Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Fresh Water Studies
Storm-Level Independent Verification of Operational Cloud Seeding: Seven Seasons of Utah's Program, 2016-2025
Published: 2026-10-19
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Meteorology
Operational winter cloud seeding programs claim precipitation increases of 3-15%, but the evaluations supporting these claims are produced by program operators using target/control methods that cannot separate seeding effects from operator storm selection: storms are seeded precisely when atmospheric conditions favor the target areas. This study performs, to the author's knowledge, the first [...]
Probabilistic Streamflow Forecasts for Mississippi River Navigation Risk and Parametric Insurance
Published: 2026-10-11
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Mississippi River navigation is disrupted by both low and high water extremes, yet shippers, ports, and terminals lack a simple instrument to transfer that risk. We test whether probabilistic forecasts of monthly streamflow can provide useful navigation-risk information. Using pretrained Chronos-2 at three major Mississippi River subbasin outlets, we compute navigation risk probabilities, [...]
Three gaps for foundation models to address in satellite remote sensing of inland waters
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Long-term Earth observation of inland waters depends on continuity between satellite missions, adequate combinations of spectral, spatial and temporal resolution, and representative calibration and validation datasets. Discontinuities and trade-offs in these components constrain the records available for studying inland waters and their change. We examine three gaps affecting inland water remote [...]
Assessment of adjacency effect correction methods for Sentinel-2 MSI observations over mid-latitude lakes
Published: 2026-10-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Accurate retrieval of remote-sensing reflectance (Rrs) from lakes requires separating water-leaving radiance from atmospheric, surface and adjacency contributions. We assessed adjacency effect correction (AEC) methods for Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) imagery using 329 satellite--insitu matchups from four mid-latitude lakes: Greifensee, Lake Geneva, Lake Garda and Lake Trasimeno. The [...]
Leveraging Ocean Data and Models: Building the Data Infrastructure, Workforce, and Modeling Capacity to Synthesize Earth’s Ocean Observations
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geology, Hydrology, Meteorology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography, Other Earth Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
NASA’s aquatic and marine research enterprise within the overarching NASA Biosphere Program is entering an era of unprecedented data abundance. MODIS and the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission already generate ocean color data at rates that strain legacy processing and archiving workflows, and forthcoming missions will add further volume and complexity. These satellite [...]
Measurement and Tracking of Blowing and Falling Snow Particles Using an Automotive 1550 nm LiDAR
Published: 2026-06-26
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Glaciology, Hydrology, Meteorology
The prevalence and affordability of fast-scanning commercially available LiDARs are increasing due to the rapid expansion of the autonomous vehicle industry. These LiDAR units can provide >1 Hz measurements of millions of laser reflections at ranges of hundreds of meters with high precision. In this study we investigate the often overlooked 1550 nm wavelength LiDAR for measurements of airborne [...]
Data-driven High-Frequency Mass Change Models from GRACE Ranging Residuals
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Glaciology, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a fully data-driven framework for transforming residual K-band range-rate (KBRR) data from GRACE into 5-day mass change models expressed in Equivalent Water Height (EWH). The approach first derives residual range and Line-of-Sight Gravity Differences (LGDs) from monthly post-fit residual range-rates and combines them with 5-day post-fit residuals. A hybrid formulation, merging LGD- and [...]
Wet and Dry Hydrological Conditions Reduce Chlorophyll-a at River-Lake Interfaces
Published: 2026-05-09
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Water Resource Management
Hydrological variation is intensifying under climate change, yet its net effects on lake water quality remain uncertain. Wet and dry hydrological conditions are commonly assumed to exacerbate eutrophication by increasing nutrient inputs during wet conditions or concentrating nutrients during dry conditions. However, these events can also activate counteracting processes—such as dilution, or [...]
Storm life cycle modulates extreme hydroclimate impact risk: a Great Lakes Region case study
Published: 2026-04-18
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Extratropical cyclones (ETCs) drive hydroclimate variability in the Great Lakes, yet their impacts vary widely between events. Here, we classify ETCs into two storm types using an unsupervised clustering approach based on storm properties and evolution. The resulting classes differ systematically in life cycle stage at Great Lakes entry. Using bootstrap-estimated risk ratios and risk differences, [...]
A Community-centered Vision for Data-Intensive Great Lakes Research and Management
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Water Resource Management
The Laurentian Great Lakes are a vital freshwater resource and a regionally significant natural system facing complex, persistent, and compounding challenges from climate change, nutrient loading, and invasive species. The increasing availability of observational data, coupled with advances in computational power and machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods, presents an [...]
Hydrological and landscape controls on dissolved organic matter dynamics in European wetlands
Published: 2025-12-28
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Fresh Water Studies
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a key component in aquatic ecosystems, representing the main source of energy for microbial metabolism and playing a crucial role in C sequestration and export. Its optical properties (absorption and fluorescence) provide integrated information on its quality (average molecular weight and aromaticity degree, main sources, presence of protein like and humic-like [...]
Assessing the effects of restoration and conservation on gaseous carbon fluxes and climate mitigation potential across six European coastal wetlands
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Fresh Water Studies
Coastal wetlands play a substantial role in regulating Earth’s climate through exchanges of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Current European policies promote widespread coastal wetland restoration to reverse historical losses and ongoing pressures. However, substantial uncertainty remains regarding how carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes respond to restoration across different coastal wetland [...]
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 [...]
Assessing Climate and Watershed Controls on Rain-on-Snow Runoff Using XGBoost-SHAP Explainable AI (XAI)
Published: 2025-06-27
Subjects: Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Water Resource Management
Rain-on-snow (ROS) events significantly impact hydrological processes in snowy regions, yet their seasonal drivers remain poorly understood, particularly in low-elevation and low-gradient catchments. This study uses an XGBoost-SHAP explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) model to analyze meteorological and watershed controls on ROS runoff in the Great Lakes Basin. We used daily discharge, [...]
Disappearance of Homo floresiensis from Liang Bua alongside seasonal aridification of Flores 61,000-47,000 years ago
Published: 2024-12-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Speleology
The cause of the disappearance of the primitive hominin, Homo floresiensis, from the Indonesian island of Flores ~50,000 years ago is a key question in palaeoanthropology. The potential roles of human agency and climate change continue to be debated, but the history of freshwater availability critical to survival at the type locality, Liang Bua, remains unknown. Although speleothem 18O is used [...]