Preprints
There are 5932 Preprints listed.
Desiccation of the Transboundary Hamun Lakes between Iran and Afghanistan in Response to Hyro-climatic Droughts and Anthropogenic Activities
Published: 2021-10-13
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
This paper investigates the hydro-climatic reasons behind the desiccation of the Hamun Lakes in the Iran-Afghanistan border. We analyzed changes in the flow of the Hirmand River (90 percent of the total inflow to the lakes) at the international border, and precipitation over this river’s sub-basin during 1960-2016 by calculating standardized indices for precipitation (SPI) and discharge (SDI). We [...]
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 [...]
Sand-capping stabilizes muddy sediment and improves benthic light conditions in eutrophic estuaries: laboratory verification and the potential for recovery of eelgrass (Zostera marina)
Published: 2021-10-12
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Decades of eutrophication have increased water turbidity in Danish estuaries and led to light limitation of eelgrass (Zostera marina) growth. Former eelgrass areas are now denuded and consist of organic-rich muddy sediment with frequent resuspension events that maintain a high turbidity state. In addition, low anchoring capacity of eelgrass in the soft organic-rich sediments has contributed to [...]
A rapid sedimentary response to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum hydrological change: new data from alluvial units of the Tremp-Graus Basin (Spanish Pyrenees)
Published: 2021-10-12
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A massive emission of light carbon about 56 Ma ago, recorded in marine and terrestrial sediments by a negative carbon isotope excursion (CIE), caused a short-lived (~170 kyr) global warming event known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The core of this event is represented in the south Pyrenean Tremp-Graus Basin by two successive alluvial units, the Claret Conglomerate (CC) and the [...]
Sedimentary response to current and nutrient regime rearrangement in the Eastern Mediterranean Realm during the early to middle Miocene (southwestern Cyprus)
Published: 2021-10-12
Subjects: Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
During the early and middle Miocene, the Mediterranean had become a restricted marginal marine sea with diminishing and ultimate loss of connectivity to the Indian Ocean. This dramatically changed the heat, energy, freshwater and nutrient budgets across the Mediterranean and most notably in its eastern basin. While one of the most prominent lines of evidence of this change in the Eastern [...]
In-situ hydrogen wettability characterisation for Underground Hydrogen Storage
Published: 2021-10-12
Subjects: Engineering
Hydrogen storage in subsurface aquifers or depleted gas reservoirs represents a viable seasonal and/or long-term energy storage solution. However, currently, there is a scarcity of subsurface petrophysical data for the hydrogen system, limiting modelling work and industrial rollout. In this work, we address the knowledge gap by determining the wettability and Interfacial Tension (IFT) of the [...]
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 Challenge of Spatial Information Accessibility for Agricultural Policies: Case of Pakistan
Published: 2021-10-11
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Databases and Information Systems, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Agriculture is directly linked to the socioeconomic development of every region. Agriculture impacts us all, whether we are seeking food security, better health or striving to conserve natural resources. Goal 2 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) underlines the significance of agriculture as a means to achieve food security. United Nations in its recently published report titled "World [...]
Deadly Heat Exposure in an Urbanized World
Published: 2021-10-11
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Sustainability
Climate-change exposes an increasing share of the world population to potentially lethal heat, a threat accentuated by rapid urbanization. Here, we project occurrence of future deadly heat for urban agglomerations around the world until 2080 by using CMIP6 climate model projections of temperature and relative humidity, urbanization prospects and GDP projections from the SSP scenarios. We show [...]
The 2021 SSP scenarios of the IMAGE 3.2 model
Published: 2021-10-11
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The SSP (Shared Socio-economic Pathways) scenarios are intensively used in climate and environmental research to explore uncertain future developments and possible response strategies. This paper briefly describes an update of the SSP scenarios generated by the IMAGE 3.2 model. The paper presents the changes in method and key scenario updates. As such, it serves as a key reference for the updated [...]
The sulfur solubility minimum and maximum in silicate melt
Published: 2021-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The behaviour of sulfur in magmas is complex because it dissolves as both sulfide (S2-) and sulfate (S6+) in silicate melt. An interesting aspect in the behaviour of sulfur is the solubility minima (SSmin) and maxima (SSmax) with varying oxygen fugacity (fO2). We use a simple ternary model (silicate–S2–O2) to explore the varying fO2 paths where these phenomena occur. Both SSmin and SSmax occur [...]
The Evolution of National Spatial Data Infrastructure in Pakistan - Implementation Challenges and the Way Forward
Published: 2021-10-09
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Geospatial data are produced by several organizations located at various places, and that is clearly a distributed environment. Many technical and institutional issues need to be resolved to share data in such an environment and to eventually enable regional development. For this matter, many countries implement Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) for the last 40 years. Since 2010, also Pakistan [...]
Grain shape effects in bed load sediment transport
Published: 2021-10-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geomorphology
Bed load sediment transport, in which wind or water flowing over a bed of sediment causes grains to roll or hop along the bed, is a critically important mechanism in contexts ranging from river restoration to planetary exploration. Despite its widespread occurrence, predictions of bed load sediment flux are notoriously imprecise. Many studies have focused on grain size variability as a source of [...]
Impact of climate change on volcanic processes: current understanding and future challenges
Published: 2021-10-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The impacts of volcanic eruptions on climate are increasingly well understood, but the mirror question of how climate changes affect volcanic systems and processes, which we term “climate-volcano impacts”, remains understudied. Accelerating research on this topic is critical in view of rapid climate change driven by anthropogenic activities. Over the last two decades, we have improved our [...]