Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Structural uncertainty and uncertainty management in four common Land Use Cover Change (LUCC) model software packages. A comparison
Published: 2022-02-10
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Research on the uncertainty of Land Use Cover Change (LUCC) models is still limited. Through this paper, we aim to globally characterize the structural uncertainty of four common software packages (CA_Markov, Dinamica EGO, Land Change Modeler, Metronamica) and analyse the options that they offer for uncertainty management. The models have been compared qualitatively, based on their structures [...]
Setting up a Land Use Cover Change model application for Greater Sydney. Lessons learnt and challenges ahead
Published: 2022-02-09
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
This chapter presents a Land Use Cover Change (LUCC) model application developed for Greater Sydney. It aims to help decision making in the context of the strategic and spatial planning of Greater Sydney. To this end, the model simulates the dynamics of industrial, low density residential and medium-high density residential areas at spatial resolution of 100x100 m. A series of three Land Use [...]
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 [...]
Wildfire Smoke Exposure Worsens Learning Outcomes
Published: 2021-12-08
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Statistical Models
Wildfires have increased in frequency and severity over the past two decades, threatening to undo substantial air quality improvements. We investigate the effect of wildfire smoke exposure on learning outcomes across the US using standardized test scores from 2009-2016 for nearly 11,700 school districts and satellite-derived estimates of daily smoke exposure. Relative to a school year with no [...]
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 [...]
Flood Mitigation Data Analytics and Decision Support Framework: Iowa Middle Cedar Watershed Case Study
Published: 2021-10-23
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Risk Analysis
Flooding is one of the most frequent natural disasters, causing billions of dollars in damage and threatening vulnerable communities worldwide. Although the impact of flooding can never be diminished, minimizing future losses is possible by taking structural or non-structural mitigation actions. Mitigation applications are often costly practices. However, they can be more feasible for long-term [...]
Tidal marsh resilience to sea level rise controlled by vertical accretion and landward migration under nature-based human adaptation scenarios
Published: 2021-10-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Tidal marshes are not only lost to human disturbance but also face the threat of sea level rise (SLR). However, current earth system models used to estimate future changes in wetland extent omit wetland’s real responses to SLR without field observations. We synthesised global data on sediment accretion rate (SAR) and surface elevation change (SEC) for tidal marshes and developed a mathematical [...]
Systems-thinking for environmental policy coherence: Stakeholder knowledge, fuzzy logic, and causal reasoning
Published: 2021-10-13
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies
Environmental policies are often chosen according to physical characteristics that disregard the complex interactions between decision-makers, society, and nature. Environmental policy resistance has been identified as stemming from such complexities, yet we lack an understanding of how social and physical factors interrelate to inform policy design. The identification of synergies and trade-offs [...]
Exposures and behavioral responses to wildfire smoke
Published: 2021-10-12
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Statistical Models
The impacts of environmental change on human outcomes often depend on local exposures and behavioral responses that are challenging to observe with traditional administrative or sensor data. We show how data from private pollution sensors, cell phones, social media posts, and internet search activity yield new insights on exposures and behavioral responses during large wildfire smoke events [...]
Efficiency improvement and technology choice for energy and emission reductions of the residential sector
Published: 2021-10-11
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
The residential sector currently accounts for one fifth of global energy use and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions, largely driven by increasing demand for space heating and cooling. Climate change mitigation action requires these to reduce, but the exact decarbonization strategies and their heterogeneity is unclear. We use a regional recursive dynamic energy system model with an explicit [...]
The Impact of Neglecting Climate Change and Variability on ERCOT’s Forecasts of Electricity Demand in Texas
Published: 2021-09-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Risk Analysis
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the electric power across most of Texas. They make short-term assessments of electricity demand based on historical weather over the last decade or two, thereby ignoring the effects of climate change and the possibility of weather variability outside of the recent historical range. In this paper, we develop an empirical methodology to [...]
Safety and Belonging in the Field: A Checklist for Educators
Published: 2021-08-19
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Higher Education, Human Geography, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Outdoor Education, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Mineral Physics, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology, Remote Sensing, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Speleology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology, Water Resource Management
Ensuring taught fieldwork is a positive, generative, collective, and valuable experience for all participants requires considerations beyond course content. To guarantee safety and belonging, participants’ identities (backgrounds and protected characteristics) must be considered as a part of fieldwork planning and implementation. Furthermore, getting fieldwork right is an important step in [...]
Creating a climate changed future with the sea level rise interactive- fiction game ‘Lagos2199’
Published: 2021-07-26
Subjects: Climate, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Instructional Media Design, International and Area Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Story-based futures serve an important role in climate change scenario development. Stories are particularly useful in exploring sea level rise possibilities, since we know many coastal areas are specifically vulnerable to accelerating rises in sea level. This discrete change in coastline is different from most other climate change impacts, and offers a clear basis for scientifically-informed, [...]
Application of Probabilistic Machine Learning to the prediction of Remotely Sensed Vegetation Health
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Every prediction of the future carries some level of uncertainty; making this explicit is challenging. This paper introduces a Probabilistic Machine Learning algorithm, namely the Natural Gradient Boosting algorithm, as a modelling tool for predicting the Vegetation Health Index, a proxy for monitoring vegetation stress in response to changing weather conditions. It then elaborates on the time [...]
Projecting long-term armed conflict risk: an underappreciated field of inquiry?
Published: 2021-05-27
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Little research has been done on projecting long-term conflict risks in response to climate change. Such projections are currently neither included in the development of socioeconomic scenarios or climate change impact assessments nor part of global agenda-setting policy processes. In contrast, in other fields of inquiry, long-term projections and scenario studies are established and relevant for [...]