Long-term mass-balance monitoring and evolution of ice in caves through structure from motion–multi-view stereo and ground-penetrating radar techniques

This study investigates the application of a terrestrial structure from motionmulti-view stereo (SfM-MVS) approach combined with ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys for monitoring the surface topographic change of two permanent ice deposits in caves located in the Julian Alps (south-eastern European Alps). This method allows accurate calculation of both seasonal and annual mass balance, estimating the amount of ice inside caves. The ground-based SfM approach represents a low-cost workflow with very limited logistical problems of transportation and human resources and a fast acquisition time, all key factors in such extreme environments. Under optimal conditions, SfM-MVS allows sub-centimetric resolution results, comparable to more expensive and logistically demanding surveys such as terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). Fourteen SfM acquisitions were made between the 2017–2020 ablation seasons (i.e. July–October) while 2 GPR surveys were acquired in 2012. The obtained dense point clouds and digital terrain models (DTMs) made possible a reliable calculation of topographic changes and mass balance rates during the analysed period. The integration of SfM-MVS products with GPR surveys provided comprehensive imaging of the ice thickness and the total ice volume present in each of the caves, proving to be a reliable, low cost and multipurpose methodology ideal for long-term monitoring.

Cross-continental hydroclimate proxies: Tree-rings in Central Chile reconstruct historical streamflow in Southeastern South American rivers

Regional teleconnections permit cross-continental modeling of hydroclimate throughout the world. Tree-rings are a good hydroclimatic proxy used to reconstruct drought and streamflow in regions that respond to common global forcings. We used a multi-species dataset of 32 tree-ring width chronologies from Chile and Uruguay as a climate proxy to infer annual streamflow (Q) variability in the Negro River basin, a grassland-dominated watershed of lowland Southeastern South America. A positive linear correlation between tree-ring chronologies from Central Chile and annual Negro River instrumental streamflow from 1957 to 2012 indicated a cross-continental teleconnection between hydroclimate variability in Central Chile and Northeastern Uruguay. This relationship was mediated in part by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), whereby the El Nino 3.4 Index was positively correlated with regional rainfall, annual tree growth, and Q anomalies. Despite the proximity of Uruguayan tree-ring chronologies to Negro River hydrometric stations, the Chilean tree-ring chronologies best predicted annual streamflow. Thus, using tree-ring data from four long-term moisture-sensitive chronologies of the species Cryptocarya alba in Central Chile (32–34°S), we present the first streamflow reconstruction (1890–2009) in the lower La Plata Basin. The reconstruction supports regional evidence for increasing frequency of extreme flood years over the past century in Uruguay. We demonstrate how climate teleconnections that mediate local hydroclimate variability permit the cross-continental reconstruction of streamflow, filling a major geographical gap in historical proxies for flooding and drought in grassland biomes of the southern hemisphere.

An inverse relationship between moisture and grazing intensity in an arid mountain-basin system

Precipitation has been suggested as a crucial influencing factor in the primary productivity in arid and semi-arid regions, yet how moisture fluctuation in an arid mountain-basin system of the north Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau has affected human activities is poorly understood. Here, we reconstruct the variations of grazing intensity in high elevations and regional humidity based on independent and high-resolution records of Sporormiella-type coprophilous fungal spores and pollen grains in the same well-dated sediment core from Lake Tian’E in the western Qilian Mountains over the past 3500 years. We find that stronger grazing activity was associated with low regional effective moisture, and propose that the drier regional climate pushed people and their livestock into the mountainous areas. A notable exception was a reduction of human and grazing activities in arid region with high mountains during 380–580 CE caused by centennial-length dry and cold conditions. In addition, it is also noteworthy that intensified grazing activity occurred during 580–720 CE and after ∼1920 CE, corresponding to a warmer and wetter climate and diverse subsistence strategies with social developments in the lowlands of the Hexi Corridor. Our findings potentially provide a historical reference for understanding how ancient people adapted to the climate change in arid region with high mountains.

