Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Characterizing and Predicting Change in the Global Ocean Biosphere: A Four-Dimensional Observing Strategy for the 2028–2037 Decadal Survey
Published: 2026-09-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Ocean ecosystems constitute the largest habitable volume on Earth and regulate climate, support fisheries and a global Blue Economy valued at an estimated $1.5 trillion annually and provide services on which human wellbeing depends. Four decades of satellite ocean color observations have transformed understanding of phytoplankton distribution, biodiversity, and productivity, and NASA's PACE [...]
Topology-Aware Quality Control of Triangulated Terrain Models Using Local Euler Curvature and Elevation-Filtration Curves
Published: 2026-09-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Triangulated irregular networks (TINs) are widely used to represent topography and bathymetry, but their quali-ty control is usually dominated by geometric criteria such as minimum angle and aspect ratio, which do not test whether connectivity errors have changed the topology of the mesh. We present a topology-aware quali-ty-control framework based on a local Euler-curvature identity and on [...]
Can a Data Repository Survive a Crisis? Development of the Repository Crisis Scorecards
Published: 2026-09-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Disaster scenarios are not usually considered by scientists when publishing or archiving data. The goal is often to satisfy more immediate needs and requirements of funders, journal publishers, or collaborators. Yet, recent events around the globe, combined with the increased need for high-quality data to solve large-scale problems, have highlighted the vulnerability of data stored in [...]
Compound Supershear Rupture During the 2026 Venezuela Earthquake Doublet
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The 24 June 2026 Venezuela earthquake doublet occurred along a complex transform-fault system. Teleseismic P waves encompassing both cataloged events were analyzed using potency density tensor inversion with seven structure models. All models indicate predominantly eastward rupture over approximately 220 km, including several stages of supershear propagation. Three apparent rupture stalls [...]
The single-pair unwrapping ceiling is a property of the track, not of the radar
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology
The half-fringe limit of a repeat-pass interferogram is quoted as a property of the sensor: a quarter wavelength of line-of-sight displacement per pair. On a slope it is not. Sensitivity to downslope motion is f = |m · u|, and at a mountain source f varies with the track, with the site, and across the source itself. We compute f per pixel over 500 m source discs at two rock–ice avalanche sources, [...]
New insights into rift evolution from data-constrained burial and thermal histories at the northern South China Sea margin
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology
The evolution of the rifted margin of the northern South China Sea challenges predictions of previous models but a knowledge gap still exists regarding how thermal history varies at different locations and times of rifting. International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expeditions 367/368/368X collected samples of sediment that can be used to model the thermal evolution at different rifting stages [...]
Seasonal variation of earthquake source characteristics of the long-duration Palghar swarm, western India
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Tectonics and Structure
A swarm sequence initiated in November 2018 in the Palghar region near the western coast of India, and continued with high intensity for two years. About 8300 earthquakes were found with horizontal and depth uncertainties of ≤ 1.5 km after relocation. The earthquakes were distributed along two narrow N-S oriented clusters, separated by ~5 km. We performed time-domain regional waveform full moment [...]
Unlocking Blue Carbon's Potential Requires Targeted Uncertainty Reductions
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oceanography, Sustainability
Coastal “blue” carbon ecosystems like swamps and marshes are among the most efficient natural carbon sinks on Earth. Consequently, restoring and conserving these wetlands is gaining interest from private and government stakeholders as a nature-based solution to offset greenhouse gas emissions and generate revenue through carbon credits. However, the financial viability of blue carbon crediting is [...]
Coupled Physics-Based and Machine Learning Streamflow Modeling with High-Resolution Flood Inundation and Impact Assessment for Hurricane Florence (2018): A Case Study of the Neuse River at Goldsboro, North Carolina
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Computer Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Planetary Hydrology, Probability
Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina in September 2018 and produced record or near-record river stages across the Neuse River basin, including at United States Geological Survey (USGS) gauge 02089000 near Goldsboro. This study presents an end-to-end hydrological and floodmapping workflow that couples a semi-distributed, physics-based rainfall-runoff model (Physics V3.5) and a [...]
Azores–Canaries mantle plume interactions revealed by seismic imaging
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Mantle plumes transport heat and material from the deep Earth towards the surface, yet how neighbouring plumes interact and influence mantle flow remains poorly understood. The Azores--Madeira--Canaries region, which hosts several closely spaced mantle upwellings, provides a unique opportunity to investigate these processes. Here we use data from the UPFLOW experiment, an unprecedented [...]
Approaches and challenges in estimating economic loss from tsunami damage models
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences
Tsunami damage assessment as a field has been steadily gaining momentum in the scientific community, and one of the most common ways in which damage has been quantified is by fragility functions. However, how tsunami damage models can be applied to practical disaster risk management is still relatively underexplored. An important aspect of disaster risk management is loss estimations. Loss [...]
Critical mineral pathfinder targeting in the Aravalli basement (northwest India) calibrated against age and tectonically-matched Western Australian analogues using the AuScope EarthBank platform
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Critical mineral element fingerprints established in Australian regional geochemistry could accelerate exploration in geologically comparable but less-characterised terranes of north-west India, provided that a defensible basis for comparison can be established. We present a drainage-based method for identifying age and tectonically-matched Australian analogues for north-west Indian [...]
Global isotopic proxy records for Ordovician temperature reconstruction
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
The Ordovician represents a critical interval in the Phanerozoic, marked by two profound biological events: the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), with an unprecedented tenfold increase in marine species diversity, which was abruptly terminated by the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME), one of the most severe extinction events in Earth's history, wiping out approximately 85% of [...]
Efficient measurement of marine sedimentary porewater pH and oxygen concentrations using optical sensors
Published: 2026-09-16
Subjects: Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Porewater oxygen concentrations and pH exert substantial influence on sediment diagenesis and potentially towards the reliability of palaeoceanographic records. However, these fundamental chemical parameters are not systematically measured during sea-going expeditions. This study presents an easy, inexpensive and effective method to measure marine sediment porewater oxygen and pH levels using [...]
Surface-wave sensitivity to anisotropy in a 3D seismogeodynamics mantle plume model.
Published: 2026-09-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology
High-resolution anisotropic seismic images of the upper mantle provide fundamental constraints on mantle plume dynamics and mantle deformation. Seismic tomography has come far by using travel-time and waveform (phase) information but has exploited amplitude information only to a limited extent. Here, we calculate adjoint sensitivity kernels to assess the value of incorporating amplitude [...]