Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Heavy Metal Toxicity: A Major Driver of Past Biodiversity Crises?
Published: 2025-05-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Whether today’s heavy metal pollution represents an unprecedented threat to biodiversity, in Earth’s history remains an open question. Here, we reassess the state-of-the-art research to evaluate whether heavy metal toxicity played a major role in past extinction events. Although there is evidence to heavy metal loading during several past biotic crises, direct causal links to extinctions are [...]
How to Model Cooling Service Flow of Urban Parks Based on Supply-Flow-Demand Framework? A Case Study of Beijing Olympic Park
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Rapid urbanization intensifies the urban heat island effect and undermines health for vulnerable communities located beyond the effective cooling reach of large parks. This study introduced a spatially supply-flow-demand framework to quantify the cooling service flow of urban park using Beijing Olympic Park as a case study. Field measurements at representative land types in the park were [...]
Luminescence Characteristics of Terrestrial Jarosite from Kachchh, India: A Martian Analogue
Published: 2025-05-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In this study, naturally occurring jarosite samples from Kachchh India (considered to be Martian analogue) were characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Cathodoluminescence- Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (CL-EDXS) and luminescence (thermoluminescence (TL), blue and infrared stimulated luminescence (BSL and IRSL) methods. FTIR and CL-EDXS studies suggested that [...]
The Global Peace and Food Security; A case study of the Global South and the South Pacific Island Nations; the need for affordable wheat and grain supply
Published: 2025-05-09
Subjects: Life Sciences
Most countries in the Global South, Africa, and Pacific Island have irregular rainfall patterns, with strains of El Niño patterns causing severe food shortages. Plant breeding on grains is non-existent in Pacific Island nations, and the main staple foods are imported rice and wheat, although their prices are exorbitant. Food labelling and marketing of affordable energy grains from conventional [...]
Multidisciplinary Evaluation of the Pyramid-Shaped Formation near Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina: A Case for Anthropogenic Construction
Published: 2025-05-02
Subjects: Life Sciences
This study presents a multidisciplinary investigation of the pyramid-shaped formation known as the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun (Visočica Hill) located in central Bosnia-Herzegovina. Integrating geodetic, geomorphological, geological, archaeological, electromagnetic, and geometrical data, the analysis examines whether the formation’s distinctive features can be fully explained by natural processes [...]
Biogenic origins and moon
Published: 2025-05-02
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Astronomical discoveries of water abundance in protoplanetary disks are the basis of my hypothesis of a cool formation of the Earth by hydrous accretion in the habitable zone of the disk our solar system derived from, under different pressure conditions than in disks observed at present, chemical evolution in times of accretion, early beginning of prebiotic and biological life. I arrange some of [...]
Establishing Deep Time: Multi-Method Dating of Archaeological and Speleological Features in the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This study presents an integrated chronological framework for the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids using multiple scientific dating techniques. Radiocarbon dating, uranium-thorium analysis, and soil pedogenesis studies were conducted on archaeological and speleological features including the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon, and the Ravne tunnel networks. Results suggest [...]
Proactive Tundra Conservation Strategy for a Rapidly Changing Arctic
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Warming induced forest expansion, permafrost thaw, and human activities are major drivers affecting the biodiversity and ecosystem functions of the Arctic tundra. While the pace of climate warming is fastest in the Arctic, some important stressors, like forest expansion, seem relatively slow. The slow response might provide the opportunity to safeguard Arctic biodiversity and ecosystem function [...]
Swiss data quality: augmenting CAMELS-CH with isotopes, water quality, agricultural and atmospheric chemistry data
Published: 2025-04-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
In the era of large-sample hydrology (LSH) datasets, there is still limited availability of water quality data. Here, we introduce CAMELS-CH-Chem, an extension of CAMELS-CH (Catchment Attributes and Meteorology for Large-sample Studies in Switzerland), incorporating up to 40 water quality parameters for 115 catchments across Switzerland. This new dataset spans the period 1981–2020 and allows for [...]
What the landscape can tell: An integrative stratigraphic prospection approach for localizing a Black Death mass grave in Erfurt/Central Germany
Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
The Black Death pandemic (1346-53) has caused a 30-50% population decline across Europe. For the city of Erfurt in Thuringia, substantial human losses and corresponding mass graves are well-documented in historical archives. The aim of our study is to localize these mass graves in the deserted village of Neuses in order to validate the written sources and to obtain skeletal remains for future [...]
Unprecedented Social-Ecological Impacts of the 2023 Extreme Drought in the Central Amazon
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While the 2023 record-breaking drought led to widespread social-ecological impacts across Amazonia, local impacts of such extreme events are rarely described in detail. Here we leverage a large interdisciplinary data collection related to social and ecological impacts in the Central Amazon. Compound hazards (reduced river water levels, lack of rainfall, high water/air temperatures, river erosion [...]
Paddy Segmentation Using Google Earth Engine: A Remote Sensing Approach Abstract
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences
Paddy field segmentation using remote sensing is crucial for agricultural monitoring, yield prediction, and resource allocation. In this research, we employ Google Earth Engine (GEE) for paddy segmentation using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. Our method leverages Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Water Index (LSWI) to mask paddy fields efficiently. We collected 2000 [...]
Multi-decadal analysis of major global risk assessments reveals consistent biases and low predictive capacity
Published: 2025-03-19
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risk Reports (GRRs) are published annually with the aim to uncover the most pressing challenges facing the world. However, the GRR have been criticized for presenting an overly simplistic and potentially biased portrayal of interconnected global risks and crises. Despite their influence, no in-depth, interannual analysis of the GRRs has been conducted to [...]
Collaborative Assessment of a Large-Scale Integrated Landscape Restoration Project in the Steep-Slope Regions of Central Africa
Published: 2025-03-14
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Landscape restoration projects are among the most extensive conservation actions at the global level that have been promoted in the last three decades. Such projects, however, cannot exclusively be based on the restoration of natural and semi-natural ecosystems, but should focus on a cultural landscape approach balancing environmental and socio-economic needs. One of the largest restoration [...]
Velocity of climate change and the vulnerability of mountain lake landscapes
Published: 2025-03-05
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Freshwater ecosystems in mountain landscapes are increasingly threatened by climate change. Accumulated heat in ecosystems can result in lethal short-term heat exposure, while the velocity of change governs severity and rates of long-term heat exposure. Here, we novelly integrate heat accumulation and velocity of change approaches to classify climate-vulnerable USA mountain lake watersheds. Our [...]