Interbasin water transfer in a changing world: A new conceptual model

Water scarcity is a global issue, affecting in excess of four billion people. Interbasin Water Transfer (IBWT) is an established method for increasing water supply by transferring excess water from one catchment to another, water-scarce catchment. The implementation of IBWT peaked in the 1980s and was accompanied by a robust academic debate of its impacts. A recent resurgence in the popularity of IBWT, and particularly the promotion of mega-scale schemes, warrants revisiting this technology. This paper provides an updated review, building on previously published work, but also incorporates learning from schemes developed since the 1980s. We examine the spatial and temporal distribution of schemes and their drivers, review the arguments for and against the implementation of IBWT schemes and examine conceptual models for assessing IBWT schemes. Our analysis suggests that IBWT is growing in popularity as a supply-side solution for water scarcity and is likely to represent a key tool for water managers into the future. However, we argue that IBWT cannot continue to be delivered through current approaches, which prioritise water-centric policies and practices at the expense of social and environmental concerns. We critically examine the Socio-Ecological Systems and Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus models as new conceptual models for conceptualising and assessing IBWT. We conclude that neither model offers a comprehensive solution. Instead, we propose an enhanced WEF model (eWEF) to facilitate a more holistic assessment of how these mega-scale engineering interventions are integrated into water management strategies. The proposed model will help water managers, decision-makers, IBWT funders and communities create more sustainable IBWT schemes.

Coastal development in southwestern Bangladesh: understanding the interplay between storms and sea level rise

Sea-level rise and sediment supply have influenced coastal morphology and sedimentation on Bangladesh’s southwestern Ganges‐Brahmaputra‐Meghna (GBM) delta coast. Satellite images and geological core from the Haringhata coastal region were analyzed to explain the morphological changes and to understand the influences on deposits. The results derived from satellite images indicate that the southern coastline experienced a retreat that ranges between 2.3 and 2.9 km. In contrast, the eastern and western coastline advanced. The erosion and accretion ratio was 0.29 from 1977 to 1989, while the ratio was higher 2.90–4.77 from 1989 to 2020. Two sedimentary facies were identified using 130 cm thick successions. A parallel to wavy laminated bluish gray mud facies of deeper part was deposited in a marine-influenced environment. A planar to hummocky cross stratified, gray to grayish white silty sand facies of storm overwash deposits overlies the mud facies with sharp contacts. Unimodal to bimodal grain distributions of sandy sediments suggest two sources: sand derived from the beach and mud carried by adjacent tidal rivers and resuspended offshore sediment. Coastline dynamics and sedimentation of the area were influenced by inequality of accommodation and sediment supply ratio in the river mouth. This occurs due to sea-level rise and deficit in upstream water and sediment discharge. Morphological change along the southwestern GBM delta coast was not only caused by wave energy, but also by rising sea levels which shifted sediment accommodation space landward.

Nonlinear characteristics of the vegetation change and its response to climate change in the karst region of southwest China

The vegetation is known to be sensitive to both climate change and anthropogenic disturbance. However, the relationship between changes in vegetation and climate is unclear in karst regions. The nonlinear characteristics of vegetation change and its possible relationships with driving factors in the karst region of southwest China are revealed, using methods of Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition, Mann-Kendall, and Partial Least Squares Regression. The results show that: (1) vegetation changes demonstrate an increasing trend with an abrupt change in 2002. Multiple time scales of 3, 6, 10, and 25-year are observed in vegetation variations, dominated by long-term trend and the short time scale of 3-year with variance contributions of 58.10% and 28.63%. (2) The relationship of climate indexes with vegetation changes shows r2 = 0.78 ( p < 0.01) based on the reconstruction of characteristic scales, indicating significant great relationship. In space, the area percentage with relationship of climate to vegetation is more than 50%, and the impact is much greater after the abrupt change of vegetation in 2002 ( r2 are 0.24–0.91 and 0.42–0.99, respectively). In addition, the correlation between vegetation change and ecological engineering is 0.15 ( p < 0.01). The results indicate that climate change is the main impact factor of vegetation change, ecological engineering has positive influences in improving vegetation condition, and methods of scales decomposition and abrupt detection could reveal some hidden information for better understanding ecosystems in karst regions.

