Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Potential groundwater recharge during floods
Published: 2026-02-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
Groundwater constitutes 30% of fresh water reserves on Earth. It is important as a source for drinking water and irrigation due to its good quality. For many aquifers in arid regions, long-term groundwater extraction has put in risk its sustainable use. Thus, it is relevant to understand and quantify processes that contribute to sustainable groundwater recharge. Most recharge to aquifers in [...]
Multi-Sensor Fusion of Sentinel-2 Imagery and ICESat-2 Satellite Laser Bathymetry for Benthic Habitat Classification in Key Largo, Florida Keys
Published: 2026-02-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Multispectral imagery has traditionally been used to classify benthic habitats; however, many challenges exist when using this method alone including the overlap of spectral signatures among habitat types, and the loss of signal due to water depth in coastal areas. The authors propose an innovative method that combines multispectral imagery from Sentinel-2 (Tile 17RNJ, January 30, 2024) with [...]
Compositional Reservoir Simulation Sensitivity Studies: Grid, Permeability, and Well Configuration Analysis Using OPM Flow
Published: 2026-02-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Petroleum Engineering
This technical report presents a comprehensive parametric sensitivity analysis of compositional reservoir simulation using the open-source OPM Flow simulator, extending previous gas injection feasibility studies (Padder, 2026) through three systematic investigations: (1) grid refinement analysis comparing coarse (7×7×3, 147 cells) and refined (14×14×6, 1,176 cells) spatial discretization under [...]
Two-thirds of global coastline affected by climate-driven saline groundwater intrusion by end of century, reaching far inland by 2300
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Fresh groundwater is a vital resource along global coastlines where already over a third of the world’s population lives. Saline groundwater intrusion, driven by sea-level rise, groundwater abstraction, and reduced recharge, threatens the potability of coastal groundwater. Yet, the global potential for intrusion remains uncertain. Using a global groundwater model, we assess climate-driven saline [...]
Multiple-Well Monitoring Site Adjacent to the Midway- Sunset and Buena Vista Oil Fields, Kern County, California
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater quality in and around oil fields in the Southern San Joaquin Valley is of interest to many California residents that rely heavily on groundwater for domestic, commercial, and agricultural use. To help assess the effects of historical oil-field activities and natural geologic sources on groundwater near the southwest margins of the Kern County Groundwater Subbasin, a multiple-well [...]
Shifting the Paradigm: Redefining the Chronostratigraphy of the Triassic Rewan Group, Bowen Basin, Australia
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
The Triassic continental Rewan Group in the northern Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia, consisting of the Sagittarius Sandstone and the Arcadia Formation, preserves a key record of terrestrial environments and faunas that have been assumed to document recovery following the end‑Permian mass extinction (EPME). The Rewan Group accumulated in a retroarc foreland basin during the Hunter–Bowen [...]
LLM-augmented taxonomy for >4500 palaeopalynology genera
Published: 2026-02-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics
Large Language Models (LLMs), being text-based, are ideal types of artificial intelligence to consider the complexities of palaeontological taxonomy because palaeontology depends on published textual descriptions as the primary, authoritative record of a taxon. This paper describes (1) the preparation of palynological (the study of organic-walled microfossils) taxonomic text contained within the [...]
A Domain-Based Evolution Model for Red Sea: New Sea-Floor Spreading Evidence
Published: 2026-02-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The propagation of the Red Sea continental margin remains unevaluated. Despite the unanimous agreement that the southern Red Sea axial ridge valley is underlain by juvenile oceanic crust, there is a lack of such agreement for the central and northern Red Sea. Significant issues relating to Red Sea tectonics are whether the Arabian and Nubian plates have been completely separated (i.e., oceanic [...]
A metadata schema for documenting material samples from multiple domains
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Library and Information Science
This paper documents a metadata schema, implementation, and associated vocabularies developed for the Internet of Samples (iSamples) project to integrate geoscience, archaeology/anthropology, biology and genomics sample descriptions in a single cross-domain catalog. To develop the sample description scheme for sample discovery across these disparate domains, we reviewed the metadata schema and [...]
Elevated in-situ Vp/Vs preceding hydraulic-fracturing-induced earthquakes
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Effective management of seismic hazard in geo-energy development demands real-time estimates of subsurface fault instability. However, real-time monitoring of pore pressure change during subsurface fluid injection remains challenging. Here, we present a novel high-resolution, non-tomographic monitoring strategy that tracks the ratio of seismic wave speeds (Vp/Vs) as a proxy for pore pressure [...]
Magmatic volatile budgets of the 2014 Tavurvur eruption at Rabaul Caldera, Papua New Guinea
Published: 2026-01-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Volcanology
Rabaul is a caldera volcano on New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, whose active cone Tavurvur ranks seventh globally for long-term SO2 and CO2 emissions. It is unknown why Rabaul is such a strong emitter of volcanic gases. Magma mixing between basaltic and dacitic magmas is envisioned to play a fundamental role in driving eruptions at Rabaul, but the compositions of mafic recharge magmas and [...]
The debt burden of tropical cyclones and climate change
Published: 2026-01-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resource Economics, Sustainability
Addressing climate change, through both mitigation and adaptation, is anticipated to require global investments of more than $6 trillion annually by 2035. However, many countries face significant barriers to accessing the finance needed for these investments, due to low or absent credit ratings, large debt burdens, and high borrowing costs. There is concern that climate change, through its [...]
Near-total loss of buttressing stresses observed on Pine Island Ice Shelf, West Antarctica
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ice shelves, the floating extensions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, provide critical buttressing stresses that resist the seaward flow of ice and help set the position of the grounding line, where the ice goes afloat. As buttressing stresses are diminished by thinning or fracturing and collapse of the ice shelf, glaciers tend to accelerate. Here, we focus on the response of Pine Island Ice Shelf [...]
Spontaneous liquefaction in saturated granular deposits: State controlled boundary and surface reconfiguration
Published: 2026-01-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Mining Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
In the case of water-saturated, granular deposits that are at risk of liquefaction, engineers need reliable information about the spatial extent of soil deformation in the event of liquefaction. It is not so important for them to know the exact location of the first failure. However, existing anal-yses primarily deal with the triggering of liquefaction and offer only limited information on how [...]
Estimation of Near-Surface Density using Vertical Gravity Gradients in Central and Western Japan
Published: 2026-01-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The Vertical Gravity Gradient (VGG), derived from the difference between terrestrial and airborne gravity data, highlights shallow density contrasts. We estimated the near-surface density structure of Central and Western Japan using VGGs derived from terrestrial data within 3 km of airborne flight lines. We constructed an inversion model on a 1/7-degree grid to estimate surface density and a [...]