Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Water Resource Management
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: 2025-01-02
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 records generated at a station located in the central reaches of the estuary indicate sea level rise has accelerated over the past 20 years to an average of 9.6 ± 1.6 mm yr−1 (2003–2022) and it is expected to continue accelerating over the duration of this [...]
A Conversational Intelligent Assistant for Enhanced Operational Support in Floodplain Management with Multimodal Data
Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Floodplain management is crucial for mitigating flood risks and enhancing community resilience, yet floodplain managers often face significant challenges, including the complexity of data analysis, regulatory compliance, and effective communication with diverse stakeholders. This study introduces Floodplain Manager AI, an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) based virtual assistant designed to [...]
Effective permeability of fluvial lithofacies in the Bunter Sandstone Formation, UK
Published: 2024-11-29
Subjects: Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Understanding effective permeability is crucial for predicting fluid migration and trapping in subsurface reservoirs. The Bunter Sandstone of North-West Europe hosts major groundwater and geothermal resources and is targeted for CO2 and hydrogen storage projects. Here the effective permeability of fluvial facies within the Bunter Sandstone Formation was assessed using facies-scale models. Twelve [...]
Flood Resilience Assessment of Interconnected Critical Infrastructures
Published: 2024-11-07
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis, Systems Engineering, Water Resource Management
Undertaking systemic risk assessments of critical infrastructures (CIs) is necessary to improve understanding, mitigate impacts, and increase resilience to cascading effects of intensifying hydrometeorological hazards. This paper presents a novel quantitative approach for simulating local physical interdependencies between multiple infrastructure sectors that may be disrupted by floods. [...]
Rising Temperatures Increase Risk of Soil Salinity and Land Degradation in Water-Scarce Regions
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Soil Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Climate change introduces significant uncertainty when assessing the risk of soil salinity in water-scarce regions. We combine a soil-water-salinity-sodicity model (SOTE) and a weather generator model (AWE-GEN) to develop a framework for studying salinity and sodicity dynamics under changing climate definitions. Using California’s San Joaquin Valley as a case study, we perform first-order [...]
Potential effects of coagulation processes on phytoplankton mortality in the Elbe estuary from a Lagrangian point of view
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Oceanography, Water Resource Management
Within the Elbe estuary, a sudden change in depth occurs when the river enters the shipping channel in the Port of Hamburg. This change in depth correlates with a sharp decline in phytoplankton concentrations. This decline affects the estuarine food web and shifts the ecosystem from autotrophic to heterotrophic during the summer months. Previous studies have hypothesized that this collapse is [...]
Prediction of the daily spatial variation of stem water potential in cherry orchards using weather and Sentinel-2 data
Published: 2024-10-11
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
The common practice for irrigation management is to apply the water lost by evapotranspiration. However, we could manage the irrigation by monitoring the plant's water status by measuring the stem water potential (Ψs), which is currently costly and time-consuming. The primary goal of this work is to predict the daily spatial variation of Ψs using machine learning models. We measured Ψs in two [...]
The extended Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset: Extending the GLCP to include ice, snow, and radiation-related climate variables
Published: 2024-08-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
A changing climate and increasing human population necessitate understanding global freshwater availability. To enable assessment of lake water variability from local-to-global and monthly-to-decadal scales, we extended the Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset, which contains monthly lake surface area for 1.42 million lakes with paired basin-level climate and population data [...]
On weighted ensembles of streamflow: bias correct separately and prefer constrained weights for more reliable and predictable outputs
Published: 2024-08-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Statistical Models, Water Resource Management
It has become more and more common in hydrology to consider multiple estimates of hydrological variables – ensembles – over single model runs. Ensemble members represent different realisations of various model structures, input data, and/or parametrisations. Improved predictions can be made using weighted ensembles with wide variety of model averaging methods found in the literature, but only a [...]
Lidar-based snow monitoring: cable car deployment in the Austrian Alps
Published: 2024-06-26
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Water Resource Management
Traditional methods for surveying the spatial and temporal distribution of snow are often time-consuming, costly, and potentially hazardous. To address these challenges, we propose a novel approach utilizing a newly developed sensor system based on cost-effective industrial lidar sensors. This system is designed to be mounted on cable cars, enabling continuous envi- ronmental scanning during [...]
Detecting methane emissions from palm oil mills with airborne and spaceborne imaging spectrometers
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Water Resource Management
Methane (CH4) emissions from human activities are a major cause of global warming, necessitating effective mitigation strategies. In particular, the palm oil industry generates palm oil mill effluent (POME), which continuously emits methane into the atmosphere. Satellites are becoming a powerful tool to detect and quantify methane emissions, but there is no evidence of their ability to monitor [...]
Shifts in water supply and demand shape land cover change across Chile
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Water Resource Management
Globally, droughts are becoming longer, more frequent, and more severe, and their impacts are multidimensional. These impacts typically extend beyond the water balance, as long-term, cumulative changes in the water balance can lead to regime shifts in land cover. Here, we assess the effects of temporal changes in water supply and demand over multiple time scales on vegetation productivity and [...]