Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biodiversity
Positive Nature Futures for Transformative Change: Visions from Youth in Europe and Central Asia
Published: 2026-10-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Education, Environmental Studies
Amid an escalating global crisis for safeguarding nature and its contributions to people, advancing methods to envision and realise transformative change is increasingly urgent. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) provides a heuristic to co-create visions of positive futures centred on human-nature relationship and diverse values of nature. Despite its potential, the application of the NFF among [...]
Land Use Change, Spillovers, and Transitions: Global Trends, Prospects, and Emerging Drivers
Published: 2026-10-10
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
In this review, we first compile data on global trends and rates of major land use changes over the recent decades, and summarize the main insights revealed by these data. We then review recent research and quantitative estimates on key land use spillover processes, i.e., leakage, indirect land use change, rebound effect and land sparing, and agglomeration economies. We then turn to the [...]
Interface Habitats: An Integrated Observing Strategy for Earth’s Most Dynamic and Consequential Aquatic Boundaries
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Climate, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
One line, no hard line breaks — safe to copy and paste: Interface Habitats – the dynamic boundaries where water meets land, the seafloor, the atmosphere, and ice, and where fronts, eddies, and filaments draw comparably sharp boundaries within the water itself – are among Earth's most productive, diverse, and rapidly changing ecosystems, and the site of most human interaction with aquatic [...]
Transient Events: A Rapid-Response, Multi-Platform Observing Strategy for Detecting and Understanding Abrupt Change in Aquatic Ecosystems
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Extremes, not average conditions, increasingly govern the state of aquatic ecosystems and the risks they carry for people. Events far outside normal variability can reshape ecosystem structure and function within hours to weeks, and both the observational record and climate projections indicate such extremes are growing more frequent, more intense, and longer lasting. Whether an extreme becomes a [...]
Carbon and the Elements of Life: Integrated Observing and Modeling of Marine Biological Carbon Cycles
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The global ocean acts as a massive reservoir for carbon dioxide, establishing ocean biogeochemistry as a primary driver of global carbon distributions [1-3]. This dynamic system is mediated by living organisms that cycle carbon and other elements through the ocean interior and air-sea interface, and is already being altered by warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and shifting nutrient supply [...]
What Did the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam Do to Vegetation? Separating Flood, Reservoir and Irrigation Effects with Satellite Data
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
The Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine was destroyed on 6 June 2023. This could have changed vegetation in three ways: through the flood below the dam, the draining of the reservoir, and the loss of water for the irrigation canals. All three happened inside an active war zone. I tested each pathway separately with MODIS NDVI at 250 m resolution for 2016–2024. Treated land was defined by what [...]
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Do Coastal Rules Reach the People at Risk? Comparing Five Island Jurisdictions
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Hydrology, International and Area Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resource Economics, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Sustainability
Low islands face a rising sea at the same time as the reefs and mangroves that shelter them are under stress. I measured both across 5 island groups in 3 ocean basins (Maldives, Lakshadweep, Seychelles, Fiji and the Canary Islands), testing mangroves and coral reefs as separate pathways. Exposure is the share of people (WorldPop 2020) living on land at or below 1 m, on a bare earth elevation [...]
Testing the Fluorescence Advantage: Does Solar-Induced Fluorescence Signal Agricultural Drought Earlier than NDVI in Marathwada, India?
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
India uses rainfall deficits and vegetation indices such as NDVI to declare drought, and PMFBY crop-insurance payouts depend on these declarations. Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF) is linked to photosynthesis, so many expect it to show drought stress earlier than NDVI. I tested this in the eight districts of Marathwada, Maharashtra, over nine Kharif seasons (2015–2023). I compared [...]
Stolen Strata: Brick Kilns and the Loss of Karewa Tableland in Budgam, Kashmir,1993–2025, with a Correction to an Earlier Estimate
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Karewa tablelands are the flat-topped, scarp-bounded remnants of the old lake and river deposits of the Kashmir Valley. Reporting from Kashmir has said for years that they are being dug away for brick clay and fill, but I did not find a satellite measurement of how much, where and when. This study asks three questions: how much karewa tableland that was vegetated in 2013–2015 is no longer [...]
The Cotton Line: Testing the Institutional Persistence of an Erased Colonial Land-Tenure Boundary Across Vidarbha's Agrarian and Vegetation Geography
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, International and Area Studies, Statistics and Probability
Can a provincial boundary abolished in 1956 still be detected in today's farmland? In the nineteenth century Berar, in western Vidarbha, was settled under the Ryotwari land-revenue system. The Central Provinces districts to the east were settled under Malguzari. On district lineage the old line matches the present boundary between Amravati and Nagpur Divisions, which I rebuild as a 384.7 km line [...]
Incomplete coverage of the state of nature across biodiversity credit methodologies: an assessment using the State of Nature metrics framework
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies
Biodiversity credits are growing rapidly, yet the proliferation of methodologies has raised concerns about their quality and integrity. Because biodiversity cannot be reduced to a single common unit, methodologies differ in their choice of indicators; previous comparative studies, however, have examined only aggregation levels or taxonomic focus, leaving unaddressed how comprehensively [...]
Interdisciplinary large-scale research to advance the science and management of drying river networks facing climate change
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Biodiversity
Drying River Networks (DRNs) are increasingly widespread due to climate change and human pressures, yet their ecological and societal importance has long been underestimated. This paper synthesizes the interdisciplinary outcomes of the DRYvER (Securing Biodiversity, Functional Integrity and Ecosystem Services in Drying River Networks) project, which developed an innovative framework for [...]
Sub-pixel Canopy Phenology reveals divergent Spring transition sequences in Tropical Mixed Deciduous Forest
Published: 2026-07-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
Vegetation phenology regulates terrestrial carbon uptake and land–atmosphere interactions, and is commonly inferred from satellite-derived vegetation indices such as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). However, these observations represent spatially aggregated signals that mask phenological variability among individual tree canopies in [...]
Beyond the elite athlete: coupled climate-related health burdens in trail ultramarathon running
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Public Health, Other Life Sciences
Climate change is simultaneously threatening the physical safety and psychological wellbeing of people who recreate outdoors, and degrading the ecological integrity of the natural environments in which they do so. Understanding who bears the greatest burden, which benefits are lost, and how adaptation strategies may shift rather than resolve risk is one of the defining challenges of planetary [...]
Globally expanding lithium mining could threaten endemic species in biodiversity hotspots
Published: 2026-07-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Electric vehicles (EVs) are widely framed as a technological solution to the climate crisis. However, the mineral extraction supplying EV battery production can cause serious environmental damage, threatening ecosystems and biodiversity from local to global scales. Lithium, a key EV battery component, is experiencing an enormous mining boom, which could drive species population declines and [...]