Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Natural Resources and Conservation
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 [...]
Four-Decade Analysis of Fire Behavior in the Brazilian Caatinga Biome 1985-2023
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Forest Management, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
The Caatinga, unique in northeastern Brazil, has species adapted to the semi-arid climate. Recurrent fires put its biodiversity at risk, highlighting the need for urgent measures to protect this fragile ecosystem. This study analyzed four decades of fire behavior in the Caatinga biome (1985-2023) using data from the MapBiomas Fire project and spatial analysis, revealing a worrying dynamic of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Rewetting drained boreal peatland forests does not mitigate climate warming in the 21st century
Published: 2025-02-08
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Rewetting of drained peatland forests restores ecosystem functions and improves peatland ecological status. It is also considered to mitigate climate change, yet some studies challenge this view Recently, Laine et al. (2024, Restoration Ecology, 32(7), p.e14213) considered feasible restoration outcomes of boreal forestry drained peatlands and proposed that rewetting nutrient-rich peatland forests [...]
Modeling stand-level forest attributes using lidar and Common Stand Exam data
Published: 2025-02-04
Subjects: Forest Management, Natural Resources and Conservation
Traditional forest inventories provide important information to forest managers regarding stand volume, structure, and species composition. While crucial for making informed decisions, forest inventories can be time intensive, costly, and acquisition can delay forest management actions. In some cases, publicly available and large-scale LiDAR datasets can serve as a means for assisting with or [...]
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 [...]
Delineating HCV forest areas using density analysis: it's not clear-cut
Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation
High conservation value (HCV) areas include natural habitats with high ecological, biological, social or cultural values. The use of spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify HCV areas is more cost-efficient and less time consuming that field surveys. GIS-based approaches can also be necessary for identifying HCV areas in heterogeneous landscapes where, e.g., HCV [...]
Multiregional accounting of corporate carbon emissions
Published: 2024-11-26
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Corporations routinely use environmentally-extended input-output models to estimate and report greenhouse gas emissions upstream in their supply chain. However, the most widely used of such models assume that the structure of supply chains and the emissions intensity of industries match those of a single region—usually the U.S. or the U.K. Here, we use a high-resolution multiregional input-output [...]
Harnessing nature-based solutions for economic recovery: a systematic review
Published: 2024-10-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
Nature-based solutions (NbS) involve working with nature to address societal challenges in ways that benefit communities and biodiversity locally. However, their role supporting economic recovery from crises, such as those arising from conflicts or pandemics remains underexplored. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic review of 66 reviews on the economic impact of nature-based [...]
Efficiency and heat transport processes of low-temperature aquifer thermal energy storage systems: new insights from global sensitivity analyses
Published: 2024-10-07
Subjects: Geology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) has great potential to mitigate CO2 emissions associated with the heating and cooling of buildings and offers wide applicability. Thick productive aquifer layers have been targeted first, as these are the most promising areas for ATES. Regardless, there is currently an increasing trend to target more complex aquifers such as low-transmissivity and alluvial [...]
Mapping current and future European potential vegetation to support restoration planning
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
The extent and intactness of natural ecosystems is a key factor enabling species populations to thrive. However, the distribution of ecosystems is changing owing to both climatic and anthropogenic factors. Recently negotiated European policy directives, such as the Nature Restoration Law, argue for the restoration of natural ecosystems. Yet to determine what is to be restored the range of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]