Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Ferdinand von Hochstetter’s November 1860 Folio of New Zealand survey data and the location of the Pink and White Terraces
Published: 2023-03-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology
This research utilises Ferdinand von Hochstetter’s unpublished November 1860 Folio of survey data from the first major terrestrial topographical and geological survey in New Zealand. The Folio data enable the reconstruction of the survey across the North Island to Lake Rotomahana, with unique bearings to the lost Pink and White Terraces. Originally prepared for the purposes of cartographic [...]
Paleoenvironmental implications of Deccan volcanism relative to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction: evidence from the ‘red bole’ record
Published: 2023-03-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) have been widely studied over the past decades due to their likely link to mass extinction events. Previous work involving U-Pb zircon dating of the Deccan lava flows indicates that the main phase-2 began 250 Ka before the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction boundary and continued into the early Danian, suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship. Closer to [...]
Complex rupture evolution of the 2007 Martinique earthquake: a non-double-couple event in the Caribbean Sea
Published: 2023-03-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A large non-double-couple component of a tectonic earthquake indicates that its rupture likely was complex and likely involved multiple faults. Detailed source models of such earthquakes can add to our understanding of earthquake source complexity. The 2007 Martinique earthquake in the Caribbean Sea is one of the largest recent earthquakes with a known large non-double-couple component. It was an [...]
Vulnerability of Firn to Hydrofracture: Poromechanics Modeling
Published: 2023-03-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences
On the Greenland Ice Sheet, hydrofracture connects the supraglacial and subglacial hydrologic systems, coupling surface runoff dynamics and ice velocity. Over the last two decades, the growth of low-permeability ice slabs in the firn above the equilibrium line has expanded Greenland’s runoff zone, but the vulnerability of these regions to hydrofracture is still poorly understood. [...]
Structure and Morphology of an Active Conjugate Relay Zone, Messina Strait, Southern Italy
Published: 2023-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Messina Strait is a narrow fault-bounded marine basin that separates the Calabrian peninsula from Sicily in southern Italy. It sits in a seismically active region where normal fault scarps and raised Quaternary marine terraces record ongoing extension driven by southeastward rollback of the Calabrian subduction zone. A review of published studies and new data shows that normal faults in the [...]
Largest aftershock nucleation driven by afterslip during the 2014 Iquique sequence
Published: 2023-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Various earthquake models predict that aseismic slip modulates the seismic rupture process but actual observations of such seismic-aseismic interaction are scarce. We analyze seismic and aseismic processes during the 2014 Iquique earthquake sequence. High-rate Global Positioning System (GPS) displacements demonstrate that most of the early afterslip is located downdip of the M 8.1 mainshock and [...]
Steady decline in mean annual air temperatures in the first 30 ka after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary
Published: 2023-03-06
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy
The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary marks one of the five major mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic. How the climate system responded to a bolide impact and extensive volcanism at this time over different timescales is highly debated. Here we use the distribution of branched tetraether lipids (brGDGT) from fossil peats at two sites in Saskatchewan, Canada (paleolatitude ~55°N), to generate a [...]
Glacier projections sensitivity to temperature-index model choices and calibration strategies
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Glacier models contribute significantly to the uncertainty of glacier change projections. In this study, we focus on temperature-index mass-balance (MB) models and their calibration, exploring the impact of various design choices on projections. Using the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM), we compare the effects of different surface-type dependent degree-day factors, temporal climate resolutions [...]
Multi-scale rupture growth with alternating directions in a complex fault network during the 2023 south-eastern Türkiye and Syria earthquake doublet
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A devastating doublet of earthquakes with moment magnitude Mw 7.9 and Mw 7.6 earthquakes contiguously occurred in SE Türkiye near the NW border of Syria. Here we perform a potency-density tensor inversion to simultaneously estimate rupture evolution and fault geometry for the doublet. We find the initial Mw 7.9 earthquake involved discrete episodes of supershear rupture and back-rupture [...]
Effects of concentrated and intense heavy rain on phreatic eruptions ～Based on a case study of the phreatic eruptions of Mt. Ontake in Japan-～
Published: 2023-02-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
"This paper is a non-peer reviewed preprint submitted to EarthArXiv" For humans living in an economic zone adjacent to volcanoes, the reality of unpredictable eruptions is a constant concern. This paper presents a new view on the phreatic eruption process of Mt. Ontake, Japan. The purpose of this posting is to find ways to reduce casualties from phreatic eruptions. As a background, there is the [...]
Seasonal and annual tropical river pattern change detection using machine learning
Published: 2023-02-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Rivers in the tropics are more likely to exhibit seasonal changes in pattern than those in temperate regions because of strongly seasonal rainfall. However, such changes in seasonal tropical river patterns have not been widely investigated. Machine learning methods are used in this study with Sentinel-2 multispectral remote sensing images to classify active channel landforms (water; unvegetated [...]
Large variation in Mekong river plastic transport between wet and dry season
Published: 2023-02-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Plastic pollution in rivers is of increased global concern. Rivers act both as pathways for land-based plastic waste into the ocean, and as plastic reservoirs for long-term retention. Reliable observations are key to designing, optimizing and evaluating strategies to prevent and reduce plastic pollution. Several measurement methods have been developed to quantify macroplastic ($>$0.5 cm) storage [...]
Extrapolation based regionalized re-evaluation of the global estuarine surface area
Published: 2023-02-24
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology
At the interface between the continental and oceanic domains, estuaries are essential components of the land-ocean aquatic continuum that play a significant role in biogeochemical cycles, as they transform and export large amounts of carbon and nutrients from rivers to coastal waters. Because of this intense biogeochemical processing, they are significant ecosystems in terms of greenhouse gas [...]
Eclogites and basement terrane tectonics in the northern arm of the Grenville orogen, NW Scotland
Published: 2023-02-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The presence of eclogites within continental crust is a key indicator of collisional orogenesis and they have been used worldwide to assist in the delineation of ancient collisional sutures. Eclogites within the Eastern Glenelg basement inlier of the Northern Highland Terrane (NHT) have been re-dated in order to provide more accurate constraints on the timing of collision within the northern arm [...]