bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Age2exhume: A Matlab/Python script to calculate steady-state vertical exhumation rates from thermochronologic ages in regional datasets
Authors: van der Beek Peter , Schildgen Taylor
Published: February 2023

Interpreting cooling ages from multiple thermochronometric systems and/or from steep elevation transects with the help of a thermal model can provide unique insights into the spatial and temporal patterns of rock exhumation. Several well-established thermal models allow for a detailed exploration of how cooling or exhumation rates evolved in a limited area or along a transect. However, integrating large, regional datasets in such models remains challenging due to the difficulty of extracting exhumation rates from ages that are affected by variable effective cooling temperatures, sampling elevations, and surface temperatures. Here we present a thermal model that can be used to rapidly provide a synoptic overview of exhumation rates from thermochronologic data spread over wide regions. The model incorporates surface temperature based on a defined lapse rate and sample elevation relative to a mean relief value that is dependent on the thermochronometric system of interest. Other inputs include sample age, thermochronometric system, and an initial (unperturbed) geothermal gradient. The model is simplified in that it assumes steady, vertical rock-uplift when calculating exhumation rates. For this reason, it does not replace more powerful and versatile thermal-kinematic models like PECUBE, but it has the advantage of simple implementation and rapidly calculated results. In our example dataset, we show the results of exhumation rates calculated from 1785 thermochronologic ages from the Himalaya associated with five different thermochronometric systems; results were calculated in under a second on a standard laptop. Despite the synoptic nature of the results, we show how they illustrate several fundamental features of the mountain belt, including strong regional differences that reflect known segmentation patterns and changing exhumation rates in areas of newly developed ramp structures. The results can also be correlated with geomorphic metrics to probe potential controls on surface morphology.
Air quality studies using long-term observations at Welgegund, South Africa
Authors: Vakkari Ville , Jaars Kerneels , Josipovic Miroslav , Kulmala Markku , Laakso Lauri , Petäjä Tuukka , van Zyl Pieter G.
Published: February 2023

Quality-controlled long-term measurements of atmospheric composition are central in identifying the sources and processes that are most important for air quality in a particular environment. In South Africa, continuous measurements of various atmospheric constituents have been carried out at the Welgegund measurement station since May 2010 in close collaboration between North-West University, Finnish Meteorological Institute and University of Helsinki. Welgegund is a regionally representative continental site approx. 100 km west of Johannesburg with no local sources. Before Welgegund, measurements were operated at Marikana village, which is an urban location with large industrial point sources in the vicinity. At both sites measurements included particulate matter smaller than 10 µm in diameter (PM10), black carbon (BC) and trace gases (SO2, NO, NOx, O3, CO) among others.Numerous industrial point sources surrounding Johannesburg result in elevated NOx and SO2 levels in the region, but these concentrations remain below air quality standards. On the other hand, PM10 does exceed 50 µg m3 rather frequently and more often at Marikana than at Welgegund. However, strong correlation with CO suggests that the periods of elevated PM10 are related to incomplete combustion rather than the industrial emissions at both locations. At Marikana the major source appears to be domestic heating during winter time, while at Welgegund landscape fires seem more important. Also, O3 exceeds air quality standards frequently at both sites and the highest O3 cases appear to be linked with landscape fires. Furthermore, our observations suggest that O3 formation is not NOx-limited but rather VOC-limited.
Methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells: measurements and uncertainties
Authors: Kang Mary , Boutot Jade , Bowman Lauren , El Hachem Khalil
Published: February 2023

Measurements have shown that abandoned oil and gas wells emit methane to the atmosphere, but the estimates of methane emissions at the national scales remain highly uncertain. Here, we provide an overview of available measurement data and studies investigating factors linked to high methane-emitting abandoned wells. We then analyze abandoned oil and gas well data in Canada and the United States to estimate methane emissions for both countries and evaluate uncertainties in the national estimates. Available measurement data indicate that average methane emission rates used as emission factors vary by 3 orders of magnitude or more, even after accounting for plugging status. Plugging status has been shown to be an important predictor of high methane emitting wells; however, there may be other important factors such as age, depth, fluid type and geographical region. Such well attribute data are not consistently available for many abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells in Canada and the United States. Overall, there is a need for additional measurements of methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells and compilation of well attributes to reduce uncertainties in national estimates.
A large sample study of the effects of upstream hydrometeorological input features for LSTM-based daily flow forecasting in Canadian catchments
Authors: Snieder Everett , Khan Usman
Published: February 2023

