Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
How do climate, geomorphology, and land-use control sediment yield generation in an anthropogenically modified landscape?
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology
Understanding the controls on sediment yield (SY) is essential for water resource management. However, in the Cauvery basin in India, progress is hindered by fragmented studies that lack an integrated analysis. This research quantifies sub-catchment SY using long-term gauging data and employs Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) and multiple regression (MLR) to evaluate geomorphic, climatic, [...]
Geological CO2 storage assessment in emerging CCS regions: Review of sequestration potential, policy development, and socio-economic factors in Poland
Published: 2025-08-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Emerging carbon capture and storage (CCS) markets face critical challenges in developing systematic methodologies to assess geological CO2 storage potential under conditions of limited data availability, evolving regulatory frameworks, and nascent infrastructure development. This study establishes an assessment framework designed for lower-maturity CCS regions, using Poland as a representative [...]
Quantifying the intensity of crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO): some practical considerations and recommended practices
Published: 2025-08-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Crystallographic preferred orientations (CPOs) commonly develop during the crystal-plastic deformation of rocks and minerals and are widely used to infer strain intensity and geometry, reconstruct deformation conditions, and estimate mechanical anisotropy. Numerous methods have been proposed to quantify CPO intensity as a scalar metric, but these metrics can be highly sensitive to their [...]
The Role of Tectonic Luck in Long-Term Habitability of Abiotic Earth-like Planets
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences
Carbonate-silicate weathering feedback is thought to stabilize Earth's climate on geologic timescales. If climate warms, faster mineral dissolution and increased rainfall speed up weathering, increasing CO2 drawdown and opposing the initial warming. Limits to where this feedback might operate on terrestrial exoplanets with N2-O2-CO2-H2O atmospheres are used to define the 'habitable zone'-the [...]
Best practices for the analyses of CO2 fluids by Raman Spectroscopy
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
Raman spectroscopy is a key method for determining CO₂ densities in geological fluids, yet acquisition, calibration, and processing methodologies vary widely between laboratories. This study evaluates how these parameters affect precision and accuracy. We show that spectral non-linearity can cause a single instrument to show variable relationships between CO2 density and spectral parameters as [...]
Alaskan Glacier Depths from a Decade of Airborne Radar Sounding
Published: 2025-08-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences
NASA’s Operation IceBridge employed airborne radar sounders in Alaska and adjacent northwestern Canada between 2012-2021 to measure the thickness of the region’s glaciers. Here we present the first comprehensive analysis of these data, providing over 5,500 linear-km of ice thickness and bed elevation measurements – constituting the greatest ice thickness inventory for this region to date. Aside [...]
Analysis of geomagnetic secular variation for the last 1.5 Ma recorded by volcanic rocks of the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt: new data from Sierra de Chichinautzin, Mexico
Published: 2025-08-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology
The great wealth of volcanism along the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVB) and the need to improve the secular variation curve of the Earth magnetic field of the region is the aim of this research. 300 oriented cores from 33 sites and 21 individual cooling units were acquired from Sierra de Chichinautzin volcanic field (ChVF) and Sierra de Santa Catarina (SSC). Directional analysis and rock [...]
Climate driven hydrologic nonstationarity patterns across the Contiguous United States
Published: 2025-08-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We calculated metrics of climate change, land use-land cover change, and hydrologic nonstationarity in 671 catchments across the Contiguous United States (CONUS) that are known not to have relatively little urbanization and anthropogenic land cover. Climate change is correlated with hydrologic nonstationarity in these basins. Land use-land cover change has no correlation with hydrologic [...]
Subsurface Lithologic Controls on Off-Fault Deformation and Multi-Fault Slip During the 2016 Mw 6.5 Norcia Earthquake Revealed by Satellite Geodesy
Published: 2025-08-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Understanding the mechanisms controlling deformation localization is crucial for our understanding of fault mechanics and improving seismic hazard assessment, but has not been extensively studied for normal-faulting earthquakes. Here, we present a thorough analysis of the 2016 Mw 6.5 Norcia, Italy, earthquake using high-resolution satellite geodesy. We investigate the degree of deformation [...]
On the Origin of Slow and Large Earthquakes in South-Central Mexico
Published: 2025-08-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Slow slip events (SSEs) in Guerrero and Oaxaca, Mexico, have likely triggered five of the last six M7+ earthquakes in the region since 2012. This interaction, however, is non-systematic, as evidenced by the preceding 17 years of large earthquake quiescence, when multiple SSEs occurred without consequence. The Mexican catalog since 1800 reveals that large earthquakes cluster in time every ~15 [...]
Geomodelling of multi-scenario non-stationary reservoirs with enhanced GANSim
Published: 2025-08-05
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Mining Engineering, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Reservoir geomodelling is critical for groundwater management, CO₂ storage, geothermal exploitation, and hydrocarbon exploration, yet traditional geostatistical methods like multiple-point statistics (MPS) struggle with simulating complex geological patterns. GANSim, a Generative Adversarial Networks-based geomodelling method, has proven effective for single-scenario stationary reservoirs, but [...]
Reconstructing Jezero Crater’s Paleoenvironment: Insights from Perseverance Rover and Orbital Data
Published: 2025-08-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Jezero Crater on Mars is a critical site for investigating ancient aqueous environments due to its preserved delta and lacustrine features. Reconstructing its paleoenvironmental history is essential for understanding Mars’ climate evolution and assessing its past habitability. This study integrates in-situ data from the Perseverance rover, including review for high-resolution imaging, [...]
Artificial Intelligence in Earth Science: A GeoAI Perspective
Published: 2025-08-03
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
GeoAI, or geospatial artificial intelligence, has transformative potential for Earth science by integrating geospatial data with artificial intelligence to enhance environmental monitoring, predictive modeling, and decision-making. This commentary, based on the Greg Leptoukh Lecture at AGU 2024, explores the evolving role of GeoAI in addressing pressing challenges—from environmental change in the [...]
Mantle-driven, climatically modulated landscape evolution in Southern Patagonia
Published: 2025-08-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences
We explore the relative importance of tectonic, geodynamic and surface processes in driving landscape evolution in Argentine Patagonia using 64 new 10Be exposure ages of fluvial terraces preserved over >250 km along the Shehuén and Santa Cruz rivers (50ºS). Terrace ages range from 33 ka to 1.5 Ma, and coincide with Patagonian glaciations. We demonstrate that landscapes can respond directly to [...]
Experiments to Systematically Evaluate the Role of Cohesion in River Morphodynamics
Published: 2025-07-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Other Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While cohesion is thought to be an important control on sediment transport, few studies have systematically examined the role of cohesion in river morphodynamics. In this study we use simplified, small-scale laboratory experiments to investigate how increasing sediment cohesion affects the morphometrics of fluvial channels. Experiments were conducted in a laminar flume with a mixture of [...]