Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Dehydration of Serpentinized Ultramafic Rocks as a Candidate Deep Crustal Source of Natural Hydrogen and Hydrocarbons: Experimental Evidence from the Lesser Caucasus
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology
Natural hydrogen generated by serpentinization — the hydration of ultramafic rocks, in which ferrous iron is oxidised and molecular hydrogen is liberated from water — has recently been shown to proceed at rates of only 0.1 to 0.5 tonnes H₂ yr⁻¹ km⁻³ of reactive rock, implying that economically significant accumulations would require 10³ to 10⁴ years to develop [1]. A complementary process [...]
Late Paleocene leaf macroflora from a destroyed outcrop of the Marcelina Formation, Paso Diablo Mine, Venezuela: a rescue record
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Other Plant Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
In 2016, a production blast at a mining face of the Paso Diablo Mine (Guasare Basin, northwestern Venezuela) exposed a level rich in fossil leaves of the Marcelina Formation (late Paleocene), located between coal seams 4O and 4M. The material was removed as overburden by a mining shovel a few hours after it was documented. We present the first published record of leaf macroflora from this [...]
Protracted Dyking of High-Viscosity Magma into Near-Solidus Rock at Casiri, Peru
Published: 2026-10-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Dykes are a key mechanism for material transport within volcanic arcs and typically propagate over days to months. We document an unusually slow dyking episode in the arc of southern Peru that lasted for 1.5 years. The dyke opened up to 0.5 m from 2-8 km depth and was coupled with inflation of an underlying arc-parallel magma reservoir. To reconcile the slow opening of such a thin dyke with [...]
Triple oxygen isotope equilibrium between calcite and water: new constraints over 8–200 °C and their metrological implications
Published: 2026-10-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
High-precision measurements of carbonate oxygen-17 compositions are increasingly used for studying paleo-environments, hydrology, diagenesis, or biomineralization processes. Calibrating triple oxygen isotope equilibrium fractionations between calcite and water as a function of temperature provides a critical baseline for many applications. Here we report new observations constraining these [...]
Laboratory Spectroradiometric Temperature Retrieval of Silicates Using Linearized Wien Approximations and Polynomial Regression
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geophysics and Seismology, Mineral Physics
Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing provides critical diagnostic capabilities for surface temperature and spectral emissivity retrieval. However, extracting these parameters from at-target radiance measurements is fundamentally ill-posed because Planck's radiation law non-linearly couples kinetic temperature and spectral emissivity, creating an underdetermined system of N spectral bands with [...]
Erosion-induced momentum production and system acceleration govern landslide mobility
Published: 2026-10-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geotechnical Engineering, Glaciology, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Erosion can fundamentally alter landslide acceleration through the produced momentum. However, existing analytical landslide velocity models do not account for the energy dissipation associated with erosion-induced system acceleration. Here, I present a novel, complete dynamical velocity model for erosive landslides that incorporates two intrinsically coupled mechanically essential processes: [...]
Contour-crossing calculations quantify decadal changes in the pCO2 impacts of inorganic chemical weathering in the North American Arctic
Published: 2026-10-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Degradation of Arctic permafrost is altering biogeochemical dynamics by exposing previously frozen sediment to water, acids, and oxidants. While thaw-driven enhancement of carbonate and silicate mineral weathering results in drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2), acting as a negative feedback on modern climate change, enhancement of sulfide mineral oxidation increases pCO2 and acts as a [...]
Data-efficient prediction of rare earth leaching from industrial residues with physics-constrained machine learning
Published: 2026-10-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geochemistry, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Coal ash, mine-water sludge, red mud and phosphogypsum contain rare earth elements, and each new feedstock needs its own leaching recipe. LixaLearn couples a small neural network to closed-form rate laws for four metal hosts (exchange sites, fast-dissolving minerals, slow-dissolving minerals and a locked fraction), with part of the fast host limited by the solubility of its mineral. The network [...]
Assessing Basin Amplification and Rupture Directivity Effects Using Physics-Based Ground Motion Simulations in Wellington
Published: 2026-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology
Near-surface velocity structure plays a crucial role in modulating ground motion, and, in turn, contributes to seismic risk. However, a complete understanding of the basin effect is limited, owing to the paucity of detailed shallow basin structure, geological structures and near-field seismic sources. In this study, we perform physics-based simulations of ground motions incorporating the [...]
Integrating rapid 3D structural validation into interpretation: forward modelling of the Katnook Graben, Otway Basin
Published: 2026-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Structural validation of a prospect is invariably applied after the interpretation is finished, by restoring one or two key lines in 2D or, rarely, by a full 3D restoration that needs finished horizons and a specialist. The authors propose that a simple 3D kinematic forward model, built in minutes using a few explicit structural rules, fully restorable and scaled onto the mapped horizons, is a [...]
NepalDTM: A National 8-Metre Bare-Earth Digital Terrain Model of Nepal from Multi-Source Satellite Data Fusion
Published: 2026-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
NepalDTM is an open bare-earth elevation model of Nepal stored on an 8 m grid. Where the NASA High Mountain Asia 8 m stereo mosaic has a usable height, that mosaic is the surface. Elsewhere the surface is Copernicus GLO-30. A histogram gradient-boosting model, trained on 6,230,548 ICESat-2 points and 7,035,904 GEDI points, predicts how far the surface sits above the ground and subtracts that [...]
On-Fault Parameters and Fault Connectivity Control Synthetic Earthquake Catalogs and 30-Year Rupture Probabilities in RSQSim Simulations of the Eastern San Francisco Bay Area
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The faults in the Eastern San Francisco Bay Area in California have long been known as a source of seismic hazard. This potential for large earthquakes, paired with high population density and economic activity leads to high seismic risk in the Bay Area. In this study we utilize the physics-based earthquake simulator RSQSim to generate synthetic earthquake catalogs for the San Francisco East Bay. [...]
N2O source partitioning and reduction progress quantified with isotopocule datasets – a review of the modelling strategies
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Nitrous oxide (N2O) isotope signatures provide crucial information for partitioning microbial production pathways, including bacterial, fungal, and nitrifier denitrification, chemo-denitrification and nitrification, as well as for estimating the degree of N2O reduction to N2. However, interpreting the three-dimensional isotope data is highly challenging due to numerous production pathways and [...]
Horizontal Strain Rate estimation from InSAR Observations and the Strapdown Method
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is able to estimate ground-surface displacements, but interpreting deformation mechanisms and infrastructure risk requires analysis of spatial displacement gradients. The recently introduced strapdown method enables three-dimensional displacement velocities to be estimated from InSAR observations alone, including the east and north components [...]
Autogenic initiation of basin-scale salt tectonics
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Salt structures typically form due to the post-depositional flow of salt triggered and maintained by allogenic drivers such as differential loading, gravity gliding, or shortening. Using ~26,000 km² of 3-D seismic reflection data and 34 wells from the Southern North Sea, we propose that the earliest regional deformation of the Southern Permian Basin salt giant (Zechstein Supergroup) was instead [...]