Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Natural Philosophy of Protoplanetary and Planetary Discs: On the Origin and Evolution of Life
Published: 2025-08-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
This paper examines the four pivotal and most contentious issues within the field of biogenesis by analyzing the life-originating processes centred on protoplanetary and planetary discs. These include: 1. Geological environment; 2. Source of nutrients/initial molecules; 3. Source of energy; 4. RNA world versus metabolic world: which came first? To date, scientists have been unable to reach a [...]
Finding Inter-species Associations on Large Citizen Science Datasets
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Determining associations among different species from citizen science databases is challenging due to observer behavior and intrinsic density variations that give rise to correlations that do not imply species associations. This paper introduces a method that can efficiently analyze large datasets to extract likely species associations. It tiles space into small blocks chosen to be of the [...]
Relationships between water quality, stream metabolism, and water stargrass growth in the lower Yakima River, 2018 to 2020
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Life Sciences
Since the early 2000s, water clarity on the lower Yakima River has improved. Changes in best management practices combined with a total maximum daily load for suspended sediment led to these improved conditions. As water clarity improved, so did conditions for aquatic plants; the clearer the water, the better the light penetration, and dramatic increases in plant biomass were observed. In the [...]
Altitudinal and Seasonal Assessment of Precipitation Chemistry and Wet Deposition in the Vaz Research Forest, Northern Iran
Published: 2025-08-14
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
This study examines the chemical composition of precipitation across altitudinal gradients in the Vaz Research Forest, northern Iran, from 1999 to 2003. Precipitation samples were collected at 300, 1000, 1600, and 2200 m above sea level. Concentrations of nitrate (NO₃⁻), sulfate (SO₄²⁻), chloride (Cl⁻), ammonium (NH₄⁺), calcium (Ca²⁺), and magnesium (Mg²⁺) and their wet deposition values were [...]
Long-term trends and drivers of water color in Missouri reservoirs
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Contrasting water quality trends are occurring within and across North America, with waterbodies experiencing increasing phytoplankton blooms, increasing dissolved organic matter, or both, while others are becoming clearer and bluer; dramatically changing water color. To assess the spatial and temporal variability in water color, we quantified trends in satellite-derived dominant wavelength (λd) [...]
Virunga Volcanoes Supersite Biennial Report: 2017- 2019
Published: 2025-08-09
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Virunga Volcanoes is the first Supersite established on the African continent in a highly populated Multi-hazards region. This permanent Supersite was established in a critical context as little was known about the Virunga hazards sources and their dynamics, and little done as measures to evaluate, mitigate and reduce their impacts. Similarly, the active volcanoes are poorly studied and [...]
22 Years Later: Evaluating Glover & Smith’s 2003 Predictions of the 2025 Deep-Sea Ecosystem
Published: 2025-08-07
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Earth’s deep-sea ecosystem remains one of the least explored and understood ecosystems on the planet. Human interest in the resources available in the deep-sea must be balanced with potential harm to the deep-sea ecosystem. Accurately predicting the effect on human impact on the deep-sea floor can help guide policies and actions today. This research evaluates prior predictions of human impact on [...]
Bridging Ancestral Knowledge and Ecosystem Science for Coastal Restoration in Latin America
Published: 2025-08-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Peer-review status: This manuscript has not been peer-reviewed. It is a preprint submitted for public dissemination and open feedback. This study documents the CALISUR methodology, a community-based mangrove restoration model rooted in ancestral ecological knowledge and applied across six intervention sites in the Gulf of Guayaquil. The methodology integrates scientific and traditional practices [...]
Extreme Environments of Latin America: Natural Laboratories for Astrobiology
Published: 2025-07-31
Subjects: Life Sciences
Extreme environments are places where sustaining life is considered challenging by human standarts due to harmful environmental conditions. In the last decades, these kinds of environments have awakened the interest of planetary scientists due to their similar conditions to extraplanetary bodies. Most of the research done in extreme environments has been conducted in the North American and [...]
From Maps to Mandates: Multitemporal Vegetation Cover Analysis as a Tool to Evaluate Environmental Judicial Decisions
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
This study examines the use of multitemporal vegetation cover analysis as a tool to assess the ecological effectiveness of judicial decisions that recognize the rights of nature, using Colombia’s 2016 T-622 decision on the Atrato River as a case study. Using satellite data from MapBiomas and generalized additive models (GAMs), we evaluated changes in ten types of vegetation cover between 2006 and [...]
Recommendations for improving the design, amenity and performance of privately owned, small-scale biobasins
Published: 2025-07-13
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Due to spatial constraints in cities, it is increasingly challenging to integrate appropriate water sensitive urban design (WSUD) solutions. There has been a shift from larger, precinct-scale bioretention systems owned by local governments to smaller scale ‘biobasins’ managed by private landholders. This shift has brought about unique challenges in regulation, design, maintenance, and [...]
A Critical Review of Life Cycle Assessment in Shrimp Aquaculture: Uncovering Methodological Dominance and Analytical Blind Spots
Published: 2025-07-12
Subjects: Life Sciences
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to evaluate the environmental impacts of shrimp aquaculture, a rapidly expanding global food sector. However, existing shrimp LCA studies report widely divergent results, varying by more than fiftyfold across key impact categories. This systematic review identified 16 peer-reviewed shrimp LCAs and investigates the reasons for these discrepancies, [...]
Spatial Analysis of Lead (Pb) Contamination in Soils of the Savar Industrial Zone, Bangladesh Using QGIS-Based Interpolation
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lead (Pb) contamination poses significant environmental and public health risks in industrial regions. This study employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to assess the spatial distribution of Pb in soils across the Savar industrial zone, Bangladesh—an area characterized by dense industrial activity, including tanneries, textile mills, and metal-processing plants. Using point data from ten [...]
Spatial Analysis and Heatmap Visualization of Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in Dhaka and Mymensingh Divisions, Bangladesh
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physiology
Arsenic contamination in groundwater poses a critical public health threat in Bangladesh, particularly in its central and northern regions. This study investigates the spatial distribution of arsenic concentrations across the Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions using geospatial clustering and interpolation techniques. A total of 1,124 groundwater samples were analyzed using Python-based spatial [...]
River Network HyperGraphs and Transportation Network HyperGraphs: A Graph-Theoretic Approach for Geoscientific and Civil Applications
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Other Life Sciences, Other Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
River Network Graphs and Transportation Network Graphs are classical models that represent river systems and transportation infrastructures as vertices and edges, respectively, and underpin applications in hydrological simulation, watershed management, shortest-path computation, and urban traffic analysis. In this paper, we extend these graph-based models into the hypergraph and superhypergraph [...]