Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
On the Chronology and Development of Europe's Highest Aeolian Landform: The Sarykum Dune Complex in the North Caspian Region
Published: 2025-01-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The highest aeolian landform in Europe, the Sarykum dune complex, is located in the southwestern Caspian Depression near the Caucasus Mountains. Despite its prominence and accessibility, its morphology and evolution have been previously poorly understood. In this study we investigate the dune complex through a synthesis of geomorphological, geological, and geochronological methods. Our findings [...]
Widely variable granite production from a restitic metasedimentary terrane by volatile redistribution
Published: 2025-01-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Other Earth Sciences
The amount of melt extracted from a metasedimentary source is a major parameter in quantitative models of crustal processes; however, quantification of melt volume is thwarted by the heterogeneity of the crust and a lack of estimates concerning the amount of fluid present. We observe that highly systematic trends in metasedimentary rocks allow treatment of protoliths as two component mixtures, [...]
Planform geometric classification of fluvial and tidal channels via machine learning
Published: 2025-01-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology
Despite forming under different flow conditions, the geometries of tidal and fluvial channel planforms and planform transformations display significant overlap, hindering efforts to differentiate them geometrically. Although studies have demonstrated that gobally, tidal and fluvial planforms are statistically distinct based on meander metrics, there are currently no machine-learning methodologies [...]
Rift-Induced Repositioning of Mantle Plumes Beneath the Indian Lithosphere: Implications for Deccan Volcanism
Published: 2025-01-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Indian craton comprises a number of old rifts, e.g., the Narmada, the Mahanadi and the Godavari rifts, which reactivated in multiple stages during the supercontinent breakup events. The latest reactivation of the Indian rift system occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary when the Réunion plume interacted with the Indian plate, leading to the massive Deccan volcanism at 66 Ma. Although the [...]
DeepGEM-EGF: A Bayesian strategy for joint estimates of source-time functions and empirical Green’s functions
Published: 2025-01-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences
An earthquake record is the convolution of source radiation, path propagation and site effects, and instrument response. Isolating the source component requires solving an ill-posed inverse problem. Whether the instability of inferred source parameters arises from varying properties of the source, or from approximations we introduce in solving the problem, remains an open question. Such [...]
Basin-scale development of giant collapse structures induced by gypsum diagenesis
Published: 2025-01-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Across buried sedimentary basins, the dissolution-prone nature of evaporite sequences drives the formation of collapse structures (e.g., sinkholes), fundamentally transforming landscapes at large scales. Understanding where, why, and how such structures form is crucial, given they pose geological hazards that may threaten human safety and infrastructure stability, or may affect subsurface [...]
Model weighting for ISMIP6-Greenland based on observations and similarity among models
Published: 2025-01-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Glaciology
The Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6) resulted in a large number of ice sheet simulations from multiple ice sheet models. To-date, there are no model weighting studies that analyze or quantify the model performance and possible duplication of the ISMIP6 ice sheet models and the resulting effect on projections of mass loss. In this study, we adopt a model weighting scheme [...]
Simulating Seasonal Evolution of Subglacial Hydrology at a Surging Glacier in the Karakoram
Published: 2025-01-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology
Glacier motion, retreat, and glacier hazards such as surges and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are likely underpinned by subglacial hydrology. Recent advances in subglacial hydrological modeling allow us to shed light on subglacial processes that lead to changes in ice mass balance in High Mountain Asia (HMA). We present the first application of the SHAKTI subglacial hydrology model on an [...]
Fingerprinting subduction margins using PCA profiles: A data science approach to assessing earthquake hazard
Published: 2025-01-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Tectonics and Structure
Giant earthquakes (MW ≥ 8.5) along subduction margins pose great hazards to coastal societies. While it is generally accepted that geological margin properties play a role, the controls on giant earthquake occurrence remain undetermined. Their long intermittence times and the comparatively short earthquake record obscure any correlations between margin properties and seismicity. This work [...]
Algal lipid distributions and hydrogen isotope ratios reflect phytoplankton community dynamics
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Reconstructions of past changes in algal community composition provide important context for future alterations in biogeochemical cycling. However, many existing phytoplankton proxies are indicative of individual algal groups and are not fully representative of the whole community. Here, we evaluated hydrogen isotope ratios of algal lipids (δ2HLipid) as a potential proxy for phytoplankton [...]
Changes in physical properties of rocks during serpentinization and implications for natural hydrogen exploration
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology
Serpentinization, transforms the physical properties of ultramafic rocks, with significant implications for natural hydrogen exploration. This study compiles and analyzes over 1,000 samples from diverse geological settings to elucidate relationships between rock properties—such as density, seismic velocities, elastic moduli, porosity, and magnetic susceptibility—and the degree of [...]
Hypereutrophication, Hydrogen Sulfide, and Environmental Injustices: Mechanisms and Knowledge Gaps at the Salton Sea
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is undergoing significant environmental degradation, which has adverse health effects on nearby rural communities, who are primarily Latinx and Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian. Over the past two decades, the lake’s water levels have steadily dropped. Water conditions in the Sea, characterized by low oxygen and high nutrient levels, favor the [...]
Readapting PhaseNet to Laboratory Earthquakes: AEsNet, a Robust Acoustic Emission Picker Illuminating Seismic Signatures of Different Fault Gouge Materials
Published: 2025-01-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology
Laboratory acoustic emissions (AEs) represent microslip events analogous to small- scale earthquakes, providing valuable insights into the mechanics of frictional instabilities. With technological advancements in acoustic monitoring, thousands of AE waveforms can now be collected in minutes of experimental time, requiring efficient methods for their detection and analysis. In this study, we [...]
GelCam: Visualizing Episodic Sinking Particle Flux via a Polyacrylamide Gel-Based Sediment Trap
Published: 2025-01-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Oceanography
While particle-intercepting traps remain a dominant method for quantifying the contribution of sinking particles to the biological carbon pump, fluxes are typically integrated over days to months. Observations of time-varying particle flux over shorter durations are very limited. To this end, we prototyped a camera system called “GelCam” which captures a rapid time-lapse image sequence of [...]
A semi-automated method for constructing three-dimensional models of complex fault networks
Published: 2025-01-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Tectonics and Structure
Fault geometry and the connectivity between faults at depth are both important controls on the nucleation, propagation and arrest of earthquake rupture, so modelling these parameters accurately is essential to models of the earthquake cycle. However, simulations involving complex three-dimensional (3D) fault systems rarely explore the sensitivity of results to uncertainties in geometry and [...]