Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Structural Geothermal Plays in the Lower Carboniferous Limestone, East Midlands, UK: Insights from Legacy Geophysical Data
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lower Carboniferous Limestone (LCL) is a promising geothermal target in Britain, but uncertainty in subsurface structure and permeability limits resource assessment. Here, we use the Welton area of the East Midlands, where legacy hydrocarbon exploration data provide detailed subsurface coverage, to investigate the controls on LCL geothermal prospectivity. We integrate 3D seismic reflection, well, [...]
Lixa v0.1.2: an open-source, image-informed framework for closed-loop design of leaching processes for domestic critical-mineral recovery, from the pore to the plant scale
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Leaching takes a metal out of a rock and into a solution. In the United States, rare earth elements, lithium and scandium occur mostly in rocks where the metal is thinly spread through a porous matrix: weathered clays, coal ash, lithium claystones and bauxite residue. For such rocks the leaching recipe (reagent, concentration, temperature, particle size, liquid-to-solid ratio and contact time) [...]
Worldwide water gaps: Using relative elevation modelling to identify transverse drainages
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Transverse drainages are stream reaches that flow through, rather than around, topographic high grounds. The development of transverse drainage is intimately tied to the tectonic history of an area, but the identification of transverse reaches has historically been a matter of subjective opinion. Here, a GIS-based method is presented that uses relative elevation modelling to identify and [...]
Modelling the connections between internally and externally drained basins using GIS, Google Earth©, and remote sensing
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The development of internal drainage is intimately tied to the tectonic and climatic history of an area, but research into the exact causes and processes of internal drainage is constrained by the ability to accurately delineate both internally and externally draining watersheds. Until recently, existing global catalogs of internally drained regions were either hand-drawn or based upon digital [...]
Reconstruction of ancestral drainage patterns in an internally draining region, Fars Province, Iran
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Google Earth imagery is used here in conjunction with a Geographic Information System to identify transverse drainages and recreate paleodrainage in an internally draining region in Iran. At least thirty-five water gaps and thirty-four wind gaps are shown to exist in the region, as well as evidence for an integrated paleodrainage that originated north of the internally draining region and [...]
MELVIS: An open-source web application for computing and modelling the viscosity of volcanic melts
Published: 2026-10-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
The viscosity of volcanic melts governs magma transport, eruption dynamics, and a broad range of magmatic processes, so predicting it as a function of temperature, composition, and dissolved water content is central to physical volcanology. Yet no freely accessible tool integrates global machine-learning predictions, physically motivated viscosity equations, and composition-specific models [...]
Along-strike stress delays the ordering of slip on a fixed-length fault
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The size of a large earthquake depends on how far the rupture runs and how much the fault slips. An early correlation with magnitude can appear while those two contributions are still mixed. Patches at both ends stop every rupture on a 120 km fault, so the length no longer varies and the early order is an order of slip. One background stress is a single value along the fault, and the other also [...]
X-ray microdiffraction mapping on experimentally synthesized clinopyroxenes
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Volcanology
Crystallographic parameters serve as fundamental archives of crystallization environments, with pressure generally acting as a key variable governing crystal formation. In magmatic systems, tracking crystallographic and chemical parameters in clinopyroxene is critical for robust magmatic thermobarometry and reconstructing crystal life histories. While chemical thermobarometry is limited by melt [...]
Evaluating Dynamic Viability of Finite-Fault Slip Models with Ensemble Kalman Inversion
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Finite-fault slip models are widely used to infer earthquake rupture processes, yet they are inherently non-unique and do not guarantee physically consistent rupture evolution. Here, we develop a data-constrained framework that couples Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EKI) with large-scale 3D dynamic rupture simulations to efficiently evaluate the dynamic viability of finite-fault slip models. The [...]
Historical and projected freshwater withdrawals and irrigation consumptive use for Arizona, 1896–2099
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology
Sustainable water management needs spatially resolved withdrawal estimates, yet such data remain scarce worldwide. In Arizona, USA, decades of aquifer overdraft and Colorado River over-allocation have outpaced local withdrawal data, constraining policymaking. We present annual freshwater withdrawal and irrigation consumptive use estimates for Arizona at 2 km resolution over 1896–2099, partitioned [...]
Quantifying volumetric erosion from symbolic expression of landslide morphology
Published: 2026-10-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Landslide volumetric erosion is fundamental to regional sediment budgets and downstream hazard assessment, yet accurately constraining material mobilization remains a primary bottleneck in Earth-system research. Legacy area–volume relations introduce substantial uncertainty when applied across heterogeneous landslide populations. Here, we examine whether the erosional and accumulation (i.e., [...]
A scaling law for stagnant-lid convection with composite visco-elasto-plastic rheology: application to Europa's ice shell
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
Scaling laws relating the Nusselt number (Nu) and the Rayleigh number (Ra) are the standard tool for translating numerical models of convection into predictions of surface heat flux and the thicknesses of the stagnant lid and the rheological sublayer. Existing scaling frameworks for icy moons normalise this relationship using a temperature-dependence parameter, γ, calibrated against viscous and [...]
Groundwater Potential Mapping in Northwestern Nigeria: A Comparison of the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Galileo-Enhanced CAT-XGB
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Global water scarcity intensifies the need for high-resolution groundwater assessment tools, yet traditional approaches struggle to reconcile qualitative expert weights with the extensive spatial coverage offered by remote sensing data. This study presents a comparative framework evaluating expert-driven Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (a ten-layer Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)) against [...]
The critical role of stored energy in metamorphism
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The mechanical behaviour of the Earth is widely assumed to change with increasing timescale as rocks progressively relax imposed stresses [1]. On short timescales, elasticity dominates and its release drives earthquakes [2]; at intermediate timescales, viscoelastic relaxation facilitates processes such as glacial rebound [3]; whereas over geological timescales viscous deformation dominates, [...]
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 [...]