Preprints
There are 5494 Preprints listed.
An occurrence of radially-symmetric sedimentary structures in the basal Ediacaran cap dolostone (Keilberg Member) of the Otavi Group
Published: 2021-06-02
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Snowball Earth cap carbonate sequences provide an archive of what are likely the most dramatic climate transitions in all of Earth history. One approach to gain insight into these events is the detailed observation of sedimentary structures within these post-glacial units. Here, we report on newly discovered radially-symmetric sedimentary structures within the Keilberg Member post-Marinoan ‘cap [...]
Canadian emissions and unconventional oil production exceed the 2°C global warming scenario
Published: 2021-06-02
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Canada could highly impact the climate, as it possesses the world’s third largest resources of unconventional oil. This paper evaluates in three ways whether Canada is respecting a scenario of fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limiting warming to 2.0 °C by 2100. Firstly, McGlade and Ekins (2015) proposed a model providing production budgets for each fossil fuel producing [...]
Publication pressure threatens the integrity of palaeontological research
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Paleobiology, Paleontology
Publications are the de facto currency of academia. Academics, palaeontologists included, are often judged by publication metrics, which usually include the impact factor of the journal in which they publish, the number of publications and the number of citations. However, in the race to publish in high-impact journals and the pressure to increase research productivity, sometimes corners are cut, [...]
Hydrology Research Articles are Becoming More Topically Diverse
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to assess topic diversity in all research articles (∼75,000) from eighteen water science and hydrology journals published between 1991 and 2019. We found that individual water science and hydrology research articles are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary in the sense that, on average, the number of equally-common topics represented in individual [...]
Ductile deformation during carbonation of serpentinized peridotite
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Geology
Carbonated serpentinites (listvenites) in the Oman Ophiolite record mineralization of several GT of CO2, but the mechanisms providing permeability for continued reactive fluid flow are unclear. Samples of the Oman Drilling Project show that listvenites with a penetrative foliation have abundant microstructures related to crystal growth and indicate that the carbonation reaction occurred during [...]
A field guide for monitoring riverine macroplastic entrapment in water hyacinths
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Remote Sensing
River plastic pollution is an environmental challenge of growing concern. However, there are still many unknowns related to the principal drivers of river plastic transport. Floating aquatic vegetation, such as water hyacinths, have been found to aggregate and carry large amounts of plastic debris in tropical river systems. Monitoring the entrapment of plastics in hyacinths is therefore crucial [...]
Iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) deposits – A review (part 1): Settings, mineralogy, ore geochemistry and classification
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Characteristics of ten of the world’s metallogenic provinces hosting iron oxide Cu-Au (IOCG) deposits have been critically assessed, including their geological and tectonothermal evolution, alteration-mineralisation parageneses, and ore geochemistry. A new classification framework is proposed in which IOCG deposits form the major part of a family of deposits within Cu-Au-Fe (CGI) mineral systems. [...]
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 [...]
Tectonic Studies Group Equality Diversity and Inclusion report 2021
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Tectonics and Structure
In 2021, the TSG Annual Meeting was held online due to the coronavirus pandemic. To build on our 2019 gender diversity report, we wanted to begin gathering diversity data proactively and anonymously. This will enable us to be more inclusive of marginalised genders, avoid mis-gendering participants and to collect a wider range of diversity data. We ran a survey of the presenters and session chairs [...]
European carbon storage resource requirements of climate change mitigation targets
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
As a part of climate change mitigation plans in Europe, CO2 storage scenarios have been reported for the United Kingdom and the European Union with injection rates reaching 75 – 330 MtCO2 yr-1 by 2050. However, these plans are not constrained by geological properties or growth rates with precedent in the hydrocarbon industry. We use logistic models to identify growth trajectories and the [...]
Novel sensor array helps to understand submarine cable faults off West Africa
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seabed telecommunication cables can be damaged or broken by powerful seafloor flows of sediment (called turbidity currents), which may runout for hundreds of kilometres into the deep ocean. These flows have the potential to affect multiple cables near-simultaneously over very large areas, so it is more challenging to reroute traffic or repair the cables. However, cable-breaking turbidity currents [...]
Flood Markup Language – A Standards-based Exchange Language for Flood Risk Communication
Published: 2021-05-28
Subjects: Engineering
Flooding is one of the most common natural disasters. There are extensive amounts of studies on understanding and predicting flooding to support preparedness and response. It is critical to share and communicate flood forecasting and modeling datasets generated by different systems and organizations. Most of the organizations share flood risk data for operational purposes with limited metadata [...]
Deep-water syn-rift stratigraphy as archives of Early-Mid Pleistocene palaeoenvironmental signals and controls on sediment delivery
Published: 2021-05-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
The timing and character of coarse siliciclastic sediment delivered to deep-water environments in active rift basins is governed by the complicated interactions of tectonics, climate, eustasy, hinterland geology, and shelf process regime. The stratigraphic archives of deep-water syn-rift basin-fills provide records of palaeoenvironmental changes (e.g. climate and vegetation) in onshore [...]
Quantifying the influence of conduit inclination on Taylor Bubble behaviour in basaltic magmas.
Published: 2021-05-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
The ascent of single Taylor bubbles suspended in a range of Newtonian liquids, scaled to mimic basaltic magmas, within vertical and inclined tubes has been studied experimentally over the range 0° to 70° (where 0° is vertical and 90° is horizontal). Using measurements of Taylor bubble parameters (ascent velocity and film thickness) and morphology, alongside dimensionless numbers, we show that [...]
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 [...]