Recent years have seen an increase of deep learning applications for flow forecasting. Large-sample hydrological (LSH) studies typically try to predict the runoff of a catchment using some selection of hydrometeorological features from the respective catchment. One aspect of these models that has received little attention in LSH is the effect that data from upstream catchments has on model performance. The number of available and stations and distance between stations is highly variable between catchments, which creates a unique modelling challenge. Existing LSH studies either use some form of linear aggregation of upstream flows as input features or omit them altogether. The potential of upstream data to improve the performance of real-time flow forecasts has not yet been systematically evaluated on a large scale. The objective of our study is to evaluate methods for integrating upstream features for real-time, data-driven flow forecasting models. Our study uses a subset of Canadian catchments (n>150) from the HYSETS database. For each catchment, long-short term memory networks (LSTMs) are used to generate flow forecasts for lead times of 1 to 3 days. We evaluate methods for identifying, selecting, and integrating relevant upstream input features within a deep-learning modelling framework, which include using neighbouring upstream stations, using all upstream stations, and using all stations with embedded dimensionality reduction. Early results indicate that while the inclusion of upstream data often yields improvements in model performance, including too much upstream information can easily have detrimental effects.
Assimilation of SMAP surface soil moisture retrievals into the FAO crop growth model AquaCrop v7.
Authors: Bechtold Michel , Busschaert Louise , de Roos Shannon , Heyvaert Zdenko , Kumar Sujay , Mortelmans Jonas , Scherrer Samuel , Van den Bossche Maxime , Raes Dirk , Fereres Elias , Garcia-Vila Margarita , Steduto Pasquale , Hsiao Theodore , Salman Maher , De Lannoy Gabrielle
Published: February 2023

Recently, the FAO crop model AquaCrop v7.0 has been released as open-source code along with the standard graphical user interface for single field applications, and Linux, Windows, and Mac stand-alone executables for plugin into regional or climate simulations (https://www.fao.org/aquacrop/en/). In addition, AquaCrop v7.0 has been coupled as the first crop model into NASA’s Land Information System (LIS) to support regional modeling and data assimilation (DA) using spatially complete re-analysis meteorological forcings, and to produce spatio-temporally complete geolocated NetCDF output for the first time. This presentation explores the potential of soil moisture updating for improving crop growth model estimates of AquaCrop.Our DA setup uses the one-dimensional ensemble Kalman filter to assimilate the SMAP Level-2 surface soil moisture retrieval product from April 2015 through 2021 on a quarter-degree regular model grid over Europe. Prior to assimilation, a climatological rescaling is applied to remove the observation-minus-forecast bias. A preliminary evaluation against in-situ data of the International Soil Moisture Network indicates that topsoil (0-30 cm) soil moisture estimates of AquaCrop are improved through the DA compared to the model-only estimates. Our results show that the adjusted soil moisture strongly modulates biomass accumulation during the main growing period from April to June, particularly over moisture-limited areas. The impact on biomass will be further evaluated with the Copernicus Global Land Service dry matter productivity product as the observational reference.
DSCOVR Turbulence and Plasma Wave Observations at L1, and Correlation of Solar Wind Parameters With Spacecraft Separation
Authors: Loto'aniu Paul
Published: February 2023

The magnetometer onboard the NOAA DSCOVR spacecraft samples the interplanetary magnetic field at 50 samples/second, presenting unique opportunities to study turbulence and plasma waves in the solar wind up to the instruments 25 Hz Nyquist. In this study, we present example observations by DSCOVR of turbulence and Alfven waves during periods of solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar energetic particle (SEP)events. We present the turbulence structures, including spectral indices at different frequencies, and discuss how it relates to coherence waves observed during cascade and dissipation. We also present wave properties, including frequency range, wave power and polarization. In addition, by comparing DSCOVR to ACE and Wind results, we discuss the dependency of solar wind parameters on spacecraft separation and the implications for studying the evolution of cascading turbulence. Finally, we explain how users can access this distinctive DSCOVR full high-resolution magnetic field dataset through the NOAA-NCEI DSCOVR portal.
Surrogate-based Bayesian characterization of porous and deformable aquifer systems in water stressed regions
Authors: Li Yueting , Zoccarato Claudia , Tamellini Lorenzo , Piazzola Chiara , Ezquerro Pablo , Bru Guadalupe , Guardiola‐Albert Carolina , Bonì Roberta , Teatini Pietro
Published: February 2023

