Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
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 [...]
Pedogenic magnetic enhancement in a Latossolo Vermelho (Oxisol) formed on slate in the Brazilian Cerrado: an integrated record of repeated wetting–drying cycles
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seasonal wetting–drying cycles in tropical soils can drive redox reactions that control the formation and transformation of ferrimagnetic iron oxides. In the profile-scale case study, we investigated a well-drained, clayey Latossolo Vermelho (Oxisol/ Ferralsol) developed on weakly magnetic slate in the Brazilian Cerrado. The profile was sampled to 190 cm depth in the dry season (July 2023) and at [...]
Observational uncertainty is the primary source of climate uncertainty in impacts projections
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geography
Projections of future climate damages underpin environmental policy and risk management but depend on inherently uncertain climate data. Uncertainty in historical climate observations, used to train impact models and calibrate climate projections to the observed record, is rarely considered. We show this “observational uncertainty” contributes more than the spread across or within global climate [...]
Previously undetected disturbances are the dominant driver of carbon loss in protected Amazonian forests
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Forest Management, Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Amazonian forests face increasing pressures from human-induced deforestation and degradation, compounded by natural disturbances such as droughts and windthrow events. In response, forest protection policies strengthened and formalised large protected areas and Indigenous lands, now covering 43% of the region. However, clearings and degradation in these protected areas are complex and hard to [...]
From rifting to collision: deep closure of a Wilson cycle during the Archean–Paleoproterozoic transition at the Carajás-Bacajá boundary, Amazonian Craton
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Tectonics and Structure
The Carajás-Bacajá boundary preserves complementary archives of continental rifting, passive-margin development, subduction, collision and post-collisional exhumation across the Archean-Paleoproterozoic transition. We present whole-rock lithogeochemistry, Sm-Nd isotopes, U-Pb zircon geochronology and thermobarometry from the Vila Santa Fé-Rio Preto association, a mafic-felsic granulitic [...]
Decoupling ore formation, ductile fabric and hydrothermal upgrading in the giant Salobo IOCG deposit, Carajás Province, Brazil
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Tectonics and Structure
The Salobo deposit is the largest Cu-Au deposit of the Carajás Mineral Province, northern Brazil, and is hosted by altered volcanosedimentary schists of the Itacaiúnas Supergroup along the Cinzento Lineament. Multiscale structural analysis, mineral chemistry and published geochronology define four structural families: Pre-Dn, Dn, Dn+1 and Dn+2. The Pre-Dn event comprises high-temperature K, K-Fe [...]
A retrodictive theory of the origin of the Moon: a secondary circumterrestrial disk redistributed by the retrograde flyby of a rocky planet
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences, The Sun and the Solar System
The Moon is a datum, and the question is retrodictive: which physical pathways lead to it without a giant impact? The pathway examined starts from a young, hot proto-Earth, soft but never liquid, flattened and inflated by a 6 h rotation, surrounded by a disk of material that has not yet formed a satellite. A second rocky planet, planet B, passes close to the Earth against its rotation, without [...]
Mantle, lithospheric and crustal controls on large igneous province magmatism: petrogenesis of the Antrim Lava Group, North Atlantic Igneous Province
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Volcanology
Continental large igneous province (LIP) volcanism is the result of long-lived interactions between mantle plumes, lithospheric topography, ascending melts, and crustal lithologies. Disentangling the competing effects of such factors is required to understand the petrogenesis of LIP magmas and ultimately the controls on their geochemical and isotopic diversity and on ore-forming processes. The [...]
MCR-GeoChem: A harmonized, quality-flagged open compilation of whole-rock and mineral geochemistry for the 1.1 Ga Midcontinent Rift in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Higher Education, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Nickel, copper, cobalt, and the platinum-group metals are all on the final 2025 U.S. List of Critical Minerals, and the 1.1-billion-year-old Midcontinent Rift around Lake Superior hosts some of the largest domestic resources of them. The rock chemistry needed to study these systems is public but fragmented: it is spread across the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Geochemical Database, [...]
Stabilizing seismic source inversion by accounting for P-wave picking uncertainty: A waveform-shift covariance approach
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In seismic source inversion using teleseismic P waves, P-wave arrival times are picked from observed waveforms and used to adjust their timing relative to the predicted arrivals. However, uncertainty in the picked arrival times remains after this correction. Picking errors shift the entire waveform and produce temporally correlated waveform errors. If these errors are not properly accounted for, [...]