Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Experimental Investigation of Movement and Deposition of Woody-Debris Suspensions in Inclined Channel Tests
Published: 2026-03-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering
Debris flows, which mobilize large volumes of water, sediment, and woody debris, pose significant risks to human communities and infrastructure. In wildfire-affected forested areas, the accumulation of woody debris in drainage channels is exacerbated, thereby increasing the potential for more hazardous debris flows. To examine the influence of woody debris on debris flow dynamics, an inclined [...]
Probabilistic modelling of pharmaceutical pollution risk from sewage treatment work discharges using a Bayesian Network: application to a Scottish river catchment
Published: 2026-03-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Water Resource Management
Pharmaceuticals are increasingly recognised as a class of emerging contaminants of concern in rivers. Their continuous release from human use and variable removal in sewage treatment works (STWs) can produce ecologically relevant concentrations and contribute to antimicrobial resistance. We developed a probabilistic catchment-scale model based on a Bayesian Network (BN) to quantify pharmaceutical [...]
Volcanic CO2 degassing and microbial carbon fixation in a caldera offshore
Published: 2026-03-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Volcanology
Calderas are subsided volcanic terrains formed by the destructive power of some of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth. Many such depressions globally are today submerged by crater lakes or seawater, rendering them less accessible to scientific scrutiny, and hence more complicated to monitor during unrest. One of such systems is the restless, partly submerged Campi Flegrei caldera (CFc) near [...]
Territorially-Specialized Machine Learning Models for Wildfire Risk Prediction Across Argentina Using Satellite Data and H3 Hexagonal Grids
Published: 2026-03-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Wildfire risk prediction in large, ecologically diverse countries requires models that account for regional variation in fire drivers. We present GeoAlertAR-ML, a wildfire risk prediction system for Argentina that uses an ensemble of regionally specialized Random Forest classifiers operating over a national hexagonal grid of 13,231 H3 cells. Unlike global fire danger indices or single-model [...]
A terrain-aware approach for image-based urban flood monitoring
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Urban nuisance flooding is widespread, yet quantitative observations of its magnitude and spatial variability remain limited. Most image-based approaches provide only relative measures of flooded image fraction, while quantitative methods require surveyed ground control and three-dimensional reconstruction. We introduce a terrain aware, perspective weighted framework that converts flooded image [...]
Multi-decadal Barrier Island Fate Varies as a Function of Management Strategy
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Barrier islands are highly dynamic components of sandy coastlines, making up 10% of coastlines globally. Barriers provide recreational opportunities, protect mainland communities from storms, support tourism, and provide ecologically important habitat. Using a spatially explicit barrier island model, CASCADE, calibrated to represent the historical dynamics of Ocracoke, a barrier island in the [...]
Evaluating global spectral unmixing techniques using imaging spectroscopy data for retrieval of green, non-photosynthetic vegetation, and soil fractional cover
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Soil Science
Global estimates of fractional cover of green vegetation (GV), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and soil provide valuable information about the Earth system. As the new generation of Earth visible-to-shortwave infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectrometers take orbit, global fractional cover data will be obtainable with new and improved spectral unmixing algorithms. Using an ASD Field Spectrometer [...]
HIGH-RESOLUTION DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL FOR THE ITALIAN TERRITORY
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
High-resolution digital terrain models are essential for environmental planning and territorial analyses, and provide foundations for geomorphological and hydrological applications, including flood and landslide modelling and geo-hydrological hazard and risk assessments. In Italy, airborne LiDAR surveys have improved the representation of terrain morphology in the last decade, but their coverage [...]
Stealth pressurisation of boiling magma limits geodetic detectability of volcanic eruptions
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Volcanology
Crystallisation-driven volatile exsolution (second boiling) is widely invoked to pressurise shallow magma reservoirs, yet its ability to generate eruption-triggering overpressure and detectable ground deformation is poorly quantified. We couple phase equilibria with thermal and viscoelastic models of sill-like intrusions to map pressure evolution and geodetic detectability of second boiling. [...]
Open-source GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Flood Risk Model for data-constrained environments
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Flooding poses a major hazard across diverse environments and can be particularly difficult to estimate in urban/urbanizing cities without detailed hydrodynamic data/models. This paper presents a GIS-based, multi-criteria model that integrates openly available hydrological, soil, land cover, and drainage network data to produce a relative Flood Risk Index (FRI) at high spatial resolution. A [...]
crstools 1.0.0: an R package for cartographic analyses
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Spatial analyses are central to ecological studies, underpinning applications ranging from species distribution modelling to conservation planning and macroecological inference. However, most of these require translating processes occurring on a spherical surface into a planar map, inevitably introducing distortion biases. Projection choice can therefore influence both visual interpretation and [...]
Data-driven modeling of carbon dioxide and methane fluxes across the Arctic-boreal region: recent achievements and future opportunities
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The Arctic-boreal region contains a significant portion of the global carbon reservoir, which is becoming increasingly vulnerable to atmospheric release due to climate change. Thus, it is vital to monitor and model Arctic-boreal carbon flux dynamics to understand the shifting carbon balance. Data-driven statistical and machine learning models are now commonly used to upscale carbon dioxide (CO₂) [...]
Trace element contamination of sand samples by grinding
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry
Blanks during powdering processes were examined for major and trace elements using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Quartz sand (reference CV32.2) was used as a test substrate for powdering with grinding mills of several kinds: an agate mortar grinder, a stainless steel mortar grinder, a hard porcelain mortar grinder, an agate hand mill, and a hard porcelain hand mill. The [...]
Slope-dependent riverbed strengthening and the evolution of the threshold for motion in gravel-bed rivers
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology
The threshold for motion exerts a fundamental control on sediment transport, channel morphology, and fluvial erosion. While channel slope and flow history are known to influence entrainment thresholds in gravel-bed rivers, their interaction has not been explored. We investigate how channel slope modulates riverbed strengthening during low-flow periods. Flume experiments were conducted across [...]
Estimation of the water table position in unconfined aquifers with MODFLOW 6
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
The numerical estimation of the position of the water table in unconfined aquifers is important for many practical applications. Its determination through observations or analytical methods is restricted to a few cases. Therefore, it is often estimated through numerical simulations, which may be affected by numerical artifacts and/or poor stability. We use MODFLOW to estimate the position of the [...]