Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Lead contamination from shooting activities: bioavailability, bioaccessibility and hydrological controls on Pb geochemical partitioning in soil
Published: 2026-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Lead (Pb) contamination in soils is a persistent environmental and human health concern in areas affected by shooting activities. This study provides an integrated assessment of Pb geochemical behaviour, plant interactions, and human bioaccessibility in waterlogged alluvial wetland soils from Soglitelle (southern Italy), a natural reserve historically impacted by hunting activities. The results [...]
Bacterial tetraether lipid biosynthesis links membrane adaption to paleoclimate proxies
Published: 2026-06-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Membrane-spanning tetraether lipids are best known as an adaptive mechanism of archaea for stabilizing their membranes under extreme conditions. Bacteria typically rely on bilayer-forming phospholipids, making the occurrence of membrane-spanning branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) in some bacteria highly unusual. BrGDGTs occur globally in soils and sediments and exhibit [...]
Valley forests as ecological bottlenecks: Topography and resource concentration structure herbivore use in the Western Ghats
Published: 2026-06-13
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Large-herbivore distributions in the Western Ghats are often interpreted through the perspective of protected areas, forest loss, and human disturbance. This perspective can undermine the ecological role of valley forests and riparian lowlands in steep, human-modified landscapes. Evidence from Asian elephants and other large herbivores indicates that habitat use is shaped by interacting filters [...]
Surface Infrared Forcing as a Primary Driver of Contemporary Global Warming: A Synthesis of Biophysical, Spectral, and Land-Use Evidence
Published: 2026-06-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
The prevailing attribution of observed global warming to the radiative forcing of well-mixed greenhouse gases — principally CO₂ — rests on a framework that systematically underrepresents a class of forcings operating at the land-atmosphere interface. This paper synthesises evidence from satellite remote sensing (Duveiller et al., 2018), planetary biomass accounting (Erb et al., 2018), [...]
Integrative Biodiversity Science Informing Transformative Multiscale Governance through Diversifying Values of Nature in Scenarios and Models
Published: 2026-06-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
• Improved use of scenarios and models can contribute to enhancing the achievement of the Global Biodiversity Framework through more systemic approaches (e.g., causality frameworks, detection and attribution) and evidence-based methods (e.g., integrated use of data, scenarios, and model- based indicators) that incorporate diverse values of nature. • Scenarios play critical roles in both global [...]
Impacts of Potential Solar Radiation Modification: Systematic Review Reveals Challenges and Opportunities
Published: 2026-06-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences
Solar radiation modification (SRM) is a proposed temporary intervention to limit global warming while mitigation efforts continue. Understanding its potential consequences for human and natural systems is essential for informed deliberations. We conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on SRM impacts published through May 2024, identifying 289 studies, including 261 primary [...]
Mineral stabilization of soil organic sulfur at the continental scale
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Declining atmospheric sulfur (S) deposition makes S an emerging limiting macronutrient to plants, yet the stability and dynamics of soil organic S - the largest terrestrial S pool supplying plant-available sulfate via mineralization - remain unclear. Across North American soils, mineral-associated organic S (MAOS), a stabilized pool by mineral protection, dominates (61 ± 26% of the total soil S) [...]
Prioritizing Agricultural Flood Mitigation: A GeoAI-Driven Assessment of Susceptibility, Crop Exposure, and Socioeconomic Vulnerability
Published: 2026-05-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences
Flooding is a recurrent hazard across the U.S. Midwest, yet frameworks integrating flood hazard, agricultural exposure, and socioeconomic vulnerability at the county scale remain limited. This study presents a GeoAI-driven agricultural flood risk assessment for all 99 counties in Iowa, combining machine learning-derived flood susceptibility with crop-specific economic exposure and socioeconomic [...]
Rapid quantification of fluorescent micro- and nanoplastics (≤2 μm) in soil
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Soil Science
Micro- and nanoplastics (MNP) pose an emerging threat to soil ecosystems, with particular concern for small MNP (≤10 µm). Although small fluorescent MNP are widely used to track MNP distribution and transport in aquatic environments and organisms, analyses of small fluorescent MNP in soil remain qualitative. Here, we present the first direct quantification approach for MNP ≤2 μm in soil using [...]
AI–Based Classification of Coffee Leaf Rust from Leaf Images in Smallholder Kenyan Farms
Published: 2026-05-26
Subjects: Life Sciences
Coffee leaf rust (CLR), caused by Hemileia vastatrix, remains a major threat to smallholder coffee production, yet access to timely and actionable disease risk information is limited. This study developed and compared machine learning models for predicting CLR incidence using plot-level data from 9,850 observations collected across six Arabica-producing counties in Kenya between 2018 and 2023. [...]
Global forest typology at 10-meter resolution for forest and land-use monitoring
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Distinguishing forest types---primary, naturally regenerating, planted, and plantation forests---from agricultural tree crops and other land uses is essential for carbon accounting, biodiversity assessment, conservation planning, and supply-chain regulation. However, no existing global dataset resolves this typology at high spatial resolution. We present the Forest Typology (ForTy) v1 dataset, a [...]
Polygonal peatlands and treed plateau bog in Northwest Hudson Bay Lowlands, Canada: Holocene development and permafrost dynamics
Published: 2026-05-17
Subjects: Life Sciences
Since the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, peatland development in the Hudson Bay Lowlands (HBL) has been mainly influenced by postglacial isostatic rebound and climate. We studied the timing of permafrost aggradation and the successional trajectories of low Arctic and subarctic polygonal peatlands and a boreal plateau bog in Wapusk National Park (WNP), in northwestern HBL. We also explored [...]
Improving Learning and Science Outcomes in The Reservoir Observer Student Scientists (ROSS) Program Through Reflection and Skill Building Exercises
Published: 2026-05-12
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences
The Reservoir Observer Student Scientists (ROSS) program engages high school students in year-round water quality monitoring to detect and understand cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs). This place-based participatory science program combines hands-on sampling, data analysis, and reflective learning to foster scientific literacy and contribute to environmental research. A mid-year [...]
Antimicrobial Resistance – A Growing Global Groundwater Challenge
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Antimicrobials are composed of medications such as antibiotics and antivirals which are widely used to ensure human and animal health. However, inappropriate use of antimicrobials is a major driver of antimicrobial resistance in groundwater or other aquatic systems. AMR arises from complex interactions between humans, animals, microbial organisms, medicines, wildlife and the environment. [...]
From Snapshot Maps to Continuous Monitoring of Global Forest Carbon at 100 m Resolution (2000–2025)
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Life Sciences
Accurate, high-resolution estimation of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is critical for quantifying terrestrial carbon stocks and informing climate mitigation policy, yet existing global products remain constrained by coarse spatial resolution and limited temporal coverage that obscure sub-national-scale disturbances (Avitabile et al., 2016). This study presents a wall-to-wall global AGB product [...]