Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
Spatiotemporal connections in high precipitation events in Iran: Application of complex networks
Published: 2025-11-30
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Study region A relatively large area covering east and west Asia, north Africa, and Europe. Study focus This study examines the complex correlation patterns of high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study region. For this purpose, the Complex Networks Theory is used to find the links between high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study area with different time lags. [...]
Assessing pluvial flood hazard potential using multi-criteria decision making and iterative ensemble smoothing in New York City, Long Island, and Long Island Sound watersheds
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Hydrology
Exposure to pluvial floods poses significant hazards, and predicting flood locations can be challenging. We developed a metric that quantifies relative flood hazard across Long Island, New York and the watersheds surrounding Long Island Sound. Based on surface topography, land surface characteristics, and historical weather patterns, we identified seven factors with readily available data that [...]
Wetter Winters, Drier Summers: Quantifying the change in hydrological response around the Puget Sound area using the wflow_sbm hydrological model and CMIP6 projections
Published: 2025-11-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate change is expected to impact hydrological regimes worldwide, including the Pacific Northwest of the United States. This study investigates how climate change will affect river discharge in the Puget Sound region of the State of Washington, with a focus on King and Pierce Counties. We simulated river discharge under historical and future conditions using the physically based, spatially [...]
A generalized additive mixed-effect modeling approach for characterizing Sentinel-2 surface reflectances of visible light from Torch Lake in Antrim County, Michigan, 2019-2025
Published: 2025-11-19
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Statistical Methodology, Statistics and Probability
A generalized additive model (GAM) and three generalized additive mixed-effect models (GAMMs) were developed and compared to describe variations of surface reflectances of visible light from Torch Lake in the blue, green, and red bands from Sentinel 2 satellite imagery. All models included fixed effects associated with water-depth intervals, satellite orbits, trend, and smooth effects associated [...]
FEMA Phase-Out? Catastrophic Extremes Limit Decentralization of U.S. Flood Insurance
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Risk Analysis, Sustainability, Systems Engineering
The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) faces growing solvency and affordability pressures amid proposals to decentralize FEMA and shift disaster management to states. Many catastrophic floods span state boundaries, exposing multiple decentralized insurance pools simultaneously. Using a path-independent simulation framework that integrates risk-based premiums, [...]
Reducing the global human footprint on lake water quality near river inlets
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Human activities have degraded lake water quality globally, leading to toxic algae proliferation and anoxia. The spatial variability of these impacts within lakes and the potential for targeted nutrient pollution reduction to improve water quality remain however underexplored at the global scale. Using 742 million chlorophyll-a (chl-a) estimates from six satellite sensors (daily, 1–4 km [...]
Relict landscapes and fluvial landforms: Catastrophic outflow following a major Late Messinian base-level fall
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Analysis, Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Mathematics, Physics, Stratigraphy
During the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC), the entire Mediterranean basin experienced deep canyon incision along its margins as the result of sea-level variations and rapidly increasing salinity. Yet, the processes and water sources capable of generating such dramatic incision have never been quantitatively demonstrated. Using high-resolution 3-D seismic reflection data and paleo-stream network [...]
Unified Cross-Modal Learning for Hydrological Processes Using Multi-Task Transformer Framework
Published: 2025-11-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Most deep learning studies in hydrology adopt single-task frameworks that address individual variables such as rainfall or streamflow independently, limiting opportunities for shared learning across related environmental processes. This study introduces a unified multi-task, multi-modal deep learning framework capable of jointly performing 24-hour horizon streamflow forecasting and rainfall [...]
Defining Reasonable Use in Transboundary Water Governance
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Hydrology
Ambiguity in the principle of “equitable and reasonable use,” central to Article 5 of the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, has long hindered transboundary water negotiations. Without a clear definition, states invoke this principle to justify conflicting claims, prolonging transboundary water disputes across the world. We propose a sequenced interpretation: first define reasonable use [...]
Multi-Task Learning as a Step Toward Building General-Purpose Hydrological Forecasting Systems
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis
Streamflow and soil moisture are two critical variables in the hydrological cycle, linked through infiltration, runoff generation, and groundwater recharge. Traditional forecasting approaches often treat them independently, overlooking interdependencies and limiting predictive skill. This study investigates Multi-Task Learning (MTL) for daily prediction of both variables using the CAMELS dataset [...]
fasterRaster: GIS in R using GRASS for large rasters and vectors
Published: 2025-10-18
Subjects: Geomorphology, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
Within the R ecosystem, packages like terra and sf are the go-to solutions for most geospatial analyses, yet can struggle with large rasters and vectors. The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, or GRASS, offers solutions that are often more efficient for large data. However, using GRASS through R requires users to become familiar with GRASS-specific syntax and data constructs. The [...]
Sustainable Groundwater Decisions: Hydro-Economic Model Applications to Irrigation in Contrasting Environmental Conditions
Published: 2025-10-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater is important for global agriculture but increasing populations and rising food demand are placing significant pressure on its sustainable use for irrigation. Effective, financially viable irrigation management strategies are urgently needed. This study applies a farm-level hydro-economic model to two contrasting sites: the High Plains Aquifer (HPA), a deep, overexploited, unconfined [...]
The Effects of Fluid Pre-Conditioning on the Deformational Response of a Laboratory Fault
Published: 2025-10-17
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology
AI-Powered Flood Risk Assessment for Gilgit-Baltistan Using Multi-Source Satellite Data and Machine Learning
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Geography, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology
Flood disasters are intensifying worldwide due to climate change, with mountainous regions among the most vulnerable yet least studied. This paper presents an AI-powered flood risk assessment framework for Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, a high-mountain region prone to flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Multi-source satellite datasets—including CHIRPS precipitation, JRC Global [...]
Machine Learning Generated Streamflow Drought Forecasts for the Conterminous United States (CONUS): Developing and Evaluating an Operational Tool to Enhance Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Streamflow Drought Early Warning for Gaged Locations
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Forecasts of streamflow drought, when streamflow declines below typical levels, are notably less available than for floods or meteorological drought, despite widespread impacts. To address this gap, we apply machine learning (ML) models to forecast streamflow drought 1-13 weeks into the future at > 3,000 streamgage locations across the conterminous United States (CONUS). We applied two ML [...]