Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires
Published: 2024-10-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences
Climate change is forcing societies to contend with increasingly fire-prone ecosystems. Yet, despite evidence of more extreme fire seasons, evidence is lacking globally for trends in wildfires with socially and economically disastrous effects. Using a systematic dataset, we analyse the distribution, trends, and climatic conditions connected with the most lethal and costly wildfire disasters from [...]
A big data and machine learning approach for monitoring the condition of ecosystems
Published: 2024-01-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecosystems are highly valuable as a source of goods and services and as a heritage for future generations. Knowing their condition is extremely important for all management and conservation activities and public policies. Until now, the evaluation of ecosystem condition has been unsatisfactory and thus lacks practical implementation for most countries. We propose that ecosystem integrity is a [...]
The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]
Amount of carbon fixed, transit time and fate of harvested wood products define the climate change mitigation potential of boreal forest management - A model analysis
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Boreal forests are often managed to maximize wood production, but other goals, among which climate change mitigation, are increasingly important. Examining synergies and trade-offs between forest production and its potential for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation in forest stands requires explicitly accounting for how long forest ecosystems and wood products retain carbon from [...]
A Perspective on How Glyphosate and 2,4-D May Impact Climate Change
Published: 2023-08-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
An increase in herbicide use is occurring due to a growing population and herbicide-resistant crops in agriculture, which has resulted in more herbicide tolerant target species. Glyphosate and 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) are two of the most commonly used herbicides worldwide and are more recently being used in combination in pre-mixed commercial formulas. Subsequently, herbicide [...]
Developing systems theory in soil agroecology: Incorporating heterogeneity and dynamic instability
Published: 2023-03-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Applied Mathematics, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Dynamic Systems, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Ecosystem management is integral to the future of soils, yet anthropogenic drivers represent a key source of uncertainty in ecosystem models. First- and new-generation soil models formulate many soil pools using first-order decomposition, which tends to generate simpler yet numerous parameters. Systems or complexity theory, developed across various scientific and social fields, may help improve [...]
Scientific maps should reach everyone: a straightforward approach to let colour blind people visualise spatial patterns
Published: 2022-09-08
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Maps represent powerful tools to show the spatial variation of a variable in a straightforward manner. A crucial aspect in map rendering for its interpretation by users is the gamut of colours used for displaying data. One part of this problem is linked to the proportion of the human population that is colour blind and, therefore, highly sensitive to colour palette selection. The aim of this [...]
Pattern-based identification and mapping of landscape types using multi-thematic data
Published: 2022-03-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Categorical maps of landscape types (LTs) are useful abstractions that simplify spatial and thematic complexity of natural landscapes, thus facilitating land resources management. A local landscape arises from a fusion of patterns of natural themes (such as land cover, landforms, etc.), which makes an unsupervised identification and mapping of LTs difficult. This paper introduces the integrated [...]
Niche evolution and phylogenetic community paleoecology of Late Ordovician crinoids
Published: 2021-09-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Fossil crinoids are exceptionally suited to deep-time studies of community paleoecology and niche partitioning. By merging ecomorphological trait and phylogenetic data, this study summarizes niche occupation and community paleoecology of crinoids from the Bromide fauna of Oklahoma (Sandbian, Upper Ordovician). Further, patterns of community structure and niche evolution are evaluated over a ~5 [...]
Seasonally variable relationships between surface water temperature and inflow in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2021-06-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Water temperature and inflow are key environmental drivers in aquatic systems that are linked through a causal web of factors including climate, weather, water management, and their downstream linkages. However, we do not yet fully understand the relationship between inflow and water temperature, especially in complex managed systems such as estuaries. The San Francisco Estuary is the center of a [...]
Comment on ‘Carbon intensity of corn ethanol in the United States: state of the science’
Published: 2021-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Energy Policy, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Policy, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Scully et al [1] in their recent contribution review and revise past life cycle assessments (LCAs) of corn-grain ethanol’s carbon (C) intensity to suggest that a current ‘central best estimate’ is considerably less than all prior estimates. Their conclusion emerges from selection and recombination of sector-specific greenhouse gas emission predictions from disparate studies in a way that [...]
Global maps of soil temperature
Published: 2021-03-21
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids thus fail to reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions are controlled and most terrestrial species reside. Here we provide global maps of soil [...]
Motif: an open-source R tool for pattern-based spatial analysis
Published: 2020-10-17
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
*Context* Pattern-based spatial analysis provides methods to describe and quantitatively compare spatial patterns for categorical raster datasets. It allows for spatial search, change detection, and clustering of areas with similar patterns. *Objectives* We developed an R package **motif** as a set of open-source tools for pattern-based spatial analysis. *Methods* This package provides [...]