Land subsidence is one of most severe geohazards caused by excessive groundwater pumping which has gained increasingly interest over the last decades. Various numerical models have been developed to address this mechanism and support the groundwater policy-makers. In addition, the performance of these models has highlighted the importance of uncertainty quantification related to the unknown hydro-mechanical parameters. Bayesian inversion provides a powerful tool to statistically infer these uncertain parameters by incorporating the numerical model and the available observations. However, Bayesian scheme relies on the sampling algorithm to explore the parameter space. Such exploration requires enormous computational cost in which one realization of numerical model is already costly. Hence, parallel research focuses on surrogate models which aim to fast and accurately approximate the numerical solution with limited training realizations. In this study, Bayesian inversion is facilitated by substituting a coupled groundwater flow-geomechanical model with a surrogate model based on the sparse grid approach. More specifically, a 3D coupled variably-saturated groundwater flow-geomechanical model is first performed to describe the pressure head variation and deformation to the groundwater extraction from 1960 to 2012 in Alto Guadalentín Valley aquifer, Spain. Then, sparse grid method is used to construct the surrogate models which approximate the input/output mapping of the numerical simulator. Lastly, Monte Carlo Markov Chain yields the uncertainties of hydraulic conductivity and compressibility by assimilating the piezometric head records and displacement measurements obtained from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique. Our preliminary results demonstrate that the surrogate model has high and fast performance on approximating the state variables in which misfits is negligible with respect to the measurement noise. Bayesian inversion can improve the characterization of parameters of interest whose posterior distributions are significantly constrained comparing to the prior distributions. Moreover, the numerical outcomes with calibrated parameters show a good fit with the available observations. In summary, the illustrated framework takes advantage of novel techniques from various aspects, including monitoring, numerical modeling, statistical analyses and provides a reliable and efficient way to infer properties of aquifer systems with ongoing water pressure depletion.
Mars Sample Return Science Management
Authors: Kminek Gerhard , Meyer Michael A.
Published: February 2023

NASA and ESA intend to conduct a Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign to return martian samples safely to Earth for scientific research, based on the highest priority recommendations of the international science community. Returned samples will allow scientists to utilize advanced sample processing and scientific instrumentation unavailable on robotic spacecraft.The journey of scientifically selected samples starts with the context development and acquisition of the samples by the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, continues with the transit through the flight elements of the MSR Program and retrieval on Earth for curation and analysis by the world’s scientific community. The samples collected by Mars 2020 to date already show scientific potential beyond the pre-launch expectations of the scientific community for the first sample return from Mars.Based on an already signed NASA-ESA MSR Science and Sample Management Memorandum of Understanding, a Joint Science Management Plan (JSMP) has been developed to provide the framework and processes to ensure the scientific potential of the samples is preserved during return to Earth, on Earth, and for future generations, and that the science objectives of MSR can be met.This talk will inform the science community about the key science management elements described in the JSMP.
Resources for tomorrow – how airborne geophysics can contribute for the exploration of deep mineral deposits
Authors: Becken Michael
Published: February 2023

Economies are critically dependent on the secure provision of raw materials. The EU commission currently lists 30 elements as critical, including base metals as well as high-tech metals. Projections indicate a significant increase in demand within the next decades, in parts due to the transformation of the energy sector and the digital revolution. Therefore, reuse of raw materials in the context of circular economies must be accompanied by the development of additional primary resources. Furthermore, to minimize dependencies from individual producing countries, the supply chains must be diversified, including the exploitation of domestic resources. Consequently, exploration activities - of which geophysics is a critical component - must be intensified today to increase the reserves for tomorrow.New deposits are likely to be found under cover and at depths greater than has typically been exploited in the past. Both greenfield and brownfield environments, such as historic mining districts, have a potential for new discoveries. Recent developments in airborne geophysics aim at increasing the exploration depth and improving the imaging capabilities to detect targets that have previously remained hidden. In this lecture, I will discuss the challenges for airborne geophysical exploration, with a particular focus on semi-airborne electromagnetics, a hybrid approach that combines the benefits of powerful land-based transmitter deployments with the dense spatial coverage of overflights with passive airborne receivers. This concept has been implemented in the ongoing DESMEX project and has also received interest elsewhere. The hybrid approach can be shown to exhibit significantly increased penetration depth than classical airborne EM systems. Moreover, without the need to tow heavy transmitters airborne, the concept can be ideally transferred to unmanned platforms, reducing the costs significantly. Finally, three-dimensional inverse modelling becomes tractable with this setup; this is because the number of involved simulation steps per iteration scales with the number of transmitter installations (typically less than ten) instead of the number of measurement points with fixed transmitter-receiver geometries as in classical airborne measurements (typically several thousand). I will present case studies from demonstration measurements in Europe and beyond.
Water, rock and mountains: dissecting fluvial erodibility in the stream power model
Authors: Zondervan Jesse , Adams Byron , Mohamud Amani , Gilbertson Mark
Published: February 2023

