Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Situating place-based, community-engaged watershed research at Xwulqw'selu Sta'lo'
Published: 2024-12-12
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies
Xwulqw'selu Sta'lo' is a culturally significant and salmon-bearing river facing significant challenges which Cowichan Tribes and the British Columbia Provincial Government are addressing with a first-of-its-kind watershed plan. Our research is deeply situated at Xwulqw'selu Sta'lo' and is grounded in interdisciplinary academic spheres of place-based research, water monitoring and modeling, [...]
Groundwater connected art: practicing arts-based research to enrich how hydrogeology engages people, place and other disciplines
Published: 2024-12-12
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Hydrology, Other Geography
Groundwater depletion, contamination, and governance challenges persist despite decades of groundwater research. Scientific methods are crucial yet seem insufficient to inspire the deep emotional and cultural connections needed for real change – groundwater challenges and opportunities are not reaching enough hearts and minds. This article calls for a bold shift: integrating arts-based research [...]
Doing conferences differently: a decentralised multi-hub approach for ecological and social sustainability
Published: 2024-12-11
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Conferences are invaluable for career progression, offering unique opportunities for networking, collaboration, and learning. However, there are challenges associated with the traditional in-person conference format. For example, there is a significant ecological impact from attendees’ travel behaviour, and there are social inequities in conference attendance, with historically marginalised [...]
Growing wildfire-derived PM2.5 across the contiguous U.S. and implications for air quality regulation
Published: 2024-12-09
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies
Growing wildfire activity across North America produces significant smoke, undermining efforts to regulate surface air quality and protect public health. Using surface measurements, satellites, and machine learning, we provide granular, daily estimates of smoke PM2.5 concentrations in the contiguous U.S. from 2006 to 2023, and use them to assess the implications of smoke for surface air pollution [...]
Easing population to 4 billion by 2200 would help people and nature
Published: 2024-12-06
Subjects: Environmental Studies
The past century of increases in human population and resource consumption has produced some undesirable effects, ranging from environmental degradation to climate change to political unrest. We are accustomed to seeing these dependent variables charted with time on the x-axis. But this study presents metrics of biodiversity, consumption, and pollution and their extremely strong correlations when [...]
WITHDRAWN: Green-Oriented Transition of the Manufacturing in the Digital Economy: A System Dynamics Perspective
Published: 2024-12-04
Subjects: Environmental Studies
withdrawn.
The State of Global Catastrophic Risk Research: A Bibliometric Review
Published: 2024-11-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Geography, Other Life Sciences
The global catastrophic risk (GCR) and existential risk (ER) literature focuses on analysing and preventing potential major global catastrophes including a human extinction event. Over the past two decades, the field of GCR/ER research has grown considerably. However, there has been little meta-research on the field itself. How large has this body of literature become? What topics does it cover? [...]
Carbon dioxide removal could perpetuate community-scale inequalities of U.S. air pollution in net-zero scenarios
Published: 2024-11-28
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies
Pathways to net-zero reduce GHG emissions and improve air quality, but the magnitude and distribution of these improvements will depend on specific mitigation decisions, such as the amount of carbon dioxide removals (CDR). Here, we combine a series of models and datasets to analyze community-scale PM2.5 impacts across the contiguous U.S. of net-zero scenarios with different levels of CDR. Both [...]
Exposure to compound climate hazards transmitted via global agricultural trade networks
Published: 2024-11-15
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Environmental Studies, Risk Analysis
Compound climate hazards, such as co-occurring temperature and precipitation extremes, substantially impact people and ecosystems. Internal climate variability combines with the forced global warming response to determine both the magnitude and spatial distribution of these events, and their consequences can propagate from one country to another via many pathways. We examine how exposure to [...]
Unravelling sustainable development at the sub-national scale in India
Published: 2024-11-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations
India's diverse socioeconomic landscape and environmental challenges make it a complex case for implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite India's federal structure, comprehensive research on subnational SDG progress is lacking. This study analysed progress, challenges, interlinkages, and spatial disparities in individual and grouped SDGs (environmental, social, and [...]
Livelihood Asset versus Capabilities: Pillars for Sustainable Development in Rural Households of East Wallaga zone, Southwest Ethiopia
Published: 2024-10-30
Subjects: Environmental Studies
This study investigated the relationship between livelihood assets and capabilities in rural households of East Wallaga Zone, Southwest Ethiopia, to understand how they contribute to sustainable development. The analysis, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), examined factors such as social engagement, land size, education, animal ownership, irrigation, and household size as indicators of [...]
Fluoride concentration in groundwater and relationship with the sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+) Fluoride concentration in groundwater
Published: 2024-10-19
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Groundwater is the largest freshwater reserve on the planet, and its quality plays a fundamental role in human well-being and economic development. However, it sometimes contains potentially harmful compounds, such as fluoride in high concentrations, which has led to the implementation of quality standards to ensure water potability. This study evaluates the concentrations of fluoride in [...]
Climate change projects and youth engagement: Empowerment and contested knowledge.
Published: 2024-10-19
Subjects: Environmental Studies
This study investigated youths’ empowerment through EU-funded climate change projects (CCPs) and the role that social research and public engagement have in that process. The importance of considering youth empowerment in a time of climate change is increasingly recognised. Youths are exposed to interrelated health, social, economic, and political vulnerabilities caused by climate change, but [...]
Emotional predictors of environmental policy support and opposition
Published: 2024-10-15
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Understanding the affective responses to the climate and ecological emergency is essential to the development of and compliance with mitigation and adaptation policy. Empirical evidence suggests that individuals feeling negative emotions about the state of nature and the climate are more likely to show greater support for environmental policy. This is the first study investigating which among [...]
Definitional confusion and collateral damage due to new deforestation-free trade policies
Published: 2024-10-11
Subjects: Environmental Studies
1. New policies for deforestation-free trade policies, such as the European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), critically depend on the definition of forest, as mappable land cover and/or as rights-related land use type. Areas with a high tree cover combined with agricultural use and agroforestry are excluded from the official forest definition but are not separately mapped. Based on the [...]