latter can catalyze the war too. Through the analysis of the ongoing conflicts across the world, recent technological advancements, and the globalized nature of the world, we will review different [...]
Envisioning nature positive futures for Europe: Inspiring transformative change at the biodiversity nexus
Published: 2024-09-06
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Transformative change is required to secure a liveable future for people and nature. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool to facilitate the creation of plural visions of nature positive futures that help build shared motivation for transformative change. Integrating nexus approaches with the NFF leverages the foundational role of biodiversity in supporting desirable outcomes [...]