Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Published: 2020-11-21
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Other Computer Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Soil Science
Data sharing benefits the researcher, the scientific community, and most importantly, the public by enabling more impactful analysis of data and greater transparency in scientific research. However, like many other scientists, the low-temperature geochemistry (LTG) community has generally not developed protocols and standards for publishing, citing, and versioning datasets. This paper is the [...]
Published: 2020-11-12
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Other Environmental Sciences, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a principal component of global climate variability known to influence a host of social and economic outcomes, but its systematic effects on human health remain poorly understood. We estimate ENSO’s association with child nutrition at global scale by combining variation in ENSO intensity from 1986-2018 with children’s height and weight from 186 surveys [...]
Published: 2020-11-06
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 [...]
Published: 2020-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis, 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 [...]
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 [...]
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) [...]
Published: 2020-10-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistical Methodology
A large literature on “detection and attribution” has now demonstrated the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on a range of physical climate variables. Social and economic outcomes are known to be sensitive to climate change, but directly connecting observed changes to anthropogenic forcing is challenging. Here I demonstrate that changes in global productivity of maize, wheat, [...]
Published: 2020-10-25
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a widely used metric used to compare the climate change effects of various greenhouse gases. Although GWP has an established role in international climate agreements, GWP does not, in general, describe any specific identifiable impact of greenhouse gas emissions on climate. It is argued here that GWP is unphysical, unintuitive, arbitrary, ignores the time [...]
Published: 2020-10-24
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Deep water formation is not only the driver of the global ocean circulation; by sending heat and carbon to the deep ocean, it is also crucial for climate change mitigation. Yet its future is uncertain: will it slow down as stratification increases, emerge in polar regions as the wind starts blowing over previously ice-covered waters, or intensify with increased evaporation? Here we present the [...]
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Computer Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Advances in sensing and computation have accelerated at unprecedented rates and scales, in turn creating new opportunities for natural resources managers to improve adaptive and predictive management practices by coupling large environmental datasets with machine learning (ML). Yet, to date, ML models often remain inaccessible to managers working outside of academic research. To identify [...]
Published: 2020-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Approximately 100 paired summer and winter transects of beach face slope and intertidal grain size were examined from 18 separate beaches in southern New England that span meso- and micro- tidal regimes. Paraglacial materials provide the principal local sediment source to beaches in this region and grain-size distribution of beaches corresponds to adjacent surficial geology. Stratified glacial [...]
Published: 2020-09-01
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Australia is the second driest continent on Earth and freshwater is, therefore, a critical policy concern. Farm dams are ubiquitous and drive AU$17.7 billion of agricultural value, yet there has never been a formal census of Australian dams. In this study, we present a continental-scale assessment on density, distribution, and historical trends of farm dams in each State and Territory of [...]
Published: 2020-09-01
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The use of remote sensing in agriculture is expanding due to innovation in sensors and platforms. Drones, high resolution instruments on CubeSats, and robot mounted proximal phenotyping sensors all feature in this drive. Common threads include a focus on high spatial and spectral resolution coupled with the use of machine learning methods for relating observations to crop parameters. As the [...]
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Outcrop studies of fracture networks are important to understand such networks in the subsurface, but complete maps of all fractures in large outcrops are rare due to limitations of outcrop and image resolution. We present the first full-resolution UAV-based, Gigapixel dataset and DEM of the wave-cut Lilstock Benches in the southern Bristol Channel basin, a classic outcrop of layer-bound fracture [...]
Published: 2020-08-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Human exposure to toxic mercury (Hg) is dominated by the consumption of seafood. Earth system models suggest that Hg in marine ecosystems is supplied by Hg(II) deposition, with a 3x smaller contribution from gaseous Hg(0) uptake, and that photochemical reduction of marine Hg(II) drives important Hg(0) evasion to the atmosphere. Observations of marine Hg(II) deposition and gas exchange are sparse [...]