Bedrock incision models, such as the stream power model, are powerful tools in modelling surface processes in response to changes in environmental forces including climate change. Such models often assume that the bedrock river incision rate is proportional to shear stress on the river channel and lump the influences of a number of factors, including rock strength and others related to climate, into a singular erodibility term. This erodibility term is critical for understanding changes in fluvial relief and the timescale of landscape responses to temporal fluctuations in external forcings. Simplifying numerous factors into one erodibility term can obscure the relative importance of change in bedrock strength, channel width scaling, sediment tools and climate in space and time. Therefore, dissecting the erodibility term is a major challenge necessary to improving the predictive ability of stream power models.To dissect the erodibility term, we connect observations at the river reach and laboratory scale. We have designed a new abrasion-mill device for quantifying the control of rock strength and fracturing on erosion rates, while quantifying and keeping sediment impact energy constant. The laboratory device is designed to generate saltating grains which can be tracked to quantify the energy of impact, and allows us to fit natural rock samples with some degree of freedom in sample shapes. We combine our smaller-scale observations from experimental abrasion results and mechanical properties of the rock samples, with larger-scale observations of river channel geometry and slope in a natural river to develop a holistic framework of river incision. Our results will be of use to field geomorphologists and numerical modellers who are interested in modelling or quantifying rates of erosion in mountainous settings.
Projected heat- and cold-related mortality impacts under various climate change scenarios in Switzerland: the role of population development
Authors: De Schrijver Evan , Sivaraj Sidharth , Raible Christoph , Franco Oscar , Chen Kai , Vicedo-Cabrera Ana
Published: February 2023

Climate change and progressive ageing of the population is amplifying the heat-related mortality burden in Switzerland. However, limited quantitative evidence exist as to how future trends in heat- and cold-related mortality impacts will develop under various scenarios of warming and population demographics, as well as the contribution of each these two drivers combined. Therefore, we aim to project heat- and cold-related mortality under various climate change scenarios (RCPs) and scenarios of population development defined by Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), and to disentangle the contribution of each of these two drivers using high-resolution mortality and temperature data in Switzerland.To project future heat- and cold-related mortality impacts under RCP4.5/SSP2 and RCP8.5/SSP5, we estimated the temperature-mortality association using a two-stage time series analysis for each district and age group (<75 and ³75years) between 1990-2010 in Switzerland. Subsequently, we estimated the corresponding future cold- and heat-related mortality impacts for different warming levels (1.5°C, 2.0°C and 3.0°C) for RCP4.5/SSP2 and RCP8.5/SSP5 and disentangled the contribution of population development and change in climate (i.e., temperature).  We estimated that heat-related mortality will increase from 312 (95%CI:116; 510) annual deaths to 1,274 (95%CI:537; 2,284) deaths for RCP4.5/SSP2 under 2.0°C warming. This will further increase up to 1,871 (95%CI: 791; 3,284) for RCP8.5/SSP5 under 3.0°C warming, which is mostly driven by population ageing (53%) rather than temperature (47%). As a result of changes in population development, also cold-related mortality will substantially increase from 4,069 (95%CI:1,898; 6,016) annual deaths to 6,558 (95%CI:3,223; 9,589) annual deaths under 2.0°C of warming and to 5,997 (95%CI: 2,951; 8,759) annual deaths under 3.0°C of warming in RCP8.5/SSP5. In conclusion, both heat- and cold-related mortality will substantially increase under all scenarios of climate change and population development under all degrees of warming in Switzerland. Moreover, population development will reverse the reduction in cold-related mortality despite a warming climate, and further exacerbate heat-related mortality, leading to a substantial net-increase of non-optimal temperature impacts in Switzerland.
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice thickness and volume changes during the last 29 years from satellites
Authors: Bocquet Marion , Fleury Sara , Rémy Frédérique , Garnier Florent , Moreau Thomas
Published: February 2023

Sea ice is both a key witness and driver of climate change. While sea ice extent and area is well described with observations during the last four decades, sea ice thickness and volumes changes remain poorly known. However, thickness is a mandatory variable to fully understand the past, present and future changes of sea ice. Despite improvements in sea ice thickness estimation from altimetry during the past few years thanks to SAR and laser altimetry, former radar altimetry missions such as Envisat and especially ERS-1 and ERS-2 have remained under exploited so far. ERS-2 arctic sea ice thickness has been recently retrieved thanks to a machine learning approach aiming at calibrating ERS-2 and Envisat against CryoSat-2. We are now able to extend the time series from ERS-1 for both polar oceans, allowing to propose a 29 years-long sea ice thickness and volume time series. Estimates are combined with uncertainties derived from a Monte Carlo methodology. Nearly 30 years of sea ice volume time series reveals that Arctic sea ice is melting by 120 +/- 45 km³/year up to 81.5 °N (-13.1  +/- 5.1 %/decade). Antarctic sea ice evolution has no significant trends along the whole period, but a volume drop is observed since 2016. For both hemispheres, prominent regional changes have been identified with a strong heterogeneity of trends across regions. Finally, comparisons between observations and models show increasing negative bias while going back in time.
Forensic geosciences investigations on experimental fields
Authors: D’Amico Sebastiano , Byrd Jason H , Colica Emanuele , Formosa Saviour , Somma Roberta , Tagliabue Giulia , Trombino Luca
Published: February 2023

