Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
MUONITH v1.0 — A Fast Simulation Tool for Multi-directional Muography Observation Design
Published: 2026-07-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Multi-directional muography is a non-destructive technique for imaging the three-dimensional density structure of large objects such as volcanoes. Recent developments in detector technology—miniaturization, low-power operation, and weight reduction—are rapidly expanding the range of feasible observation sites, and detector deployment by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is also being studied; in [...]
Effective Microbial Kinetics under Pore-Scale Transport Limitation: A Biofilm Effectiveness-Factor Theory
Published: 2026-07-27
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Reactive-transport models of porous media usually evaluate microbial reactions with Monod kinetics and rate constants measured on well-mixed laboratory cultures, in which every cell is exposed to the same substrate concentration. In natural sediments and aquifers this assumption fails at the pore scale, because the cells are not suspended but reside in biofilms and aggregates attached to the [...]
Connectivity effects on fluid age and residence time distributions in two- and three-dimensional pore networks
Published: 2026-07-27
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Pore-scale simulations are often run on a single plane cut from a three-dimensional image, because resolving the whole pore space is expensive. This study asks what that shortcut costs. What is at stake is the distribution of fluid ages, and above all its long tail, because that tail is what slow reactions respond to. We computed the distribution directly from the flow field, by labeling the [...]
Rapid SRO aluminosilicate formation in a narrow pH interval fractionates silicon isotopes
Published: 2026-07-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Soil Science
Short-range ordered (SRO) hydrous aluminosilicates (HAS) are among the earliest secondary phases formed during incongruent silicate weathering, yet the timescales and silicon isotope (δ30Si) fractionation associated with their initial formation remains poorly constrained. We use stepwise room temperature NaOH titration to resolve pH buffering, Si–Al removal, and dissolved δ30Si evolution in two [...]
Reconstructing age and reactivity distributions from the moments carried by central-moment transport models
Published: 2026-07-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A central-moment transport model follows a property that varies across a population, such as the age of water parcels or the decay rate of organic-matter particles. Instead of storing the whole distribution of that property, it keeps only a few summary numbers, the moments, and moves those through the model. But the distribution itself is usually what a scientist wants, so it has to be rebuilt [...]
Open at the interface, closed at the core: neutrality claims in AI‑enabled geoscience infrastructure focusing on Africa – The case of Deep‑Time Digital Earth and GeoGPT
Published: 2026-07-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology
Geological data has become strategic infrastructure for resource assessment, investment negotiation, and economic sovereignty. Remotely hosted big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms are increasingly promoted for geoscience in the Global South, particularly Africa. Whether such platforms are genuinely geopolitically unaligned, and how this can be verified, has direct implications for [...]
Machine-learning-based classification of shear-band particles in a discrete-element reverse-fault model
Published: 2026-07-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering
Discrete element method (DEM) simulations provide time-resolved particle-scale information on particle motion, contact forces, rotation, and local deformation. However, these outputs are high-dimensional, making it difficult to directly interpret which particle-level descriptors characterize localized deformation. This study develops a machine-learning workflow for classifying shear-band [...]
Authorship and contribution recognition in infrastructure-scale Earth science collaborations
Published: 2026-07-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Community-driven collaborative initiatives across palaeoclimate, oceanography, and Earth system science have transformed how scientific knowledge is generated, integrated, and interpreted. Proxy synthesis efforts, climate model intercomparison projects, and scientific drilling programmes increasingly function as collaborative scientific infrastructures sustained by distributed intellectual labour [...]
Feedback-Controlled Linear Actuator System to Simulate Laboratory Analogs of Landslides
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
This study describes a scientific apparatus that induces granular flow by tilting an acrylic sample container under user-prescribed constant angular velocity and acceleration profiles. The system consists of a transparent sample container mounted within a motorized frame driven by a linear actuator that we control using pulse-width modulation with feed-forward compensation. Additional components [...]
Fabric and strain analyses support a unified framework for sediment deposition, relaxation, and glass formation
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physics, Sedimentology, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
The kinetic energy of particles at deposition Ek is a distinguishing feature of all near-surface environments, varying due to particle mass and local stress field within the fluid that transports the particles. Once deposited, a granular fabric emerges that exerts control on the subsequent relaxation processes, including on whether, when, and how granular sediments catastrophically fail. Despite [...]
Rapid Fault Leakage Screening for CO₂ Storage Under Uncertainty: Application to a Faulted Miocene Aquifer in the Malay Basin
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Other Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Transport Phenomena
Geological CO2 storage is critical for mitigating climate change, yet the risk of leakage along faults poses significant challenges. Faults function as structural traps or preferential CO2 migration pathways depending on their sealing capacity. This study applies a computationally efficient rapid fault leakage analysis tool that combines a vertically integrated reservoir model with an upscaled [...]
A Late Miocene Reduction in the Spatial Breadth of Marine Tephra Occurrence: A Five-Basin Test of the Volcanic-Pulse Hypothesis
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
Episodic "pulses" of explosive volcanism have been widely invoked to explain climatic and biotic events across the Phanerozoic, but rarely tested against a high-resolution, multi-basin occurrence record. I tested for non-random temporal clustering of explosive volcanism using VOLCORE, a compilation of 34,696 visible tephra layers recovered by ocean drilling from across the world’s ocean basins. [...]
Multi-scale constraints resolve the 2025 Kamchatka megathrust rupture in a 3D heterogeneous Earth
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Great megathrust earthquakes produce deformation over a wide range of spatial scales, yet how near‑trench, near‑field, and far‑field static displacements collectively constrain the same rupture remains poorly understood. Here we analyze the 29 July 2025 Mw 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake using spatially multi-scale observations: tsunami-derived initial uplift models for near-trench offshore deformation, [...]
Joint falsification of gravity, magnetotelluric and surface-wave data resolves a fertile-corridor discriminator: the Al Amar suture, Arabian Shield
Published: 2026-07-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A prospective mineral province is defined by deep structure that is known only from sparse geophysical data, and any one dataset permits several geological interpretations. This paper describes a prototype that converts a geologist's written tectonic history into a falsifiable prior on deep petrophysical structure and asks which measurements separate geologically distinct histories. A language [...]
Fluvial response and recovery after the Permo-Triassic Mass Extinction revealed through quantitative paleohydrology
Published: 2026-07-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Anthropogenic climate change represents the greatest modern forcing on global river dynamics. Investigating the sensitivity of rivers to past climate in the geological record is thus crucial in understanding future landscapes in a warming world. The Sherwood Sandstone Group, UK, a unit of early-middle Triassic (c. 248-239 Ma) dryland fluvial deposits, records events during and after the [...]