Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Lived Experience of Climate Change and The Impact on Health and Health Inequalities: A systematic review of qualitative studies from the UK
Published: 2023-05-12
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Climate change is one of the biggest threats to public health in the 21st century. To date little action has been undertaken globally to mitigate the risks of climate change. The aim of this systematic review is to synthesise the qualitative literature on people’s and the health care systems’ lived experiences of climate change with a focus on health and health inequalities. We employed a [...]
The complex role of local governance in facilitating property buyouts and managed retreat in response to climate hazards
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Managed retreat is an increasingly important management option for responding to the localized impacts of climate change and poses a complex governance challenge. Floodplain property buyouts represent the largest form of managed retreat currently underway in the U.S. and have been broadly studied as disaster response policy using large national datasets. Research on the local governance [...]
VIVIR BIEN: INTERCULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL APPROACH TO WATER AND POWER IN TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION
Published: 2023-04-27
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Climate change and lack of freshwater are a concern for people living in the Andean highlands, altiplano of Bolivia. The objectives of this study were to establish a culturally appropriate research approach to study water governance and to identify key political actors and engagement processes related to water governance in Bolivia. A qualitative field study was conducted in the Department of La [...]
Revisiting the Climate Narrative
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Management, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Environmental Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is chiefly tied to land stewardship. Farmers and loggers have removed the plants that, until the industrial era, kept the soil fungi alive, kept soil emissions nearby by breaking the wind, and soaked those up. The result is plumes of carbon dioxide. Putting plants back in would curb these emissions. Farmers and loggers could address biodiversity loss [...]
A two-decade analysis of the spatial and temporal variations in burnt areas across ecosystems of Zimbabwe
Published: 2023-03-31
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Understanding wildfire dynamics in space and over time is critical for wildfire control and management. In this study, fire data from MODIS (ESA/CCI/FireCCI/5_1) with ≥ 70% confidence level was used to characterise spatial and temporal variation in fire frequency in Zimbabwe between 2001 and 2020. Results showed that burnt area increased by 16% from 3,689 km2 in 2001 to 61,330km2 2011 and [...]
Understanding and Assessing Demographic (In)Equity Resulting from Extreme Heat Exposure due to Lack of Tree Canopies in Norfolk, VA using Agent-Based Modeling
Published: 2023-03-31
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability
Prolonged exposure to extreme heat can result in illness and death. In urban areas of dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat, extreme heat conditions can arise regularly and create harmful environmental exposures for residents daily during certain parts of the year. Tree canopies provide shade and help to cool the environment, making mature [...]
Nature based Solutions for flood risks: what insights do the social representations of experts provide?
Published: 2023-03-16
Subjects: Environmental Studies
In the context of intensification of flood risks, NbS propose an interesting approach to conciliate population’s protection and biodiversity. While this recently emerging concept has been the subject of numerous studies, there is still little work on this issue in social sciences. However, it is essential to understand the social representations of NbS in order to help authorities to [...]
Examining knowledge and epistemic justice in the design of nature-based solutions for water management
Published: 2023-03-15
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Over the last decade, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for water management have gained traction as triple-win options for climate action due to their ability to address social, economic, and environmental challenges. Recent developments in the literature of NbS have resulted in a body of work addressing questions about knowledge and justice. In line with these developments, this paper proposes the [...]
Levers for transformative nature-based adaptation initiatives in the Alps
Published: 2023-03-15
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Transformative adaptation is essential to face the unprecedented biodiversity and climate change crises. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) could accelerate the transformation of social-ecological systems to address climate change and biodiversity and Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) loss. However, they are not widely implemented. Understanding the drivers of decision-making context that [...]
Aquifer depletion exacerbates agricultural drought losses in the US High Plains
Published: 2023-03-10
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Aquifer depletion poses a major threat to the ability of farmers, food supply chains, and rural economies globally to use groundwater as a means of adapting to climate variability and change. Empirical research has demonstrated the large differences in drought risk exposure that exist between rainfed and irrigated croplands, but previous work commonly assumes water supply for the latter is [...]
The Digital Environmental Footprint - a holistic framework of Digital Sustainability
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
This paper examines the different ways in which the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector negatively affects the environment. To capture environmental externalities beyond the common but limited carbon footprint, a novel holistic framework of digital sustainability was created - the Digital Environmental Footprint (DEF). To apply and test the DEF, the ICT sector was evaluated [...]
The Earth4All model of human wellbeing on a finite planet towards 2100
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geography
In the following pages, we give a short introduction to a new integrated global assessment model: The Earth4All model of human wellbeing on a finite planet towards the year 2100. The Earth4All (E4A) model has evolved over a fifteen-year period and represents a summary of insights we have gained during all these years (See Appendix 1 for a list of the main publications that form the foundation for [...]
Did hydroclimate conditions contribute to the political dynamics of Majapahit? A preliminary analysis
Published: 2023-02-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Majapahit was the largest Hindu-Buddhist empire that ruled the Indonesian archipelago from the late 13th to mid-16th centuries CE. Only now there is still a lot of history surrounding the Majapahit era that has yet to be revealed. One is about how environmental factors influenced the political dynamics at that time. This study tries to discuss the influence of hydroclimate regimes using the Paleo [...]
Towards robust interdisciplinary modeling of global human-environmental dynamics
Published: 2023-02-20
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations
Real-world environmental problems are typically vast, urgent, and complex. Confronted with such problems, we are often tempted to act fast by pulling together little bits and pieces from different fields and simply adding these to pre-existing models and frameworks. Seldom, though, do we pause long enough to look whether and for how long those larger structures we build can support reliable [...]
Discounting the future: The effect of collective motivation on investment decisions and acceptance of policies for renewable energy
Published: 2023-02-10
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Previous research has mainly considered economic factors and personal psychological factors (e.g., personal pro-environmental attitudes) as determinants of investment behavior for renewable energies. However, less is known about how social identities, i.e. the human capacity to think and act as a member of a social group, can shape green investment behavior. Combining insights from economics and [...]