Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Water Resource Management
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 [...]
Floods and Water Management in Chiang Mai and the Upper Ping catchment, Northern Thailand
Published: 2025-04-17
Subjects: Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
The city of Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand has been subject to regular major floods in the past couple of decades. In this review, we provide some background information on the hydrology of Upper Ping river catchment, the hydrogeology of the Chiang Mai – Lamphun basin, historical records of hydrological events in the area and more recent depictions of major floods. In the second part of this [...]
Assessing legacy nitrogen in groundwater using numerical models of the Long Island aquifer system, New York
Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Nitrogen transported along groundwater flow paths in coastal aquifers can contribute substantially to nitrogen loading into surface water receptors, particularly in hydrologic systems dominated by groundwater discharge. Nitrogen entrained in the aquifer is a function of land use and associated nitrogen sources at the time of groundwater recharge, which may differ considerably from present-day [...]
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 [...]
Salinas Valley Integrated Hydrologic and Reservoir Operations Models, Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties, California Pre-Print
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The area surrounding the Salinas Valley groundwater basin in Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties of California is a highly productive agricultural area, contributes significantly to the local economy, and provides a substantial portion of vegetables and other agricultural commodities to the Nation. This region of California provides about half of the Nation’s lettuce, celery, broccoli, and [...]
Nuclear Winter Could Sever Urban Water Access Across the Northern Hemisphere
Published: 2025-04-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Risk Analysis, Water Resource Management
The continuous functioning of the underground water supply networks is essential for many aspects of modern civilization. Therefore, it is essential to keep such critical infrastructure safe from disasters. However, existing risk assessment studies often assume relatively stable climate conditions. Abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios, such as those caused by a nuclear war, a large volcanic [...]
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 [...]
Global estimates of groundwater withdrawal trends and uncertainties
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Water Resource Management
Groundwater, Earth’s largest source of liquid freshwater, is essential for sustaining ecosystems and meeting societal demands. However, accurately quantifying global groundwater withdrawals remains a significant challenge due to inherent uncertainties in input data, sectoral allocation assumptions, and model parameterization. In this study, we analyze global groundwater withdrawals from 2001 to [...]
How to deal w___ missing input data
Published: 2025-03-14
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Deep learning hydrologic models have made their way from research to applications. More and more national hydrometeorological agencies, hydro power operators, and engineering consulting companies are building Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models for operational use cases. All of these efforts come across similar sets of challenges—challenges that are different from those in controlled scientific [...]
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 [...]
Flood type drives river-scale plastic deposition
Published: 2025-03-05
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Plastic pollution is considered a global environmental challenge, prompting international regulation efforts such as the UN plastic treaty to end plastic pollution. River basins, with high population densities and poor waste management, are particularly exposed to plastic pollution. Floods amplify plastic presence in rivers by mobilizing previously deposited and introduce new plastics. Yet, the [...]
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 [...]
A review of open data for studying global groundwater in social-ecological systems
Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Global data have served an integral role in characterizing large-scale groundwater systems, identifying their sustainability challenges, and informing on socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of groundwater. These insights have revealed groundwater as a dynamic component of both the water cycle and social-ecological systems, leading to an expansion in groundwater science that increasingly [...]
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 [...]