Preprints
There are 6266 Preprints listed.
ARIA: Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability Assessment
Published: 2025-05-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering
ARIA (Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability Assessment) is a Python package designed to streamline the calculation of environmental impacts based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. It leverages Brightway2 (Mutel, 2017) as its core infrastructure, enabling robust LCA modelling while automating several steps that traditionally require tedious manual effort. ARIA utilises large [...]
Biorestorer: Synthetic Succession for Soil Restoration in Arid and Degraded Regions
Published: 2025-05-21
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Life Sciences
Soil degradation in arid and semi-arid regions poses a critical threat to global ecological stability and food security. This paper introduces Biorestorer, a systems-based framework for initiating synthetic succession and synthetic pedogenesis in highly degraded or sterile substrates where natural recovery is infeasible. The Biorestorer concept integrates dual-temperature biochar, [...]
Heavy Metal Toxicity: A Major Driver of Past Biodiversity Crises?
Published: 2025-05-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Whether today’s heavy metal pollution represents an unprecedented threat to biodiversity, in Earth’s history remains an open question. Here, we reassess the state-of-the-art research to evaluate whether heavy metal toxicity played a major role in past extinction events. Although there is evidence to heavy metal loading during several past biotic crises, direct causal links to extinctions are [...]
Optimization of Automated Sea Ice Melt Pond Depth Determination in ICESat-2 Laser Altimeter Data with the DDA-bifurcate-seaice Algorithm Using Airborne Campaign Data
Published: 2025-05-21
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Melt ponding on Arctic sea ice is a key indicator of the transition from a predominantly perennial to a seasonal sea ice cover, yet quantitative data on pond depth remain limited. Here, we present the first analysis of melt-pond depth using ICESat-2’s Advanced Topographic Lidar Altimeter System (ATLAS). The Density-Dimension Algorithm for Bifurcating Sea-Ice Reflectors (DDA-bifurcate-seaice) [...]
Hydraulic geometry hypothesis allows reverse engineering of 3D quasi-equilibrium landscapes from 2D channel networks
Published: 2025-05-20
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A fluvial catchment consists of unchannelized hillslopes drained by a channel network. Catchments can be fully characterized by their three-dimensional (3D) topography and the bankfull characteristics of their channels. Here we use a probabilistic algorithm to generate a set of scale-free, two-dimensional (2D) pixelized river networks of increasing complexity. We then integrate reach-scale [...]
Water Quality and Microclimate Gradients in the Argentine Andes and Patagonia: Field Measurements of TDS, Conductivity, and Temperature Across Altitudes
Published: 2025-05-18
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This field study reports portable in situ measurements of water temperature, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), air temperature, and humidity across six representative sites in Argentina (March 2025). We sampled 20 points spanning 115 m (Perito Moreno) to 3 383 m (Aconcagua). Mean TDS at high‑altitude sites (Aconcagua: 1172 ± 425 ppm) was up to 50 times higher than at [...]
How Advertising Matters: Outdoor Media Strategies for Increased Engagement with Creative Climate Change Messages
Published: 2025-05-18
Subjects: Instructional Media Design
Amid many communication strategies in 2025, creative advertising approaches are clearly powerful tools. Yet, out-of-home (OOH) or outdoor media (OM) often receives little attention in advertising research, particularly when used in the context of climate change, sustainability and environmental issues. This research helps to bridge the gap with experimentation and analysis OOH or OM in the [...]
A climate empirical temperature simulator, an application in Provence (France)
Published: 2025-05-18
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The importance of being able to make climate projections at the local level is fundamental because they are the ones that will serve as an input for any vulnerability study as part of a climate change adaptation plan. The techniques exist and, in France, the DRIAS portal allows you to download these projections with several models and with an 8 km x 8 km grid (called Safran grid). However, a [...]
The Motion and Tilts of Subsurface Floats due to Surface Waves
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Subsurface and nearly neutrally-buoyant floats can be stable, well-behaved platforms for measuring ocean dynamics in the near-surface wave zone. Here, we measure and model the wave-induced tilt of one such platform. We use data from Lagrangian floats built at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL/UW) and carrying a Nortek Signature1000 Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler with an AHRS (Attitude and [...]
The OpenQuake Model Building Toolkit: A suite of tools for building components of a seismic hazard model
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Building a probabilistic seismic hazard model is a complex task, requiring the integration of disparate datasets into one cohesive and comprehensive model. To facilitate this process, we have developed the OpenQuake Model Building Toolkit (OQ-MBTK), a collection of functions for constructing probabilistic seismic hazard models. This toolkit encompasses a wide array of functions essential for [...]
Enzyme-Mediated Multiphase Precipitation (EMMP): An Innovative Strategy for Ecotoxic Metal Immobilization in Aqueous Systems
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ecotoxic metal contamination in wastewater and soil poses a critical environmental challenge due to its persistence, toxicity, and bioaccumulation potential. While conventional biogeotechnical methods like Enzyme-Induced Carbonate Precipitation (EICP) and Microbial Induced Carbonate Precipitation (MICP) have shown promise for metal immobilisation, their application is limited by excessive [...]
Climate Change Impacts on Inland and Black Sea Marine Fisheries: Risks, Adaptation, and Sustainable Investment Pathways
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Other Life Sciences
This paper explores climate adaptation and sustainable investment strategies within the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, with a focus on vulnerable regions such as the Black Sea basin. As climate change intensifies environmental pressures and socioeconomic vulnerabilities, building resilience requires an integrated approach combining localized adaptation, mitigation and strategic investment. [...]
How to Model Cooling Service Flow of Urban Parks Based on Supply-Flow-Demand Framework? A Case Study of Beijing Olympic Park
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Rapid urbanization intensifies the urban heat island effect and undermines health for vulnerable communities located beyond the effective cooling reach of large parks. This study introduced a spatially supply-flow-demand framework to quantify the cooling service flow of urban park using Beijing Olympic Park as a case study. Field measurements at representative land types in the park were [...]
Time shift: The peak reduction potential of demand response with simple time-of-use pricing
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Increasing electrification of energy systems, required for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, poses challenges for electricity systems from increased peak demand. Demand response can reduce peak demand, but acceptability is limited by consumer concerns about effort, complexity, and lack of control. This study assesses the potential of simple demand response programs using existing electricity [...]
Peak loads, health, and energy equality. The effects of demand-side electricity efficiency interventions
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sustainability
Electrification is key for climate change mitigation but, if unmanaged, risks increasing energy poverty, inequalities, and peak electricity demand. While demand response to reduce peak electricity demand has been the subject of extensive research, the effects of energy efficiency interventions for wider health system and socioeconomic outcomes are less studied. This study assesses the impact of [...]