The search for homicide graves is a very strenuous activity that may lead to the identification of the burial site if it is planned based on articulated scientific approaches considering several aspects of forensic sciences. Moreover, another difficult task in such criminal cases may be the estimation of the Post-Mortem Interval (PMI) of the victim. Discrepancies between PMI estimation through entomological studies and other evaluations may be. This inconsistency is at the base of the necessity to examine and well understand the human decay process of human beings and the decay consequences in the surrounding environmental context. It is noteworthy that several processes may occur on the surrounding site the burial. Phenomena as a depression, a different growth of plants, or the occurrence of peculiar insect associations may be observed on the grave, due to the body’s decay, and the body fluids release in the underground. These aspects may be analysed in experimental fields where pig carcasses, usually used as analogues for the human cadavers, are inhumated in holes dug by means of hand instruments (pick and shovel) or mechanical excavators. These sites may be monitored by applying geological, geophysical, geochemical, and geomatic methods, as well as entomological and botanical characterization of the insects and flora, respectively. The present research is devoted to plan, analyse and monitoring of a simulated experimental field in Malta, where a simulated grave containing a pig carcass will be prepared. The research project is dedicated to geophysical and geomatic surveys to be realized before the excavations and during the project for monitoring the depression development and the shape and dimensions of the leachate plume. Geophysical methods consist of ERT tomographies, seismic and georadar profiles, parallel and orthogonal to the graves. Geological investigations are focused on characterizing the pedogenic profile and the composition, texture, and structure of the soil/sediment. Entomological research is devoted to identifying insect species typically related to body decay. Ideally and in addition to the above, botanical surveys are aimed at defining the main species and differences in the plant growth. The reconstructed evolution of the burial environment may be investigated to better assist criminal investigations into the definition of the PMI in recognition of a burial site and other significative criminological and criminalistic data.
A European Dashboard showcasing the State of the Environment
Authors: Adamaki Angeliki , Vermeulen Alex , Schaap Dick , Thijsse Peter , Krijger Tjerk , Bardaji Raul , Fornos Andreu , Rodero Ivan
Published: February 2023

The European Open Science Cloud is a pan-European initiative that aims at developing a federated infrastructure that supports scientific research and Open Science. Having the FAIR principles at the core of Open Science practices, the Environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRIs) that operate in Europe collaborate at cluster level (the ENVRI cluster) continuously improving the FAIRness of their services and working towards becoming more interoperable among them but also with other clusters. To showcase the benefits of an integration platform that supports scientific workflows, the ENVRIs develop the “Dashboard for the State of the Environment” as a cross-discipline service to address with scientific facts the environmental concerns. The project brings together three scientific domains (Atmosphere, Biodiversity, Ocean) that each have set up analytical workflows to provide environmental indicators in real-time, allowing the users to visualise the “State of the Environment” by interacting with the service interface. The Dashboard is designed to be completely user configurable so that the users can select from a list the indicators to be shown and their order. Providers can add, remove and edit indicators through a standard REST API, that allows transferring all parameters, including the configuration of the indicators and how to provision data values and thumbnail interaction. The Dashboard is implemented and operated using engineering best practices, including YAML for the indicators’ descriptions and a robust and flexible container-based deployment. It builds on EOSC services like AAI, cloud services, and data storage, and the workflows that provide the indicators will also build on the EOSC and Research Infrastructure (RI) computing integration. As a proof of concept, a limited list of indicators is available, and we foresee that the participating RIs will provide many more indicator options in the near future. In addition, through the extension API it will be possible for new RIs to start providing indicators. The Dashboard service is completely open source, and, as the whole concept, it is designed to be flexible and expansible. Therefore, we encourage other clusters that are part of EOSC to use the service as another basis for disseminating their relevant indicators to a wider audience.
Cosmic Ray Muon Imaging of the Great Pyramid of Giza
Authors: Ehrlich Ralf
Published: February 2023

The Exploring the Great Pyramid (EGP) Mission is investigating using cosmic-ray muons to study the interior of the Great Pyramid of Giza with unprecedented resolution. Muon telescopes would collect data over a large angular range at different locations around the pyramid base to produce a tomographic image of the internal structures of the pyramid. The muon telescopes will use scintillator bars with embedded wavelength-shifting fibers read out by silicon photomultipliers, a technology successfully employed in several high-energy physics experiments. We will report on measurements made with a prototype detector at the Fermilab test beam facility and extensive simulation results showing the expected performance of the detectors. 
Radioactive waste storage in salt structures under cyclic glacial loading
Authors: Popov Anton A. , Baumann Tobias S. , Kaus Boris J.P. , Kottwitz Maximilian O. , Urai Janos L.
Published: February 2023

