Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Soil Science
A Fibonacci-Like Propagation Graph for Infiltration and Internal Erosion in Heterogeneous Layered Soils
Published: 2026-06-06
Subjects: Geotechnical Engineering, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Soil Science
Infiltration and internal erosion in heterogeneous layered soils involve coupled flow, pressure build-up, and material degradation across preferential subsurface pathways. High-fidelity Richards-type simulators are physically detailed but can be too expensive for rapid scenario screening and Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation when hydraulic parameters are poorly constrained. We introduce a [...]
Mineral stabilization of soil organic sulfur at the continental scale
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Declining atmospheric sulfur (S) deposition makes S an emerging limiting macronutrient to plants, yet the stability and dynamics of soil organic S - the largest terrestrial S pool supplying plant-available sulfate via mineralization - remain unclear. Across North American soils, mineral-associated organic S (MAOS), a stabilized pool by mineral protection, dominates (61 ± 26% of the total soil S) [...]
Rapid quantification of fluorescent micro- and nanoplastics (≤2 μm) in soil
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Soil Science
Micro- and nanoplastics (MNP) pose an emerging threat to soil ecosystems, with particular concern for small MNP (≤10 µm). Although small fluorescent MNP are widely used to track MNP distribution and transport in aquatic environments and organisms, analyses of small fluorescent MNP in soil remain qualitative. Here, we present the first direct quantification approach for MNP ≤2 μm in soil using [...]
Erosion-driven changes in soil cation exchange capacity quantified using barium isotopes
Published: 2026-04-23
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Human activities have perturbed the balance between rates of soil erosion and formation, driving declines in soil quality. However, quantifying these soil imbalances remains challenging, especially at large scales. Here we present a novel isotope mass balance approach that can be used to quantify river catchment wide rates of change in cation exchange capacity (CEC), a key soil quality metric, in [...]
Soil-informed multivariate decision support to assess urban ecosystem service potential
Published: 2026-04-18
Subjects: Agriculture, Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Dynamical Systems, Multivariate Analysis, Natural Resources and Conservation, Remote Sensing, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Theory and Algorithms
Metropolitan expansion across Africa requires robust soil information to support ecosystem services and urban resilience. However, digital soil mapping often prioritises predictive accuracy over identifying where information is reliable for decision making. This study evaluated numerical and South African Soil Taxonomy within a decision framework to assess where ecosystem service inferences can [...]
An End-to-End Workflow for Processing Multilingual Stakeholder Workshop Data: A Soil Health Case Study
Published: 2026-04-11
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Soil Science
This paper presents an end-to-end workflow for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of multilingual stakeholder workshop data related to soil health. Stakeholder workshops often produce diverse qualitative and ordinal data which is difficult to process consistently and transparently, especially in multilingual settings. The proposed workflow provides clear guidance for collecting, [...]
Interactive effects of landscape position and soil diversity drive the spatial variability of soil organic carbon concentration in subalpine soils of Switzerland
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Soil Science
Subalpine soils store a significant amount of soil organic carbon (SOC), yet the factors driving its landscape-scale variability remain poorly constrained. Although topography, soil type, soil texture, and moisture are recognised as key drivers of SOC concentration, their interactive effects in subalpine environments remain largely unexplored. In particular, the extent to which soil type shapes [...]
Evaluating global spectral unmixing techniques using imaging spectroscopy data for retrieval of green, non-photosynthetic vegetation, and soil fractional cover
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Soil Science
Global estimates of fractional cover of green vegetation (GV), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and soil provide valuable information about the Earth system. As the new generation of Earth visible-to-shortwave infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectrometers take orbit, global fractional cover data will be obtainable with new and improved spectral unmixing algorithms. Using an ASD Field Spectrometer [...]
An analysis of landslides in Great Britain using soil texture, rainfall, and topography reveals contrasting failure conditions between organic and mineral soils
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rainfall-induced landslides cause millions of pounds in damage to infrastructure in Great Britain (GB) annually and occasionally result in human fatalities. However, there are limited guidelines or policies aimed at reducing landslide risk in GB and few studies have broadly characterized landslide incidence across the region. Furthermore, peat landslides, which are a phenomenon that occur almost [...]
Terra Preta de Índio as an Emergent Ecological State: Reclassifying a Path-Dependent Attractor from Constructible Substrate
Published: 2026-02-28
Subjects: Soil Science
Terra Preta de Índio, or Amazonian Dark Earth, is widely recognized as an anthropogenic, carbon rich, fertile, and unusually persistent soil associated with long term Indigenous land use in the Amazon Basin. Prior research has established the importance of charcoal derived black carbon, nutrient enrichment, stable organic matter, and high nutrient holding capacity in explaining many of its [...]
Dynamic critical groundwater depth as a predictor of irrigation-intensified salinization in lowland Hungary
Published: 2026-02-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Hydrology, Soil Science
Shallow groundwater in continental lowland environments sustains upward capillary fluxes that transport dissolved salts to the land surface. However, the depth below which this capillary-driven contribution becomes negligible, often parameterized as the extinction depth in groundwater model ET packages, has been treated as a static, soil-dependent parameter. We argue that salinization risk is [...]
Smoothing Earth’s surface: the complexity of soil texture class transitions
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Dynamical Systems, Dynamic Systems, Environmental Sciences, Non-linear Dynamics, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Ordinary Differential Equations and Applied Dynamics, Soil Science, Statistical Models, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
Soil depth functions are essential for analysing, modeling, understanding and visualising soil profiles. While robust methods existed for continuous properties, soil texture is typically reported as discrete classes, and no established approach exists to interpolate soil categorical information with depth. Here, we introduced phySplines, a physics-informed, analytically solvable spline for [...]
Assessing the Impact of Wind Erosion in Baringo County, Kenya
Published: 2026-01-14
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geomorphology, Soil Science
Wind erosion poses substantial threats to soil health and agricultural productivity in arid and semi-arid environments globally. In response to the escalating environmental challenge of wind erosion, this study, centered in Baringo County, employs a blend of remote sensing and GIS techniques alongside the Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ) model. The study spans a 25-year period, with a main [...]
Peatland Mid-Infrared Database 1.0.0
Published: 2025-10-06
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Soil Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Systematic collections of peat mid-infrared spectra and other peat properties are scarce, but useful to understand peat chemistry and develop spectral prediction models. The Peatland Mid-Infrared Database ('pmird') stores 3877 mid-infrared spectra of peat, peat-forming vegetation, and dissolved organic matter, together with measurements of other peat properties that were collated from previous [...]
Reconciling remote sensing and reanalysis land surface temperatures: How surface conditions shape systematic differences between GOES-16 and MERRA-2 across the contiguous US
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Soil Science
Land surface temperature (LST) is a key variable governing land–atmosphere energy and water exchanges. Despite the importance of LST, satellite observations and reanalysis products often differ in how they define the effective LST depth and in the assumptions underlying their estimates, making comparisons and interpretation challenging. In this study, we present a detailed comparison of LST from [...]