Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Deep oxygen status of Lake Geneva: a zombie lake or a prematurely pronounced death?
Published: 2026-11-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Lake Geneva has become an emblematic example of a lake trapped in an apparent "zombie" state, where deep-water hypoxia persists despite decades of declining phosphorus concentrations. The persistence of oxygen depletion has largely been attributed to climate-driven reductions in deep winter mixing, assuming a limited responsiveness to successful nutrient management. The analysis of the 53-year [...]
Extensive Olivine Depletion in Archean Greenstone Belts: Evidence from Drill Core and Implications for Natural Hydrogen Generation
Published: 2026-11-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Mineral Physics
Natural hydrogen models commonly assume that ultramafic rocks in Archean greenstone belts retain olivine for continued serpentinization, but the regional extent of preservation is poorly constrained. We analyze thermal-infrared mineral logs from 18,692 m of ultramafic drill core in 218 Western Australian boreholes. Olivine exceeds a defined spectral threshold in 97% of intrusion-hosted core but [...]
Projecting Spatiotemporal Shifts in Phenology of Southeast Asian Commodity Crops Through A Simple Growing Degree Day Model For Near and Midterm Climate Change Scenarios
Published: 2026-11-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences
Understanding the impacts of climate change on crop phenology is vital for regional agricultural planning. This is especially pertinent to agricultural regions like Southeast Asia (SEA) dominated by small-holder modes of production. This study projected the Days to Maturity (DTM) trends for key commodity crops across the region over different future emission scenarios. A simple Growing Degree Day [...]
GEM-15: Global surface and terrain elevation models (15 meters) from sub-meter optical stereo imagery
Published: 2026-11-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Geomorphology, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Existing open global digital elevation models (DEMs) are limited to 30 m resolution, blur fine-scale urban and canopy structure, and rely on satellite missions flown between 2000 and 2015. We present Google's Global Elevation Models at 15 m (GEM-15), to our knowledge the first openly available near-global multi-layer elevation dataset at 15 m grid spacing. GEM-15 aggregates native 0.5 m optical [...]
Classifying rock dissolution patterns using reaction persistence length and front velocity
Published: 2026-11-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology
Acid–rock dissolution in carbonates underpins many natural and engineered subsurface processes. Péclet–Damköhler (Pe–Da) scaling is traditionally used to relate dissolution patterns to reaction kinetics, advection, and diffusion, but it fails to explain contrasting patterns in fluid–rock systems with similar pH. This is because Da does not capture reaction-rate changes along the flow path, and [...]
Permeability anisotropy systematically deflects fluid flow in volcanic media
Published: 2026-11-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
Permeability is fundamental in volcanic systems, governing heat and mass transfer across spatial scales and controlling pressurisation of the edifice and conduit. In nature, permeability is rarely isotropic and should be treated as a second-order tensor rather than a scalar. This contribution experimentally demonstrates directional dependence of permeability in transversely isotropic volcanic [...]
A National Screening Framework for Critical Mineral Potential and Heavy Metal Hazard in U.S. Mine Waste
Published: 2026-11-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Natural Resource Economics, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Mine Waste Inventory (NMWI) Version 2.0 provides the first comprehensive national database of mine-waste features across the United States, but it does not directly evaluate their critical-mineral potential or environmental hazard. We linked 1,498 tailings, waste-rock, leach, and slag features at 343 sites to nearby public geochemical observations from [...]
Role of Reforestation in Reducing Landslide Risk in Galyat, Pakistan: A Remote Sensing and GIS-Based Temporal Analysis (2011–2025)
Published: 2026-11-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Landslides are among the most common natural hazards in mountainous regions, often resulting in loss of life, damage to infrastructure, and destruction of agricultural land. Forest cover plays an important role in slope stabilization, soil erosion control, and landslide-risk reduction; however, empirical evidence regarding this relationship in specific mountainous landscapes remains limited. This [...]
A domain-specific atomistic model for Earth’s core materials
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Mineral Physics
Understanding Earth’s core requires accurate descriptions of multicomponent iron alloys under extreme conditions. Here, we develop the Earth’s Core Atomistic Model (ECAM) for Fe–Ni–S–Si–O–C–H alloys through sampling with a foundational atomistic model, targeted ab initio simulations, and iterative exploration. A compact dataset selected from nearly half a million configurations is consistently [...]
The width beyond a static arrest point predicts which static arrests span the fault
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Population models treat a static arrest as the end of the rupture, although some of those arrests span the fault in a fully dynamic calculation. This paper tests whether the static crack itself shows which ones. A static stress-intensity criterion and a fully dynamic rupture were compared on 180 new random stress fields on one 120 km antiplane fault with linear slip weakening. The predictor is [...]
New Scalar Measures of Geodetic Strain and Moment Rate from Kinematic Mode Decomposition: Application to the Southwestern United States
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Scalar representations of geodetic strain rate tensors are widely used to characterize crustal deformation and, in seismic hazard assessment, to convert strain rate to expected seismic moment rate. Existing scalar definitions of shear strain rate, total strain rate and deformation style are not defined consistently and, because they depend on eigenvalues that carry both dilatation and shear, [...]
Fertile or Barren: an open benchmark for testing geochemical fertility indices on mineralized and barren mafic-ultramafic intrusions.
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide deposits form through a sequence of processes (e.g., magma generation, transport, crustal interaction, sulfur saturation, and sulfide accumulation). These processes can modify whole-rock compositions in different ways, making it challenging to evaluate the geochemical fertility of mafic-ultramafic magmatic intrusions. Several whole-rock fertility indices have been [...]
Predictive modeling of microbial biomineralization across scales
Published: 2026-11-03
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Microorganisms influence mineral formation and transformation in natural and engineered environments, with consequences for element cycling, contaminant mobility, and mineral records. Predicting these processes remains difficult because microbial activity, local aqueous chemistry, interfacial reactions, and mineral formation operate across different spatial and temporal scales. Here, we review [...]
Residue alkalinity limits microbial leaching of rare earth elements from industrial wastes
Published: 2026-11-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Microorganisms that make acids can recover rare earth elements from industrial residues such as red mud, coal fly ash, phosphogypsum and electronic waste. Most published studies test one organism on one residue, so their results are hard to transfer. Here we compiled 17 bioleaching studies, covering 10 residues, 5 groups of organisms and 217 runs. We described them all with one physical model, [...]
Lithologic Period Predicts Yttrium Enrichment in Western United States Stream Sediments
Published: 2026-11-01
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Design of Experiments and Sample Surveys, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Screening ground for heavy rare earth prospecting potential at regional scale depends upon archived geochemistry, because favorable intrusive terrain in the western U.S. greatly exceeds what any drilling program could evaluate directly. This research examined whether the lithologic period of intrusive igneous terrain can reliably predict acid-leachable yttrium using only the stream sediment [...]