Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lixa v0.1.2: an open-source, image-informed framework for closed-loop design of leaching processes for domestic critical-mineral recovery, from the pore to the plant scale
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Leaching takes a metal out of a rock and into a solution. In the United States, rare earth elements, lithium and scandium occur mostly in rocks where the metal is thinly spread through a porous matrix: weathered clays, coal ash, lithium claystones and bauxite residue. For such rocks the leaching recipe (reagent, concentration, temperature, particle size, liquid-to-solid ratio and contact time) [...]
Worldwide water gaps: Using relative elevation modelling to identify transverse drainages
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Transverse drainages are stream reaches that flow through, rather than around, topographic high grounds. The development of transverse drainage is intimately tied to the tectonic history of an area, but the identification of transverse reaches has historically been a matter of subjective opinion. Here, a GIS-based method is presented that uses relative elevation modelling to identify and quantify [...]
Modelling the connections between internally and externally drained basins using GIS, Google Earth©, and remote sensing
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The development of internal drainage is intimately tied to the tectonic and climatic history of an area, but research into the exact causes and processes of internal drainage is constrained by the ability to accurately delineate both internally and externally draining watersheds. Until recently, existing global catalogs of internally drained regions were either hand-drawn or based upon digital [...]
Reconstruction of ancestral drainage patterns in an internally draining region, Fars Province, Iran
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Google Earth imagery is used here in conjunction with a Geographic Information System to identify transverse drainages and recreate paleodrainage in an internally draining region in Iran. At least thirty-five water gaps and thirty-four wind gaps are shown to exist in the region, as well as evidence for an integrated paleodrainage that originated north of the internally draining region and [...]
Feature-Relative Deployment Optimisation of Ice-Tethered Buoy Arrays in the Southern Ocean
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Oceanography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Southern Ocean marginal ice zone is critical for climate dynamics and sea-ice model validation, yet remains severely undersampled due to costly deployment and short buoy lifetimes. The sea-ice edge shifts by hundreds of kilometres between years, so fixed-coordinate optimisation fails when future ice conditions are unknown. This paper presents a robust multi-objective framework that encodes [...]
The July 2026 North American wildfire smoke event was three times deadlier due to climate change
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In mid-July 2026, numerous fast-burning wildfires affected western Ontario and northern Minnesota, resulting in extensive smoke across eastern North America. Here, we conduct a rapid attribution analysis of the 14–21 July smoke event, quantifying the change in wildfire smoke (WFS) PM2.5 concentrations and mortality compared to a counterfactual world without anthropogenic climate change (ACC). We [...]
MELVIS: An open-source web application for computing and modelling the viscosity of volcanic melts
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
The viscosity of volcanic melts governs magma transport, eruption dynamics, and a broad range of magmatic processes, so predicting it as a function of temperature, composition, and dissolved water content is central to physical volcanology. Yet no freely accessible tool integrates global machine-learning predictions, physically motivated viscosity equations, and composition-specific models [...]
Using 4D synchrotron X-ray microtomography rigs for time-resolved X-ray diffraction experiments: applications with the Mjölnir suite
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Synchrotron 4D X-ray microtomography provides unique insights into evolving microstructures during deformation, fluid flow and mineral transformations, but offers limited access to crystallographic information such as phase composition, lattice strain, and stress. Conversely, synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD) provides direct crystallographic measurements but is commonly restricted to small [...]
Along-strike stress delays the ordering of slip on a fixed-length fault
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The size of a large earthquake depends on how far the rupture runs and how much the fault slips. An early correlation with magnitude can appear while those two contributions are still mixed. Patches at both ends stop every rupture on a 120 km fault, so the length no longer varies and the early order is an order of slip. One background stress is a single value along the fault, and the other also [...]
Evaluating Dynamic Viability of Finite-Fault Slip Models with Ensemble Kalman Inversion
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Finite-fault slip models are widely used to infer earthquake rupture processes, yet they are inherently non-unique and do not guarantee physically consistent rupture evolution. Here, we develop a data-constrained framework that couples Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EKI) with large-scale 3D dynamic rupture simulations to efficiently evaluate the dynamic viability of finite-fault slip models. The [...]
Quantifying volumetric erosion from symbolic expression of landslide morphology
Published: 2026-10-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Landslide volumetric erosion is fundamental to regional sediment budgets and downstream hazard assessment, yet accurately constraining material mobilization remains a primary bottleneck in Earth-system research. Legacy area–volume relations introduce substantial uncertainty when applied across heterogeneous landslide populations. Here, we examine whether the erosional and accumulation (i.e., [...]
Coupled in-reservoir and downstream water-temperature responses to the deep drawdown of a large reservoir, and tradeoffs for fisheries management
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Across the Pacific Northwest and other regions, the construction and operation of large dams has provided numerous societal benefits but has also fundamentally altered present-day river networks by blocking fish passage and altering streamflows and thermal regimes. Increasingly, evolving management directives require dam operations far outside of historical operational regimes to achieve new [...]
A scaling law for stagnant-lid convection with composite visco-elasto-plastic rheology: application to Europa's ice shell
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
Scaling laws relating the Nusselt number (Nu) and the Rayleigh number (Ra) are the standard tool for translating numerical models of convection into predictions of surface heat flux and the thicknesses of the stagnant lid and the rheological sublayer. Existing scaling frameworks for icy moons normalise this relationship using a temperature-dependence parameter, γ, calibrated against viscous and [...]
Groundwater Potential Mapping in Northwestern Nigeria: A Comparison of the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Galileo-Enhanced CAT-XGB
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Global water scarcity intensifies the need for high-resolution groundwater assessment tools, yet traditional approaches struggle to reconcile qualitative expert weights with the extensive spatial coverage offered by remote sensing data. This study presents a comparative framework evaluating expert-driven Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (a ten-layer Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)) against [...]
P- and S-Wave Travel-Time Characteristics and Station-Dependent Residuals from Local Earthquakes in Ghana
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding P- and S-wave travel-time behaviour is important for characterizing seismic-wave propagation and identifying station-dependent variability within regional seismic networks. This study investigates P- and S-wave travel-time characteristics and station-dependent residuals using local earthquakes recorded by the Ghana Digital Seismic Network (GHDSN). The analysis reexamines the [...]