Preprints
There are 7999 Preprints listed.
PING-Mapper: open-source software for automated benthic imaging and mapping using recreation-grade sonar
Published: 2022-06-14
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation
The characterization of benthic habitats is essential for aquatic ecosystem science and management, but is frequently limited by waterbody visibility and depth. Recreation-grade side scan sonar systems are increasingly used to aid scientific inquiries in shallow water due to their relative low-cost, ease of operation, low-weight, and ease of mounting on a variety of vessels. However, existing [...]
Microcystin as a Biogeochemical Cycle: pools, fluxes, and fates of the cyanotoxin in aquatic ecosystems
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Microcystin poses a serious threat to aquatic ecosystems and human health. There is a pressing need to understand the production, movement, and storage of microcystin in lakes. We constructed a conceptual biogeochemical model for microcystin through a comprehensive literature synthesis, identifying four major pools and nine major fluxes in lakes that also connect to the terrestrial environment. [...]
Notes from the Oil Patch: Planning for a Worker-Focused Transition in the Oil and Gas Industry
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Engineering
The energy transition portends major disruption to livelihoods of oil and gas workers and communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry. Managing this transition smoothly will require coordinated policy planning, community and place-based incentives, and structural reforms and support structures that carefully map the skills of the worker to opportunities in the clean energy economy.
Variational and numerical modelling strategies for cost-effective simulations of driven free-surface waves
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A new, cost-effective and widely applicable tool is developed for simulating three-dimensional (3D) water-wave motion in the context of the maritime-engineering sector, with specific focus on the formation and analysis of extreme waves generated within in-house experimental wave tanks. The resulting ``numerical wave tank'' is able to emulate realistic sea states in which complex wave-wave or [...]
Potential for Perceived Failure of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Deployment
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Sustainability
As anthropogenic activities warm the Earth, the fundamental solution of reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains elusive. Given this mitigation gap, global warming may lead to intolerable climate changes as adaptive capacity is exceeded. Thus, there is emerging interest in solar radiation modification, which is the process of deliberately increasing Earth's albedo to cool the planet. [...]
Building Archean cratonic roots
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Geophysical, geochemical, and geological investigations have attributed the stable behaviour of Earth's continents to the presence of their Archean cratonic roots. These roots are likely composed of melt-depleted, low density residual peridotite with high Magnesium number (Mg#), while devolatilisation from the upper mantle during magmatic events might have made these roots more viscous and [...]
Volume estimation from planform characteristics of washover morphology
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Geomorphology
Overwash is the cross-shore transport of water and sediment from a waterbody over the crest of a sand or gravel barrier beach, and washover is the resulting sedimentary deposit. Washover volume, and alongshore patterns of washover distribution, are fundamental components of sediment budgets for low-lying coastal barrier systems. Accurate sediment budgets are essential to forecasting barrier [...]
Ascent rates of 3D fractures driven by a finite batch of buoyant fluid
Published: 2022-06-20
Subjects: Fluid Dynamics, Geology, Glaciology, Mechanics of Materials, Volcanology
Propagation of fluid-filled fractures by fluid buoyancy is important in a variety of settings, from magmatic dykes and veins to water-filled crevasses in glaciers. Industrial hydro-fracturing utilises fluid-driven fractures to increase the permeability of rock formations, but few studies have quantified the effect of buoyancy on fracture pathways in this context. Analytical approximations for the [...]
Intercomparison of deep learning architectures for the prediction of precipitation fields
Published: 2022-07-07
Subjects: Education, Engineering
In recent years, the use of deep learning methods has rapidly increased in many research fields. Similarly, they have become a powerful tool within the climate scientific community. Deep learning methods have been successfully applied for different tasks, such as identification of atmospheric patterns, weather extreme classification, or weather forecasting. However, due to the inherent complexity [...]
Flood Susceptibility Mapping using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process for Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Published: 2022-06-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies
Floods affect over 2.2 billion people worldwide, and their frequency is increasing at an alarming rate compared to other natural disasters. Presidential disaster declarations have issued increasingly almost every year in Iowa for the past 30 years, indicating that the state is on the rise of flood risk. While significant scientific and technological advancement is becoming available for many [...]
Pervasive carbonation of peridotite to listvenite (Semail Ophiolite, Sultanate of Oman): clues from iron partitioning and chemical zoning
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Geochemistry, Geology
Earth’s long-term cycling of carbon is regulated from mid-ocean ridges to convergent margins by mass transfers involving mantle rocks. Here we examine the conversion of peridotite into listvenite (magnesite+quartz) occurring along the basal thrust of the Semail Ophiolite (Fanja, Sultanate of Oman). At the outcrop scale, this transformation defines reaction fronts, from serpentinized peridotites, [...]
A spatial framework for prioritizing biochar application to arable land: a case study for Sweden
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Engineering
The biochar-agriculture nexus can potentially generate several benefits ranging from soil carbon sequestration to the reduction in nutrient leaching from arable soils. However, leveraging these benefits requires spatially-explicit information on suitable locations for biochar application. This study provides a flexible multicriteria framework that delivers spatial indications on biochar [...]
Regionalized life cycle assessment of present and future lithium production for Li-ion batteries
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Engineering
Existing life cycle assessments (LCA) of lithium carbonate production from brines are mainly based on one single brine operation site, while many different lithium carbonate production routes have been developed in the past. Hence, current life cycle inventories do not capture the variability of brine sites and misestimate life cycle impacts. This study presents a systematic approach for LCA of [...]
Bioenergy with or without carbon dioxide removal: influence of functional unit choice and parameter variability
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
PURPOSE. Bioenergy with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly presented as an efficient way to mitigate climate change. This study set out to determine under which circumstances and methodological choices CDR bioenergy systems are preferable over a reference bioenergy system from a climate change mitigation perspective. In addition, the CDR systems investigated were compared to each [...]
Heterogenous controls on lake color and trends across the high-elevation U.S. Rocky Mountain region
Published: 2022-06-25
Subjects: Fresh Water Studies
Global change may contribute to ecological changes in high-elevation lakes and reservoirs, but a lack of data makes it difficult to evaluate spatiotemporal patterns. Remote sensing imagery can provide more complete records to evaluate whether consistent changes across a broad geographic region are occurring. We used Landsat surface reflectance data to evaluate spatial patterns of contemporary [...]