Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Initial assessment of all-season Arctic sea ice thickness from ICESat-2
Published: 2025-05-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
We present an initial assessment of all-season Arctic sea ice thickness estimates from ICESat-2 by combining freeboard retrievals with all-season SnowModel-LG snow loading. ICESat-2 captures the key regional and seasonal patterns of Arctic sea ice variability and shows good agreement with CryoSat-2 all-season estimates, including regional patterns of inter-annual variability in summer ice [...]
Pliocene to Holocene deformation and earthquake potential of the Mesamávida fault, West Andean Thrust System of central-southern Chile (36ºS)
Published: 2025-05-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Crustal reverse faults are recognized for their potential to generate devastating earthquakes, making them a focus of seismic hazard assessment. Along the Chilean Andes, the Western Andean Thrust System (WATS)—a structure marking the Central Valley-Principal Cordillera border—includes several probable late Quaternary faults. However, evidence for large Holocene earthquakes (M~7) has only been [...]
The Apalachicola Barrier Island complex: a benchmark for MIS 5e (125 ka) sea-level oscillations?
Published: 2025-05-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology
Coastal sandy barrier systems develop under moderate wave energy, sufficient sediment supply, and adequate accommodation space, and can preserve critical paleoenvironmental records of past sea-level variations, climatic shifts, and storm histories within their geomorphological and stratigraphic frameworks. Beach ridges, identifiable on both horizontal (ridge-swale morphology) and vertical [...]
Challenges in using modern pollen analogs for Cenozoic paleoecology: examples from the European Neogene
Published: 2025-05-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Plant Sciences
The use of modern pollen analogs in paleoecology is well established in Quaternary studies; however, the reliability of this approach decreases with increasing geological age due to evolutionary changes. Establishing a definitive chronological boundary beyond which modern pollen analogs remain reliable is currently unfeasible. This limitation affects not only paleoenvironmental reconstructions [...]
A SCALABLE MACHINE LEARNING MODELLING TOOL FOR MAPPING LANDSLIDE RUNOUT USING A CASE STUDY IN HAWKES BAY, NEW ZEALAND
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Other Statistics and Probability
Understanding landslide runout is crucial for land use planning, utility networks, and assessing infrastructure resilience on slopes. Recent guidance recommends incorporating landslide runout models along with climate change implications when assessing land for development. The advancement of machine learning (ML) techniques can offer new insights and a tool to be used alongside current methods. [...]
Application of mud gas analysis for reservoir evaluation
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mud gas, which is usually used for monitoring the safety of the wells while drilling, can also be used as a formation evaluation tool. This study aims to analyse mud gas ratios and compare them with the traditional formation evaluation tools, such as resistivity. The analysis of four wells, either exploration or development wells, located in differing geological settings, shows that [...]
Cooling after net zero
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Climate policy aims to limit global warming by achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Climate models indicate that achieving net-zero emissions yields a nearly constant global temperature over the following decades. However, whether temperatures remain stable in the centuries after net-zero emissions is uncertain, as models produce conflicting results. Here, we explain how this disagreement [...]
Reliability of Contrast-Based Automated Fracture Detection from Decimeter Resolution Aerial Imagery
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Aerial imagery that captures outcrop exposures of rocks enables the characterization of structural discontinuities such as faults and fractures across large and difficult-to-access areas. These datasets provide an opportunity to analyze the characteristics of fault and fracture networks as analogues for the subsurface. The application of automated interpretation methods to imagery has the [...]
Natural forests of the world - a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Informed decisions to reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and curb carbon emissions require not just knowing where forests are, but understanding their composition. Identifying natural forests, which serve as critical biodiversity hotspots and major carbon sinks, is particularly valuable. We developed a novel global natural forest map for 2020 at 10 m resolution. This map can support [...]
Earth hit twice - The hypothesis of planetary rearrangement of the lithosphere by impact and interference waves
Published: 2025-04-26
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Sciences
This study presents the impact-antipodal-interference hypothesis as a new model of planetary-scale crustal deformation. By analysing the distribution and properties of three megastructures - the Mariana Trench, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the Amazon Basin - it is demonstrated that their formation may be linked to large-scale cosmic impacts and the seismic wave interference occurring within [...]
Transforming Total Field Anomaly into Anomalous Magnetic Field: Using Dual-Layer Gradient-Boosted Equivalent Sources
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Potential field data often require interpolation onto a regular grid at constant height before further analysis. A widely used approach for this is the equivalent sources technique, which has been adapted over time to improve its computational efficiency and accuracy of the predictions. However, many of these approaches still face challenges, including border effects in the predictions or [...]
Calcium isotope constraints on Mesoarchean seawater
Published: 2025-04-24
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
The cause of the Great Oxidation Event ~2.4 billion-years-ago (Ga) is hotly debated. Recent models favor the emergence of continents as driving the event. However, we suggest that extensive shallow-marine carbonate platforms existed in the Mesoarchean. This conclusion is based on Ca isotopes from 2.8 Ga carbonate rocks, that constrains the Ca isotope value of Mesoarchean seawater to -0.5‰ [...]
Helmets Labeling Crops: Kenya Crop Type Dataset Created via Helmet-Mounted Cameras and Deep Learning
Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Accurate, up-to-date agricultural monitoring is essential for assessing food production, particularly in countries like Kenya, where recurring climate extremes, including floods and droughts, exacerbate food insecurity challenges. In regions dominated by smallholder farmers, a significant obstacle to effective agricultural monitoring is the limited availability of current, detailed crop-type [...]
Leveraging Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) for Urban Climate Emulation
Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Urban climate models are critical for understanding and addressing the impacts of urban climate change. Yet, process-based urban climate models face limitations of high-entry barriers and substantial computing resource consumption, prompting the development of data-driven methods. However, the recently developed urban climate emulators, being location-dependent, are less scalable and may overlook [...]
The impact hypothesis as a mechanism for the origin of the Amazon basin - analysis of antipodal impacts of celestial bodies and their impact on global morphotectonics
Published: 2025-04-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Amazon Basin is the largest fluvial system on Earth, yet its central subsidence and asymmetrical drainage pattern remain partially unexplained by traditional geological models. This study introduces a novel impact-based hypothesis, proposing that the Amazon depression is a result of tectonic deformation at the intersection of seismic shockwaves originating from two major planetary impacts: [...]