Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Constructed floating wetlands cut greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater lagoons
Published: 2026-03-03
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wastewater treatment is a significant, yet often overlooked, contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for ~1.6% of anthropogenic emissions (~0.77 Gt CO2-equivalent per year), including 7-10% of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide emissions (N2O). However, scalable mitigation options remain scarce. Constructed floating wetlands (CFWs) are widely used to reduce nutrient loads in [...]
Water-efficient Indian rice cultivation boosts exports despite high carbon footprints
Published: 2026-03-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences
Most agricultural sustainability efforts adopt a national-scale view, masking regional trade-offs between crop yields and environmental footprints. To measure trade-offs, satellite remote sensing based life cycle assessment of rice agroecosystems across India from 2004 to 2021 was conducted revealing pivotal shifts of four cultivation typologies, termed as unsustainable, conventional, productive, [...]
The Solar Paradox: Pure Social Diffusion and Competitive Resource Capture in Semi-Arid Irrigated Land Expansion
Published: 2026-03-01
Subjects: Agriculture, Engineering, Life Sciences
Solar-powered irrigation is expanding rapidly across semi-arid regions, but the mechanisms through which this technology diffuses in informal groundwa- ter economies—where the majority of wells operate without permits—remain poorly understood. We address this gap through a spatiotemporal analysis of 3,201 solar wells identified via satellite census in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, combined with 10,000 [...]
Multi-Parametric Assessment of Avian Biodiversity and Anthropogenic Disturbance for Conservation Prioritization in Belize
Published: 2026-02-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Background: Anthropogenic climate change and rising levels have accelerated global warming, causing severe disruptions to Belizean ecosystems through sea-level rise and habitat fragmentation. To mitigate these impacts, identifying high-value land for protected status is a critical conservation priority for maintaining medicinal biodiversity and preventing zoonotic disease spillover. Objective: [...]
Machine Learning and Explainable AI for Agricultural Drought Prediction: A Comparative Analysis of Gradient Boosting Methods Using Multi-Source Earth Observation Data
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences
Drought monitoring and prediction remain critical challenges in climate science and agricultural management, particularly under accelerating climate change. This study presents a comprehensive machine learning framework for drought susceptibility mapping in Iowa, USA, using multi-source Earth observation data and explainable artificial intelligence. We systematically evaluated eleven supervised [...]
A Novel Climatic Threat Framework Linking Biodiversity’s Vulnerability to Administrative Responsibility
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Life Sciences
Biodiversity is cornered by human habitat alteration and eroded by climate change. Protecting it urgently requires efficient allocation of conservation resources to protect vulnerable species and ecosystems. However, conservation decisions are often hindered by fragmented governance and a disconnection between policymakers, funders, managers and scientists. To address this, we propose the [...]
Mathematical modeling of dialectical emergent hybrid regimes in ecosystems
Published: 2026-01-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Traditional resilience theory often models complex systems as toggling between discrete alternative regimes, such as clear-water and turbid states in shallow lakes, each stabilized by internal feedback. While analytically powerful, this binary paradigm overlooks more nuanced dynamics observed in many real-world systems: the emergence of hybrid regimes that blend structural and functional elements [...]
Diel Dynamics of Zooplankton Fecal Pellet Flux Revealed by Integrated Optical Observations and Modeling
Published: 2026-01-24
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography
The contribution of sinking fecal pellets to the biological carbon pump depends on pellet properties, producer abundance, and the depth and timing of pellet production, which can be modulated by diel vertical migration. We examined diel variability in zooplankton fecal pellet flux in the subarctic Northeast Pacific using two image-based tools: the Underwater Vision Profiler (UVP5) and [...]
Opportunities to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation across strategic, adaptive and transformative pathways
Published: 2026-01-24
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Calls to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation promote synergistic action. However, narrow, intervention- or sector-specific perspectives obscure complexities shaping how these agendas are operationalised in practice. This paper explores opportunities for integration from a systemic perspective, viewing climate resilient futures as emerging from diverse changes across sectors, [...]
Assessing the Net Climate Impact of Norwegian Reservoirs: Integrating Land Use Change and G-res Modeling
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
This study evaluates the net climate impact of Norwegian reservoirs using land use change mapping, literature-based GHG flux aggregation, and G-res modeling. High-resolution historical aerial imagery and deep learning reconstructed pre-impoundment land cover, explicitly identifying wetlands previously absent from national datasets. The framework quantifies changes in CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes and [...]
Anthropogenic Impacts on Antibiotic Resistance Genes and Microbial Communities in Groundwater of Taopu Industrial Park, Shanghai
Published: 2026-01-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Urban groundwater is increasingly recognized as an emerging reservoir and transport pathway for antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), posing potential ecological and public-health risks. However, the distribution and transport mechanisms of antibiotics and ARGs in groundwater systems under complex anthropogenic pollution remain insufficiently [...]
Global Environmental Benefits of Plant-Based Diets: A Multi-Regional Input Output Analysis
Published: 2026-01-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Food Science, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Sustainability
The global food system, especially animal husbandry, is a major driver of negative environmental impacts. This paper investigates the potential of adopting more plant-based diets (vegan, vegetarian, no beef) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land use and related biodiversity loss, and water stress within global food supply chains. This is achieved by combining Multi-regional Input Output [...]
Accessible Batch Catchment Delineation: A Semi-Automated Workflow for Non-Hydrologists
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
Catchment delineation is a prerequisite for hydrological and water-quality analyses but remains a practical barrier for non-hydrologists, particularly when large numbers of sites must be processed. We present here a semi-automated, reproducible workflow for batch catchment delineation using openly available GIS tools. The workflow was developed during delineation of 2,870 monitoring sites [...]
Carbon stock recovery and greenhouse gas shifts following wetland restoration: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
Wetland restoration is widely promoted as a complementary nature-based climate solution, but its net carbon and GHG effects across wetland types and interventions remain poorly quantified at the global scale. We address this gap with a global meta-analysis spanning all major wetland types and restoration strategies. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 617 restored-altered pairs from 149 [...]
Marjal dels Moros: a model site for the structural, functional, and socioeconomic assessment of managed Mediterranean marshes
Published: 2025-12-30
Subjects: Life Sciences
Coastal wetlands deliver critical ecosystem services but remain highly degraded by anthropogenic and climatic pressures. This study presents an integrated structural, functional, and socio-economic assessment of Marjal dels Moros, a managed Mediterranean brackish marsh in eastern Spain, to evaluate restoration effectiveness and inform climate-based management. Six subsites representing [...]