Various salt structures, such as diapirs and salt walls, are currently considered as potential locations for the long-term storage of radioactive waste. Yet many scientific questions need to be addressed before safety and integrity of such repositories can be ensured. In particular, the effect of cyclic glacial loading on the long-term stability of a potential nuclear waste repository needs to be investigated.In the first part of this study, we perform a series of simplified 2D thermo-hydro-mechanical model scenarios selected to cover the basic geometrical features of salt diapirs and walls. Our models include internal heterogeneities in the salt and faults in the salt and overburden. We consider various repository design schemes and investigate the effect of the radiogenic heat production on the deformation of the surrounding salt in a thermo-mechanically coupled manner. We explore the sensitivity of the results to variations in the physical rock properties and evaluate the potentially significant effect of the different dominant microphysical deformation mechanisms such as dislocation creep, dynamic recrystallization and pressure solution creep in salt.The second part of this study focuses on the parameterization of the relevant salt rheology that controls the viscoelastic response of the salt structure. We quantify the rock salt rheology in a probabilistic sense by implementing a statistical creep model. Here, we incorporate a priori constraints and observations from the microstructure and determine representative creep law parameters and associated uncertainties.Following this integrated approach, we aim to identify key model parameters and find characteristics of generic salt structures to assist the selection process of suitable salt structures.
A Framework for Multi- and Systemic-Risk Analysis: Focusing on Indirect Risks Based on Dependencies
Authors: Sakic Trogrlic Robert , Hochrainer-Stigler Stefan , Reiter Karina
Published: February 2023

Despite the rising importance of both systemic and multi-risks caused by interrelated natural hazards (e.g., compound, cascading, consecutive), there is still an apparent lack of unifying frameworks that allow for harmonized assessment and management of these risks. This paper presents a six-step framework developed as part of the HORIZON 2020 MYRIAD-EU project, with the framework flexible enough to cover single, multi- and systemic risk analysis, including measurement, modelling and management dimensions. The six steps are: i) finding a system’s definition, ii) characterization of direct risk, iii) characterization of indirect risk, iv) evaluation of direct and indirect risk, v) defining risk management options, and vi) accounting for future systems state. The framework is developed based on systemic risk ideas, drawing a need to delineate clear system boundaries and identify interdependencies of system elements, ultimately enabling system of systems approach that can incorporate complexities in a manageable level for a diverse set of risk bearers. As done traditionally, in the process of risk assessment, we first propose an assessment of direct risks, emerging due to direct contact of system elements with a hazard(s). However, we suggest to move forward and then focus on indirect risks emerging due to interdependencies in the system and in response to direct risk realization, especially within a co-produced selection of indirect risk metrics with relevant stakeholders. Risk management options, including indirect risk management, are then considered, with a special emphasis on synergies and asynergies of risk management options between hazards, sectors, and impact types and between top down and bottom-up related risk management instruments. While the paper is focused on a detailed presentation and discussion of the conceptual framework, given that the framework is currently applied in five pilots across Europe (Danube, Canary Islands, Scandinavia, North Sea, and Veneto Region), it also brings initial results from practical implementation, including initial tools and methods, challenges, and opportunities.
Plant sedaDNA reveals grassland change on the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau during the past 17 ka
Authors: Liu Ying , Stoof-Leichsenring Kathleen , Diekmann Bernhard , Herzschuh Ulrike
Published: February 2023

Grasslands on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau are particularly sensitive to changes in climate and herbivory. As two main compositions, Poaceae and Cyperaceae supply forage and support herbivory survival. However, to taxonomic resolution restriction of traditional plant proxies, the plant composition and richness change of vegetation in particular of Poaceae and Cyperaceae are still largely unknown. Here, we reconstruct the vegetation using Lake Donggi Cona sediment ancient DNA metabarcoding, targeting chloroplast trnL P6 loop (g h primer). To increase Poaceae and Cyperaceae taxonomic resolution we currently also investigate ITS1 of nuclear ribosomal DNA in Poaceae and Cyperaceae. A total of 257 terrestrial higher plant taxa, 14 Pteridophyta taxa and 9 aquatic taxa were detected. Before ca. 12.6 cal ka BP, Asteraceae dominate terrestrial plant communities, which are commonly associated with cold and arid conditions during the late glacial; after 12.6 cal ka BP, Asteraceae abundance decline, Poaceae, Rosaceae, and Salicaceae abundance increase likely related to an increase in precipitation and temperature. At 6.5 cal ka BP, the Asteraceae abundance increase, Poaceae and Salicaceae abundance decrease, which is possibly related to cold and dry environments. The plant richness increase sharply since 6.5 cal ka BP and continually maintain relatively high richness values, which may be related to herbivory. Our analyses combine different plant sedaDNA markers will help to elucidate vegetation shifts in the past with deeper taxonomic resolution and provide reference on grassland protection under future climate change scenarios.
Mapping forest cover dynamics in the Swiss Alps using 70 years of aerial imagery
Authors: Nguyen Thiên-Anh , Rußwurm Marc , Kellenberger Benjamin , Tuia Devis
Published: February 2023

