Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Solubility and speciation of sulfur in silicate melts under crustal conditions
Published: 2025-12-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Volcanology
We have determined the solubility of sulfur as either sulfide (S2-) or sulfate (S6+) in a wide range of silicate melts at 1 atm pressure and temperatures of 1050° to 1250°C. The method involved suspension of the melt in either a mixture of CO2-CO-SO2 (sulfide solubility) or SO2 and air (sulfate solubility) for periods of up to 120 hours. Sulfur concentrations, measured by electron microprobe were [...]
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 [...]
Earth Embeddings: Towards AI-centric Representations of our Planet
Published: 2025-12-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
This paper presents a new perspective for the flexible and efficient representation of geospatial data, tailored to and empowered by AI: Earth embeddings. Earth embeddings provide a unified and accessible vector representation of local geographic characteristics. They fuse different geospatial data sources across time and space, compress highly-correlated raw geospatial data into one dense [...]
A Himalayan-Scale Orogen in the Central African Copperbelt and the Formation of a World-Class Metal Province.
Published: 2025-12-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Tectonics and Structure
The Central African Copperbelt (CACB) of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the world’s largest sediment-hosted copper-cobalt province. It comprises Tonian–Ediacaran sedimentary rocks of the Katangan Basin and Ediacaran–Cambrian metamorphic and intrusive rocks formed during the assembly of Gondwana. The age distribution of metal deposits within the CACB peaks during the orogeny, [...]
Shelf invading low oxygen waters control Cenozoic organic carbon burial rates
Published: 2025-12-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The thermostatic mechanisms of Earth’s persistent habitability are far from resolved. High resolution C isotope records, with P accumulation and coarse fraction I/Ca over the Cenozoic, allow the recalculation and assessment of controls on the global proportional flux of organic carbon burial, a regulator of atmospheric CO2 and O2. Proportional Corg burial was suppressed during the hothouse of the [...]
ShallowLandslider: a physics-based component for predicting regional distributions of coseismic landslides
Published: 2025-12-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology
Earthquakes can trigger thousands of shallow landslides across mountainous terrain, reshaping landscapes and posing severe hazards. Predicting their spatial distribution remains challenging because most existing models are empirical, event-specific, and lack physical interpretability. We introduce ShallowLandslider, a physics-based component within the open-source Landlab framework for regional [...]
Comment on Barboni et al. (2025), ‘Pervasive impact modification of pristine lunar clasts’
Published: 2025-12-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
In a recent contribution, Barboni et al. (2025) present an experimental calibration relating the aluminium content of zircon and its parent melt under lunar conditions. This calibration is then used to argue that lunar zircons are not in equilibrium with their host silicate melts, and that caution is required when interpreting zircon-derived U-Pb dates in evolved lunar rocks. Their contribution [...]
An assessment of the quality of microanalysis of silicate glass using scanning electron microscope-based energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS)
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The composition of volcanic glass records important clues into the origin and evolution of magmatic systems. However, the analysis of volcanic glass presents challenges when performed using electron-beam techniques, particularly due to Na mobility. While microanalysis of geological materials is usually performed using electron microprobe-based wavelength-dispersive spectrometry (EMP-WDS), we [...]
Recurrent evacuation of mantle mush by mafic recharge in ocean island basalts, recorded by La Palma clinopyroxene
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
Temporal variations in magma plumbing architecture and magmatic processes influence eruption priming and the interpretation of pre- and syn-eruptive signals. Yet, how these processes operate in low-flux volcanoes remains poorly constrained, leaving a key gap in understanding eruption precursors. Here we examine the temporal evolution of magmatic processes at La Palma, Canary Islands, a low-flux [...]
Revised History of Pleistocene Vertical Motions in NE Sicily and Southern Calabria, Italy, from 40Ar/39Ar Dating and Fault Zone Morphology
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Long-term rates of crustal uplift in southern Calabria and NE Sicily are incompletely understood due to limited information about the age of marine terraces at 1.0–1.3 km above sea level (asl). This study provides a new constraint on high-elevation terrace ages through integrated analysis of geochronology, stratigraphy, shoreline modeling, and fault-zone morphology. 40Ar/39Ar step-heating [...]
Ocean-arcs as a hidden cooling mechanism during the early Paleozoic
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The late Cambrian to end Ordovician is marked by a long-term climatic cooling, culminating with the short lived (<2 Ma) Hirnantian icehouse, before recovering to warmer climates. Increased silicate weathering during the Laurentian Taconic orogeny, driven by the accretion of ocean island arcs and obduction of ophiolites, has been invoked as a causal mechanism to help explain cooling. However, [...]
Advancing CLMU for regional urban climate simulations through WRF coupling: intercomparison with NOAH–SLUCM
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Urban areas are highly vulnerable to climate extremes, creating a pressing need for reliable modeling tools to support climate adaptation. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is widely used for regional urban climate simulations, and incorporating an alternative urban scheme for long-term climate projections expands the available modeling options and supports more robust simulation [...]
Evaluating Trade-offs Between Irrigation Profit and Streamflow Depletion Using a Hydro-Economic Model
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Groundwater overexploitation can reduce flows in connected rivers through streamflow depletion, which threatens ecosystems and downstream users who often rely on these flows for their economic wellbeing. Quantifying groundwater-surface water interactions and their economic trade-offs remains challenging for sustainable water management. This study integrates analytical groundwater and streamflow [...]
Where were the mountains and how big were they?
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Constraining past topography and the shape of Earth’s surface is the next frontier in palaeogeography and full-plate tectonic modelling. Mountains are highly dynamic on geological time scales, growing in response to tectonic processes such as subduction and continent collision, and eroding as they are exposed to precipitation and time. Mountain ranges regulate atmospheric circulation and enforce [...]
A lithium isotopic perspective of basalt weathering: Cycling of Li and its mobility relative to Ca and Mg
Published: 2025-12-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Lithium isotope composition (δ7Li) has been extensively utilized to trace silicate weathering. Although the direction and magnitude of Li isotope fractionation during Li adsorption onto secondary minerals are well understood, the relative importance of Li partitioning via its adsorption vis-à-vis structural incorporation into clay minerals on overall Li isotope fractionation remains poorly [...]