Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Applied Statistics
Assessing and Correcting Bias in Gridded Reference Evapotranspiration over Agricultural Lands Across the Contiguous United States
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Gridded reference evapotranspiration (ETo) data are widely used for agricultural water management and remote sensing ET (RSET) models, but biases can arise in agricultural regions where coarse-resolution meteorological inputs fail to capture local microclimates. We investigated biases in the gridMET ETo product across irrigated agricultural areas of the contiguous United States (CONUS) by [...]
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 [...]
Two Wind Farms, Two Islands: Physics Informed Causal Wind Analysis in New Zealand
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Power and Energy
Wind power forecasting models often rely on correlation-based methods, which can misinterpret the relationship between meteorological variables and power generation. A key example is air density: while physics suggests denser air should increase available wind power, observational data can show a negative correlation because high-pressure regimes (high density) often coincide with lower wind [...]
Infiltration drives a Heavy–Tailed Distribution of Combined Sewer Overflow Spill Durations
Published: 2025-12-11
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) discharge untreated wastewater into natural water bodies during periods of excess sewer flow, posing environmental risks. Using ~ 4 million CSO spill events recorded by Event Duration Monitors across England (2020–2024), we characterize the statistical distribution of spill durations. We find that while spills exceeding four hours represent only 6.4 % of events, [...]
Multi-Planar Hierarchy in Pan-American Seismic Fractality: A Bayesian Resolution to the Projection Paradox
Published: 2025-12-10
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
Earthquake catalogs worldwide exhibit an enduring paradox: seismicity appears confined to planar faults (correlation dimension D2≈ 2.0), yet operates within volumetric lithospheric deformation. We resolve this paradox through Bayesian fractal analysis of 50,010 earthquakes across seven Pan-American tectonic regimes (2010–2025), revealing that apparent planarity reflects instrumental projection [...]
Sequential Efficacy of Information for Optimized Geophysical and Drilling Strategies in Mineral Exploration
Published: 2025-12-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Geophysics and Seismology, Mining Engineering
The global energy transition has created an urgent need for expanded critical mineral supply. Projected production from existing deposits and current discovery rates remains insufficient to meet this demand. More efficient exploration strategies are therefore required, particularly in optimizing costly and low-success data acquisition campaigns. To address this challenge, we introduce the concept [...]
A generalized additive mixed-effect modeling approach for characterizing Sentinel-2 surface reflectances of visible light from Torch Lake in Antrim County, Michigan, 2019-2025
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Statistical Methodology, Statistics and Probability
A generalized additive model (GAM) and three generalized additive mixed-effect models (GAMMs) were developed and compared to describe variations of surface reflectances of visible light from Torch Lake in the blue, green, and red bands from Sentinel 2 satellite imagery. All models included fixed effects associated with water-depth intervals, satellite orbits, trend, and smooth effects associated [...]
FEMA Phase-Out? Catastrophic Extremes Limit Decentralization of U.S. Flood Insurance
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Risk Analysis, Sustainability, Systems Engineering
The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) faces growing solvency and affordability pressures amid proposals to decentralize FEMA and shift disaster management to states. Many catastrophic floods span state boundaries, exposing multiple decentralized insurance pools simultaneously. Using a path-independent simulation framework that integrates risk-based premiums, [...]
Quantification Error Model for Aerial LiDAR Methane Emission Rate Estimates
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Statistical Models
Accurate characterization of methane emission rate quantification error (QE) is essential for building measurement-based emissions inventories that benchmark emissions, guide mitigation, and satisfy reporting frameworks such as OGMP 2.0. Previous studies have summarized QE using distributions of errors from controlled release experiments, but with limited consideration of environmental conditions [...]
The Tocantins Framework: A Machine Learning-Based Assessment of Intra-urban Thermal Anomalies
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Statistics and Probability, Sustainability
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect has been extensively studied at the city scale. Yet, the Intra-Urban Heat Island and the Intra-Urban Cool Island effects remain poorly characterized due to the absence of standardized quantification frameworks. This study introduces the Tocantins Framework, a dual-metric system combining machine learning and spatial morphology to identify and quantify [...]
A Two-Stage Fitting Method for Truncated Stem Diameter Distributions
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Forest Management, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Stem diameter distributions underpin growth projections, harvest scheduling, and carbon accounting, yet permanent sample plot inventories are routinely truncated by merchantability limits and maximum expected diameters. The accepted remedy is to fit truncated versions of the desired density, but those forms are seldom documented or supported in common software, so practitioners often default to [...]
Factors Affecting Aboveground Carbon Storage in Mixed Oak-Pine Forests: A Multiple Regression Analysis of Southeastern U.S. Forest Inventory Data
Published: 2025-11-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Multivariate Analysis, Natural Resources and Conservation, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models
This study investigated the factors affecting aboveground carbon storage in mixed oak-pine forests of the southeastern United States, with a particular focus on the influence of stand age. Using data from 946 Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots collected from 2009 to 2019, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the relative importance of various forest and topographic [...]
A Weighted Fitting Approach for Diameter Distributions from Horizontal Point Sampling
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Horizontal point sampling (HPS) produces size-biased tallies that cannot be fit directly with standard probability distributions without distorting diameter distribution estimates. Previous work resolves this by deriving bespoke size-biased probability density functions (PDFs) for each assumed distribution. We revisit the problem and formalise a weighted non-linear least squares approach that [...]
Scalable and robust Gaussian processes for reanalysis of urban air temperature with crowdsourced meteorological data
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistical Models
Crowdsourced air temperature data from networks like Weather Underground offer dense spatial coverage and are increasingly used to study the canopy urban heat island (CUHI) effect. However, these observations are noisy: siting conditions, environmental interference, and sensor failures introduce spatially and temporally varying bias. This complicates interpolation, limiting our ability to [...]
Statistical Characterization of LGM and Late Holocene Oceanography in the Indonesian Maritime Continent
Published: 2025-10-19
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Oceanography
This study provides a statistical characterization of surface oceanography in the Indonesian Maritime Continent (IMC) during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 23–19 ka) and Late Holocene (LH; 4–0 ka). Using the lgmDA v2.1 paleoclimate data assimilation product, we analyze sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS), and seawater $\delta^{18}$O. Results indicate the LGM was [...]