A new formula for predicting movable bed roughness coefficient in the Middle Yangtze River

Computing movable bed roughness plays an important role in the modeling of flood routing and bed deformation, and the magnitude of movable bed roughness is closely associated with complex bedform configurations that change with the sand wave motion. The motion of sand wave is dependent on the incoming flow and sediment conditions and channel boundary. After the operation of the Three Gorges Project, the flow and sediment regime changed remarkably in the Middle Yangtze River (MYR), followed by significant channel adjustments. A dramatic decrease in sediment concentration caused continuous channel degradation and significant variations in cross-sectional profiles of the MYR. These adjustments in the channel boundary influence the motion of sand wave, which can further affect the magnitude of movable bed roughness. A new formula for predicting the movable bed roughness coefficient is developed, which can be expressed by a power function of both Froude number and relative water depth. The proposed formula was first calibrated using 1266 datasets of measurements at five hydrometric stations in the MYR during 2001–2012. A back-calculation process shows that the roughness coefficients calculated by the proposed formula agree well with the observations, with the determination coefficient being equal to 0.88. The proposed formula was further verified using 651 datasets of measurements at these hydrometric stations during 2013–2017. Furthermore, four common roughness formulas selected from the literature were tested for comparison. The results indicate that the calculation accuracy of the proposed formula is significantly higher than that of the previous formulas, and the Manning roughness coefficients predicted by the proposed formula have the errors less than ±30% for 96% of the datasets. Therefore, the new bed roughness predictor proposed in this study can accurately calculate the roughness coefficients straightforwardly without iterative solution and graphical interpolation, and the parameters required in the roughness predictor are easily obtained from the hydrometric observations.

Comparative study of multiple heat indices in revisiting summer heat across China based on meteorological observations

Multiple indices have been created to measure hot conditions that may cause discomfort, stress even death to humans. However, distinctions among these indices and their performance in measuring heat remain undisclosed. We conduct a comparative study of multiple heat indices and revisit the spatiotemporal changes in summer heat across China. The maximum temperature-based index, more sensitive to average and maximum temperatures, suggests a larger increasing trend (0.42°C/10a) in heat intensity than those average temperature-based ones which are more sensitive to minimum temperature. The absolute threshold-based heat-day indices are not so applicable as the relative ones in measuring the increasing heat days over the Tibetan Plateau. During 1960–2018, significant ( p < 0.05) increasing trends in heat intensity (0.11–0.42°C/10a) and heat day (0.63–2.67 days/10a) are revealed with a jump-like increase after the mid-1990s at the country level. Stronger heat intensity occurs over the southeast and north China with larger increasing trends over the Tibetan Plateau and northwest China. Northern China with larger increasing heat intensity and days should take effective measures of adaptation to reduce suffering from the summer heat. Given differences among multiple indices and the performance over different regions, a rational selection of heat index considering the research subject of interest and regional climatology is highly recommended.

Fitting limit lines (envelope curves) to spreads of geoenvironmental data

Geoscientists frequently are interested in defining the overall trend in x- y data clouds using techniques such as least-squares regression. Yet often the sample data exhibits considerable spread of y-values for given x-values, which is itself of interest. In some cases, the data may exhibit a distinct visual upper (or lower) ‘limit’ to a broad spread of y-values for a given x-value, defined by a marked reduction in concentration of y-values. As a function of x-value, the locus of this ‘limit’ defines a ‘limit line’, with no (or few) points lying above (or below) it. Despite numerous examples of such situations in geoscience, there has been little consideration within the general geoenvironmental literature of methods used to define limit lines (sometimes termed ‘envelope curves’ when they enclose all data of interest). In this work, methods to fit limit lines are reviewed. Many commonly applied methods are ad-hoc and statistically not well founded, often because the data sample available is small and noisy. Other methods are considered which correspond to specific statistical models offering more objective and reproducible estimation. The strengths and weaknesses of methods are considered by application to real geoscience data sets. Wider adoption of statistical models would enhance confidence in the utility of fitted limits and promote statistical developments in limit fitting methodologies which are likely to be transformative in the interpretation of limits. Supplements, a spreadsheet and references to software are provided for ready application by geoscientists.

Coastal erosion in sandy beaches along a tectonically active coast: The Chile study case

Coastal erosion in 45 sandy beaches covering nearly 2000 km along the tectonically active Chilean coast is assessed during the last four decades. The historical analysis is based on the assessment of decadal changes of the shoreline position extracted from topographic surveys, aerial photographs, satellite images and survey maps using the DSAS software. Results show that 80% of the sites presented erosion rates (>−0.2 m/y), 7% beaches accreted (>0.2 m/y) while 13% remained stable. Eroded beaches include headland bay beaches, embayed and pocket beaches. A discussion on the possible causes explaining these results is conducted. While changes in offshore wave climate are spatially smooth within the region, relative mean sea level changes are highly variable and modulated by tectonic activity; the reduction of the sediment supply explains erosion rates in few cases.