The availability of high-resolution remote sensing imagery has enabled precise mapping of the forest cover at large scale. Since forest cover evolves due to land use change, climate and extreme events, understanding its past dynamics becomes crucial in a changing climate context. In this work we analyze historical aerial imagery acquired in Switzerland since 1946 [2] for high-resolution forest mapping. We focus on the 1500–2500m a.s.l. altitude range in the Valais and Vaud Alps, where agricultural land abandonment and climate change have caused forest cover changes.The times series are composed of single-band, panchromatic images until year 1998, then RGB images up to the year 2020, the last acquisition date over our study area. As a reference for the forest cover in 2020, we use the Topographic Landscape Model SwissTLM3D [1]. For previous years, we plan to manually generate labels to evaluate our results.We frame forest mapping as a multi-temporal semantic segmentation task: given a time series of images, we predict a map for each imageattributing every pixel to the class "forest" or "non-forest". To solve this task, we develop a deep learning model composed of:a segmentation module, trained with the images and labels from the year 2020;
a temporal module, which takes consecutive features generated by the segmentation module and outputs a multi-temporal segmentation map. This module is trained using a Mean Squared Error (MSE) loss enforcing temporal consistency.
We analyze predictions obtained with three models, each one containing one or two of the modules described above. We observe that using the full spectral information of the input images leads to a better delineation of forest borders for both old and recent images (Table 1, Figure 1). By adding the temporal module, the accuracy on the last image is practically unchanged (Table 1), while temporal consistency along the time series is improved (Figure 2). Table 1: Segmentation scores for the year 2020 on the validation set, for all pixels and for pixels under 10m distance of forest borders
Model
# inputs
Temporal module
Mean F-1 score (all)
Mean F-1 score (forest borders)
Mono-temporal grayscale
1
no
0.86
0.63
Mono-temporal RGB
3
no
0.89
0.72
Multi-temporal RGB
3
yes
0.88
0.72
   Our method is currently not suited for abrupt forest loss, and is prone to error spreading from previous predictions. Future work will consist in designing a temporal consistency loss that better reflects known dynamics of the forest cover, in order to obtain a more accurate segmentation for the oldest images and encourage physical consistency across time.References[1] Swisstopo. SwissTLM3D. https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/geodata/landscape/tlm3d.html [Online; accessed 06.01.2023].[2] Swisstopo. Orthoimages. https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/geodata/images/ortho.html [Online; accessed 06.01.2023].
Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems NEXUS: Gaps and opportunities to increase the policy impact of nexus research in Europe
Authors: Willaarts Barbara , Milliken Sarah , Caucci Serena , Okzul Zeynep , Girotto Francesca , Martinat Stanislav
Published: February 2023

Water, energy, food, and ecosystems (WEFE) are key resources that support human well-being and, as such, are security concerns for countries across the world. Awareness about the interconnection and interdependence between resource securities, the so-called “WEFE nexus”, is not new but the combination of intensifying resource demands, growing global uncertainties related to the ongoing climate crisis, and the geopolitical atmosphere, have intensified the interlinkages and amplified the cost of inaction and mismanagement of existing policies.Promoting the development of sound and effective policies to deal with the growing security challenge and its spillovers on other sectoral domains, require actions across different fronts. A fundamental one is to strengthen the nexus research agenda in such a way that sufficient evidence is available and well communicated to inform the development of a more coherent and aligned policy framework.  This requires developing analytical frameworks that can help to unravel the complex interlinkages across sectors. But as important is to research how greater policy coherence can be achieved in practice and how to create the appropriate enabling environment i.e. nexus governance.Scientific evidence on WEFE in Europe is substantial, and there is a wealth of scientific evidence probing the high interconnectedness that exists between natural resources, and how the sustained pressures we are exerting over them are generating cascading impacts and trade-offs. Despite the level of nexus science, there is barely any information available on the level of impact nexus research projects have had in shaping the policy agenda at the national or European level.Our research builds on the efforts developed within the COST ACTION NEXUSNET (CA 20138) to map the nexus research projects funded by key European funding schemes (FP7, H2020, HORiZON, JPI Urban Europe, PRIMA) in the course of the last decade, and explore the type of nexus challenges addressed, main policy recommendations provided and the level of implementation of the proposed measures. Preliminary results show that between 2013 and 2022 more than 70 research projects and innovation actions have been funded, with over 222 case studies and demonstrators across European countries. A survey targeting case studies showcased that the level of implementation and adoption of proposed nexus policy measures was below 20%. These preliminary findings showcase that while the research effort in Europe on nexus has been substantive, the policy impact of such research remains unclear, and efforts are required to understand barriers and enablers to increase the relevance and policy impact of nexus research.
Sensing the tropospheric water vapor from grazing-angle Spaceborne GNSS-R
Authors: Wang Yang , Morton Jade
Published: February 2023

