Preprints
There are 5934 Preprints listed.
Investigation on the Impacts of COVID-19 Lockdown and Influence Factors on Air Quality in Greater Bangkok, Thailand
Published: 2020-11-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, many countries announced lockdown measures, including Thailand. Several scientific studies have reported on improvements in air quality due to the impact of these COVID-19 lockdowns. This study aims to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown and its driving influence factors on air pollution in Greater Bangkok, Thailand using [...]
Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: Supplementary method
Published: 2020-11-07
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis, Sustainability
The paper presents supplementary information about the framework and method for the socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation (STMCE) of spent fuel management strategies (Sci Total Environ, In press; Available on EarthArXiv at DOI:10.31223/X5459S). The STMCE approach consists of (i) a multi-criteria evaluation that provides an ordinal ranking of alternatives based on a list of criterion [...]
Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: A framework and method
Published: 2020-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
In the absence of a federal geologic repository or consolidated, interim storage in the United States, commercial spent fuel will remain stranded at some 75 sites across the country. Currently, these include 18 “orphaned sites” where spent fuel has been left at decommissioned reactor sites. In this context, local communities living close to decommissioned nuclear power plants are increasingly [...]
A Machine Learning Approach to Methane Emissions Mitigation in the Oil and Gas Industry
Published: 2020-11-05
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Systems Engineering
Reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector is a key component of climate policy in the United States. Methane leaks across the supply chain are stochastic and intermittent, with a small number of sites (‘super-emitters’) responsible for a majority of emissions. Thus, cost-effective emissions reduction critically relies on effectively identifying the super-emitters from thousands [...]
Thickness of the Saudi Arabian Crust
Published: 2020-11-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
We analyzed P-wave receiver functions from seismic stations covering most of Saudi Arabia to map the thickness of the crust across the Arabian plate. We present an update of crustal-thickness estimates and fill in data gaps for the western shield and the rifted margin at the Red Sea, as well as the eastern Arabian platform. Our application of a conventional H-k stacking algorithm included [...]
¬Estimating Microbial Hydrogen Consumption in Hydrogen Storage in Porous Media as a Basis for Site Selection
Published: 2020-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Subsurface storage of hydrogen, e.g. in depleted gas or oil fields (DOGF), is suggested as a means to overcome imbalances between supply and demand in the renewable energy sector. However, hydrogen is an electron donor for subsurface microbial processes, which may have important implications for hydrogen recovery, gas injectivity and corrosion. Here, we review the controls on the three major [...]
Preservation and re-exposure of late Palaeozoic glacial rock surfaces through cyclical burial and exhumation: apatite fission track evidence from the Fleurieu Peninsula, southeastern Australia
Published: 2020-11-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The antiquity of the Australian landscape has long been the subject of debate, with some studies inferring extraordinary longevity (>10^8 Myr) for some subaerial landforms dating back to the early Palaeozoic. A number of late Palaeozoic glacial erosion surfaces in the Fleurieu Peninsula, southeastern Australia, provide an opportunity to test the notion of long-term subaerial emergence, and thus [...]
Closing the gap: Explaining persistent underestimation by US oil and natural gas production-segment methane inventories
Published: 2020-11-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Methane (CH4) emissions from oil and natural gas (O&NG) systems are an important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, recent synthesis studies of field measurements of CH4 emissions at different spatial scales are ~1.5x-2x greater compared to official greenhouse gas inventory (GHGI) estimates, with the production-segment as the dominant contributor to this divergence. [...]
Evaluating participatory modelling methods for co-creating pathways to sustainability
Published: 2020-11-03
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Planetary Sciences, Systems Engineering
The achievement of global sustainability agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, relies on transformational change across society, economy, and environment that are co-created in a transdisciplinary exercise by all stakeholders. Within this context, environmental and societal change is increasingly understood and represented via participatory modelling for genuine engagement with [...]
Segment tip geometry of sheet intrusions, II: Field observations of tip geometries and a model for evolving emplacement mechanisms
Published: 2020-11-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Volcanology
Igneous sheet intrusions are segmented across several orders of magnitude, with segment tip geometry commonly considered indicative of the propagation mechanism (brittle or non-brittle). Proposed propagation mechanisms are inferred to represent host rock mechanical properties during initial magma emplacement; typically, these models do not account for segment sets that show a range of tip [...]
IBM PAIRS: Scalable big geospatial-temporal data and analytics as-a-service
Published: 2020-11-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The rapid growth of geospatial-temporal data from sources like satellites, drones, weather modeling, IoT sensors etc., accumulating at a pace of PetaBytes to ExaBytes annually, opens unprecedented opportunities for both science and industrial applications. However, the sheer size and complexity of such data presents significant challenges for conventional geospatial information systems (GIS) [...]
Influence of ductile substrates and layer thickness on the spacing and topology of layer bound fault systems
Published: 2020-11-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Sedimentology, Tectonics and Structure
Polygonal fault systems are extraordinary features of many fine grained sedimentary succession and have been described from a significant number of deepwater sedimentary basins over the last two decades. Their formation represents an important mechanism by which fine grained sediments compact often resulting in a variety of complex patterns for which several controlling factors have been [...]
The miscibility of Calcium Silicate Perovskite and Bridgmanite: A single phase perovskite in hot, iron-rich regions
Published: 2020-11-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Calcium silicate perovskite and bridgmanite are two phases believed to coexist throughout the lower mantle, which at some temperature, at least theoretically, dissolve into each other to form a single perovskite solid solution (CaxMg1-xSiO3). This may have large seismic and geochemical implications due to the changes in density, elasticity and element partition coefficients between single and [...]
An apparatus for measuring nonlinear viscoelasticity of minerals at high temperature
Published: 2020-10-30
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We describe a high-temperature, uniaxial creep apparatus designed to investigate nonlinear attenuation of materials over a wide range of temperatures (25–1300°C) using forced oscillations combined with a bias stress. This apparatus is primarily designed for investigation of minerals and rocks with high melting temperatures. An oscillatory compressional stress is used to determine attenuation and [...]
Extreme curvature of shallow magma pathways controlled by competing stresses
Published: 2020-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physics
Eruptions at shield volcanoes often occur from radially aligned linear fissures fed by blade-like magma-filled cracks (dykes). The fissures of the 2018 Sierra Negra eruption were scattered on the flank of the volcano. Space-borne radar interferometric data (InSAR) revealed that, unexpectedly, part of the eruption was fed by a 15 km long, tortuous and flat-lying crack (sill). Here we develop a [...]