Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
The Stability of Frictional Sliding on Dip-Slip and Finite-Length Faults
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Along-strike seismotectonic segmentation reflecting megathrust seismogenic behavior
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Understanding the along-strike seismogenic behavior of the megathrusts is crucial to anticipate seismic hazards in the subduction zones. However, if and how the spatiotemporal frictional heterogeneity (high and low kinematic coupling) at depth feeds back into the upper-plate deformation pattern and how the upper-plate elastic signals and permanent records may correlate has yet to be fully [...]
Stress-strain hysteresis during hydrostatic loading of porous rocks
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering
A micro-mechanical model is proposed to predict the stress-strain hysteresis during the cyclic hydrostatic loading of fluid-saturated rocks under drained or undrained conditions. A spherical pore is surrounded by a cracked shell where local deviatoric stress develops despite the remote hydrostatic loading. The effective properties of the material composing the shell are constructed with the crack [...]
Capturing geological uncertainty in salt cavern developments for hydrogen storage: Case study from Southern North Sea
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Future energy systems with greater contributions from renewable energy will require long-duration energy storage to optimise integration of renewable sources, hydrogen is an energy vector that could be utilised for this. Grid-scale underground natural gas storage is already in operation in solution-mined salt caverns, where individual cavern capacities are ~25 - 275 GWh. While traditionally salt [...]
Environmental Signal Propagation in Non-stationary Systems: The Impact of Delta Advance on Terrestrial to Marine Information Transfer
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
When interpreting environmental signals in the deep marine sedimentary archive, separating the record of local flow and sediment dynamics from that of the terrestrial transport system that feeds it can be challenging. We used a physical experiment to study the dynamics of flow and sedimentation on a prograding, hyperpycnal flow-dominated delta, shelf and submarine slope subject to slow rates of [...]
Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous orogenesis in the Klamath Mountains Province (northern California-southern Oregon) occurred by tectonic switching: Insights from Detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology of the Condrey Mountain schist
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
The Klamath Mountains province (KMP) of northern California and southern Oregon consists of generally east-dipping terranes assembled via Paleozoic to Mesozoic subduction along the western margin of North America. The KMP more than doubled in mass from Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous time, due to alternating episodes of extension (e.g, rifting and formation of the Josephine ophiolite) and [...]
Mineral precipitation and geometry alteration in porous structures: How to upscale variations in permeability-porosity relationship?
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Porous materials in natural and engineered environments are subject to morphological changes resulting from interacting chemical and physical processes. The complexity of coupled flow, transport, and chemical processes that occur on different temporal and spatial scales makes it difficult to predict the resulting porosity and permeability alterations. Delineating the controls of mineral [...]
Designing and describing climate change impact attribution studies: a guide to common approaches
Published: 2024-01-06
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Public Health, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Impact attribution is an emerging transdisciplinary sub-discipline of detection and attribution, focused on the social, economic, and ecological impacts of climate change. Here, we provide an overview of common end-to-end frameworks in impact attribution, focusing on examples relating to the human health impacts of climate change. We propose a typology of study designs based on whether [...]
Redox Geochemistry of the Late Cambrian SPICE Event in Durness Group, UK
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology
The Late Cambrian Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion (SPICE) event occurring at approximately 497 Ma and lasting for about 2-4 Myr is emblematic of a global-scale oceanic anoxia, coinciding with the trilobite mass extinction. It is significant in the biotic evolution spanning the Late Cambrian to Ordovician. Nevertheless, the driving mechanism behind the SPICE event is contentious, and [...]
Near-source effects on DAS recording: implications for tap tests
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences
In the immediate vicinity of a source there are strong gradients in the seismic wavefield that are tamed and modified in DAS recording due to combined effects of gauge-length averaging and local stacking on the local strain field. Close to a source broadside propagation effects are significant and produce a characteristic impact on the local DAS channels. In the presence of topography, of surface [...]
A shake and a surge: Assessing the possibility of an earthquake-triggered eruption at Steamboat Geyser
Published: 2024-01-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
When and why earthquakes trigger the eruption of magma, mud, and water remain unclear. On 18 September 2022, Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone, USA erupted 8.25 hours after a local M3.9 earthquake. The distribution of Steamboat eruption intervals suggests a low probability of erupting so soon after the earthquake by chance. A seismometer 340 m from Steamboat recorded seismic waves with a peak [...]
Microbial indicators and detection of Cu-sulfide ore mineralization
Published: 2024-01-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rapid electrification of society is placing unprecedented demand on critical mineral and metal resources. New strategies and technologies are thus needed to promote mineral discovery in regions where deposits are likely buried deep under soil and glacial till. We show that microbial communities from different soil types change in composition in response to amendment with copper. We also show [...]
Dye tracing of upward brine migration in snow
Published: 2023-12-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The presence of salt in the snow overlying seasonal sea ice has profound thermodynamic and electromagnetic effects. However, the way that it arrives and is distributed within the marine snowpack remains poorly understood and modelled. We describe two experiments tracing upward brine movement in snow: one laboratory experiment at Rothera research station, West Antarctica, and a field experiment in [...]
MoonIndex, an Open-Source Tool to Generate Spectral Indexes for the Moon from M3 Data
Published: 2023-12-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Spectral indexes are tools widely used to analyze the composition of the lunar surface. Many indexes have been formulated over the years, but there is no unified database for them. In this work we describe an Open-Source Python package called MoonIndex, that recreates thirty-nine indexes compiled from the literature and derived from several instruments, using data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper [...]
Sensitivity Analysis of Global Kinematics on Mantle Structure Using Automatically Generated Adjoint Thermochemical Convection Codes
Published: 2023-12-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Tectonics and Structure
Within the past 30 years, numerical models of mantle convection have been able to predict observations on Earth and planets, and among them tectonics. The possibility of building inverse problems in global geodynamics became concrete, and often involve the development of adjoint codes. Such tools provide efficient ways to estimate sensitivities of misfit functions relative to control parameters, [...]