In this work, we investigate a novel method to estimate the tropospheric wet delay, and further the vertically integrated water vapor (VIWV) and its horizontal gradients, using the coherent-reflection GNSS signals received by a CubeSat in the low-Earth orbit (LEO).  It can complement existing observation approaches over some polar and ocean regions where GNSS signals can be coherently reflected.The precise altimetry using coherent-reflection GNSS signal carrier phase measurements has gained popularity over the past couple of decades for the observation of ocean, sea ice, lake, and river surfaces.  The troposphere delay error is found to be a major error source for GNSS-R phase altimetry, especially at a low elevation angle.  However, if we can model the reflection surface elevation relatively well, then the estimated residual phase from GNSS-R signal can be dominantly contributed by the mis-modeled tropospheric wet delay, and GNSS-R signal can become a new data source for tropospheric water vapor sensing.  The GNSS-R approach can observe the horizontal gradients of VIWV along the specular point (SP) track, as the SP moves at high speeds of ~5 km/s, and the spatial resolution is 10s of km by ~1 km.In the presentation, we will provide examples using Spire Global’s grazing-angle GNSS-R data and comparisons with the ECMWF reanalysis VIWV data.  We will also discuss the applicable regions, performance, and error mitigations of the proposed method in estimating tropospheric wet delay and issues to be addressed in the further retrieval of VIWV.
Improving Early Warning System for Urban Flooding in Chinese Mega Cities using Advanced Active Phased Array Radar
Authors: Zhu Dehua , Xuan Yunqing , Body Richard , Hu Dongming , Bao Xiaojun
Published: February 2023

This two-year trial aims to bring together academics and industrial partners from UK and China to conduct a pilot study on the use of the active phased array radar to provide early urban flood warnings for Chinese mega cities, which facing challenging urban flood issues. This is the first in the world of cascade modelling using the cutting-edge active phase array radar (APRA) to provide rainfall monitoring and nowcasting information for a real-time two-dimension urban drainage model. The collaboration built up by this project and the first-hand experiment data will serve well to further catalyse the taking-up of state-of-the-art weather radars for urban flood risk management, and to tackle the innovation in tuning the radar technology to fit the complex urban environment as well as advanced modelling facilities that are designed to link the observations, providing decision making support to the city government. Recommendations for applying high spatial-temporal resolution precipitation data to real-time flood forecasting on an urban catchment are provided and suggestions for further investigation are discussed.
The effects of water and intrusive magmatism on the evolution and dynamics of Venus
Authors: Metternich Marla , Tackley Paul , Lourenço Diogo L. , Thieulot Cedric
Published: February 2023

Observations of Venus reveal tectonic expressions and recent volcanism, showing that the planet is still active. Tectonically deformed areas such as ridges or tesserae indicate surface mobility, however, no signs of active plate tectonics like on Earth have been found. The tectonics and volcanism of Venus and other terrestrial planets are defined by the active mantle convection mode. A key component of tectonics is rheology, which is affected by water as shown by numerous studies[1].  However, the effects of water have been mostly ignored when studying Venus because its interior has been assumed to be dry. This notion is being challenged by indications of strong hydrodynamic escape to space that requires volcanic replenishment[2]. Therefore, water should be present in Venus’ interior, even if its content is not known. Importantly, the potential effects of water in the dynamics and evolution of Venus are poorly understood. This calls for the consideration of complex dynamic thermo-magmatic models that track water and take into account intrusive and extrusive magmatism.In this study, we use the code StagYY to perform state-of-the-art 2D numerical models in a spherical annulus geometry to assess the effects of water on the tectono-magmatic evolution of Venus[3]. Particular attention will be given to changes in mantle viscosity, melt generation and crustal properties such as thickness and surface age. We explore model settings related to melting, intrusive magmatism, and water presence. Results show that intrusion depth influences the thermal evolution and related magmatism. Moreover, preliminary results show that the rate of water outgassing is directly related to changes in the thermo-magmatic evolution of Venus. Water outgassing rates have further implications on surface conditions and atmospheric compositions over time. In the future, coupling these improved mantle convection models to atmospheric evolution models may unveil new insights into the thermal and tectonic history that has shaped Venus into the planet we observe today.