Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Environmental Sciences
Polar ice-cores unravel the formation of a UV window during magnetic field collapse ~ 42 ka BP
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
During geomagnetic excursions (GEs), compromised magnetic field and increased cosmic-ray bombardment can deplete the ozone layer forming ‘UV window(s)’ in the Earth’s atmosphere. Here, using triple sulfur-isotope systematics in polar ice-core sulfate record spanning 600 years of the Laschamp GE, we provide direct evidence of the formation of a UV window. Several events of UV-induced anomalous [...]
Croplands as thermodynamic agents in a high-CO2 world
Published: 2026-04-28
Subjects: Other Environmental Sciences
Rising atmospheric CO2 is widely expected to influence crops through physiological pathways, yet croplands are also extensive physical interfaces that regulate land–atmosphere energy exchange. Despite covering 12–15% of Earth’s ice-free land surface, their role in surface energy balance under elevated CO2 remains poorly constrained. Most CO2 enrichment studies have not explicitly resolved the [...]
Before the Threshold: Deceptive Stability, Buffer Slack, and Earth System Transitions
Published: 2026-04-20
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Other Environmental Sciences
Earth history includes episodes in which persistent biological or geophysical byproduct loads are absorbed by finite environmental sinks and buffers, preserving apparent stability while the capacity to absorb further stress declines. This paper synthesizes literatures on Earth system revolutions, redox transitions, mass extinctions, and Anthropocene change into a comparative framework termed [...]
Geostatistical Assessment of Shallow Groundwater Risk in Urban Coastal Virginia: A Case Study from Virginia Beach
Published: 2026-04-14
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
Urban groundwater assessments in coastal cities often rely on public monitoring datasets that are spatially uneven and temporally discontinuous. This study evaluates shallow groundwater risk in Virginia Beach, Virginia, using 30 years of records (1991–2020) from 121 monitoring wells for groundwater levels and 55 wells with groundwater‑quality data for chloride (Cl), iron (Fe), and manganese (Mn). [...]
Stress testing insurance market stability under climate risk
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis
Climate change, urban development, and evolving insurance markets threaten the stability of disaster-risk financing. Homeowners insurance is embedded in a layered network of reinsurers, capital markets, and public backstops that absorb losses and can be overwhelmed by extreme events. We develop a probabilistic risk-propagation model linking physics-based simulations of tropical cyclone wind and [...]
Cervical Cancer and Climate Change
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
Background: The research question guiding this scoping review was: "What does the literature reveal (since January 1, 2005) about the association between climate change—or its underlying environmental drivers—and cervical cancer?" Methods: We conducted a comprehensive literature search using two major electronic databases: PubMed and Web of Science, for January 1, 2005, through July 30, 2024. 522 [...]
Reducing the global human footprint on lake water quality near river inlets
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Human activities have degraded lake water quality globally, leading to toxic algae proliferation and anoxia. The spatial variability of these impacts within lakes and the potential for targeted nutrient pollution reduction to improve water quality remain however underexplored at the global scale. Using 742 million chlorophyll-a (chl-a) estimates from six satellite sensors (daily, 1–4 km [...]
Hazomes: Earth’s natural multi-hazard terrestrial disturbance regimes
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Climate, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Ecosystems and societies have evolved together and are shaped by local natural hazard regimes. We introduce hazomes, an Earth classification based on multi‑hazard disturbance patterns. By combining open‑source intensity and return period data for eight hazard types, we identify thousands of distinct terrestrial disturbance regimes. Hazomes aims to deepen insight into ecosystem and societal [...]
fasterRaster: GIS in R using GRASS for large vectors and rasters
Published: 2025-10-17
Subjects: Geomorphology, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
Within the R ecosystem, packages like terra and sf are the go-to solutions for most geospatial analyses, yet can struggle with large rasters and vectors. The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, or GRASS, offers solutions that are often more efficient for large data. However, using GRASS through R requires users to become familiar with GRASS-specific syntax and data constructs. The [...]
Machine learning approaches to Landsat change detection analysis
Published: 2025-10-14
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
The Landsat mission has captured images of the Earth’s surface for over 50 years, and the data have enabled researchers to investigate a vast array of different change phenomena using machine learning models. Landsat-based monitoring research has been influential in geography, forestry, hydrology, ecology, agriculture, geology, and public health. When monitoring Earth's surface change using [...]
DOZER: a toy model of coastal hazard mitigation during a storm
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Dynamical Systems, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Motivated by observations of emergency road-maintenance crews in coastal settings, DOZER is a video game in which the player uses a bulldozer to clear sand from a beachfront road during a storm. DOZER is also a toy model in a formal sense: a heuristic tool for insight into the dynamics of real-time intervention in the physical processes of a natural hazard. Here, I introduce DOZER as both a game [...]
An Ice Core Snapshot of Past Atmospheric Chemistry in Mt. Everest’s 'Death Zone'
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Glaciology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a unique atmospheric chemistry record from the highest ice core ever recovered (8020 m, South Col Glacier (SCG), Mt. Everest), that captures ~400 years of deposition during the latter half of the first millennium BCE. Due to recent glacier thinning, the upper ~2000 years of accumulation have been lost, however, this is the only ice core record ever recovered from the “Death Zone [...]
Exploration of Gold, Copper, Magnetite, Hematite, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromite, Antimony, Bauxite, Industrial soils, Nickel, Cobalt, Lead, Lithium minerals using Landsat8 satellite
Published: 2025-07-31
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Geophysics and Seismology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
In this study, we provided an accurate and complete method for exploration and analysis of Gold, Copper, Magnetite, Hematite, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromite, Antimony, Bauxite, Industrial soils, Nickel, Cobalt, Lead and Lithium minerals in the desired area. Mineral exploration can be done using the seven bands from Landsat8 satellite images, through combination of different maps, a specific color [...]
Conservation is Coherence: Introducing the Negawatt Philosophy of Lawful Design
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Physics, Other Planetary Sciences, Sustainability, Systems Biology
This paper articulates the Negawatt Philosophy, reframing conservation not as omission or moral restraint, but as the structural intelligence that sustains life and preserves biospheric coherence. Modern economies valorise extraction and combustion while treating conservation as invisible absence. Yet thermodynamics reveals life as negentropy—an ordering that defies the drift into entropy’s [...]
A Review of Atmospheric Micro/Nanoplastics: Insights into Source and Fate for Modelling Studies
Published: 2025-05-09
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Environmental Sciences
Micro/nanoplastics (MNPs), as emerging pollutants, have attracted increasing attention due to their potential adverse effects on human health, ecosystems, and climate. The rapid, turbulent, and large-scale nature of atmospheric transport facilitates both horizontal and vertical movement of MNPs over long distances within a short time, largely independent of topographical constraints, thereby [...]