Mountain regions face a variety of natural hazards that menace infrastructure and the people living in these
areas. Human activity in these areas is intensifying, making hazard analysis and risk mitigation critical.
Switzerland, with its densely populated ...
Approximately eight billion people are living on Earth today with more than half (55%, similar to 4.2 billion) living in cities-a proportion predicted to increase to 70% (similar to 6.6. billion) by 2050. As the human population grows, urban residents will ...
This study integrates deep learning and geospatial analysis to enhance soil loss estimation in the Moulouya Watershed, a region prone to erosion due to diverse topography and climatic conditions. Traditional models like the Universal Soil Loss Equation (US ...
Anoxic microsites, zones of oxygen depletion in otherwise well-aerated soils, serve as prominent controls on several biogeochemical cycles (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, iron). However, relatively little is known about the spatiotemporal distribution of anoxic m ...
Fired clay bricks (FCBs) are a dominant building material globally due to their low cost and simplicity of production, especially in low- and middle-income countries. With a projected rising housing demand, commensurate growth in brick demand is anticipate ...
Sustainable cropland management requires preservation of soil organic matter (SOM). In spite of in depth understanding gained from ample field and laboratory studies, we have a poor understanding of landscape scale spatial variation of fresh organic matter ...
Global climate warming is leading to more frequent and severe extreme weather events, with alpine regions like the European Alps being particularly vulnerable. This thesis explores future changes in extreme weather dynamics in the southeastern Swiss Alps a ...
Smart meters, devices measuring the electricity and gas consumption of a household, are currently being deployed at a fast rate throughout the world. The data they collect are extremely useful, including in the fight against climate change. However, these ...
The present study investigates the quality of four three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies to accurately reproduce the complex pore structure of a real undisturbed soil sample for laboratory experiments of transport in porous media at a 1:1 scale. Fou ...
The West African region, one of the largest urban agglomerations in Africa has over decades experienced rapid rate of urbanization. The urbanization processes have been associated with manifold environmental and socioeconomic challenges including inefficie ...
Climate change and unsustainable land management practices have resulted in extensive soil degradation, including alteration of soil structure (i.e., aggregate and pore size distributions), loss of soil organic carbon, and reduction of water and nutrient h ...
Well beyond the impact of climate change, anthropogenic modifications of the Vietnam Mekong Delta's ecosystems have resulted in environmental degradation and subsequent loss in ecosystems. The environmental impacts include but are not limited to accelerate ...
The cold regions on Earth, such as the polar and high mountain regions, are snow covered for at least a part of the year. These snow-covered surfaces are highly dynamic, particularly under the influence of strong winds. The aeolian or wind-driven transport ...
Many methods exist to model snow densification in order to calculate the depth of a single snow layer or the depth of the total snow cover from its mass. Most of these densification models need to be tightly integrated with an accumulation and melt model a ...
The influence of drifting and blowing snow on surface mass and energy exchange is difficult to quantify due to limitations in both measurements and models, but is still potentially very important over large areas with seasonal or perennial snow cover. We p ...
Drought-associated woody-plant mortality has been increasing in most regions with multi-decadal records and is projected to increase in the future, impacting terrestrial climate forcing, biodiversity and resource availability. The mechanisms underlying suc ...
Local seed systems remain the fundamental source of seeds for many crops in developing countries. Climate resilience for small holder farmers continues to depend largely on locally available seeds of traditional crop varieties. High rainfall events can hav ...
Phosphorus (P) is an essential element to all living beings but also a finite resource. P-related problems center around broken P cycles from local to global scales. This paper presents outcomes from the 9th International Phosphorus Workshop (IPW9) held 20 ...
Salt marshes are highly productive intertidal wetlands providing important ecological services for maintaining coastal biodiversity, buffering against oceanic storms, and acting as efficient carbon sinks. However, about half of these wetlands have been los ...
Even though the Arctic is remote, aerosol properties observed there are strongly influenced by anthropogenic emissions from outside the Arctic. This is particularly true for the so-called Arctic haze season (January through April). In summer (June through ...
