Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
A Benchmark Dataset of Agricultural Weather Stations over the Contiguous United States for Evapotranspiration Applications
Published: 2026-01-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Agricultural weather data are fundamental for the accurate estimate of evapotranspiration (ET), irrigation scheduling, and water-use accounting. In particular, reference ET provides a standardized atmospheric demand for water loss from a hypothetical well-watered grass (ETo) or alfalfa (ETr); however, weather stations may not adequately represent such climatic conditions. Weather data commonly [...]
Benchmarking analog and ensemble-based seasonal forecasting strategies for water management in the Upper Rio Grande basin
Published: 2026-01-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology
In the southwestern US, declining runoff efficiencies driven by a warming climate have undermined the skill of seasonal water supply forecast (WSF) methods used for reservoir management by local to federal agencies. Seasonal water allocations are often based on deterministic inflow sequences, derived by matching historical streamflow traces (analogs) to statistical WSF volumes; yet model-based [...]
Use of Low Impact Development Systems to Enhance Recharge using Stormwater in a Heavily Groundwater-Depleted Region of the Gulf Coast Aquifer
Published: 2026-01-17
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Water resources in the Houston Metropolitan Area, otherwise known as Greater Houston, have been under enormous stress for decades due to an increase in population and uncertain climate conditions. Rapid urbanization has also increased impervious cover, leading to excess stormwater runoff. Implementing managed aquifer recharge (MAR) through the use of low impact development (LID) strategies can [...]
Global sediment transport intermittency is set by river planform
Published: 2026-01-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology
Patterns of water and sediment flux in rivers are key to understanding landscape responses to environmental change. Quantifying water intermittency in rivers (from perennial to ephemeral) provides vital context for interpreting long-term hydrographs and flood frequency, yet controls on corresponding sediment intermittency are poorly understood due to measurement challenges. We present the first [...]
Digging Through the Trash: An Investigation into Hidden Sources of Information in GNSS-R Observations
Published: 2026-01-10
Subjects: Hydrology
Interpreting remote sensing data sometimes feels like a dark art. We aim to assign a single meaning to ambiguous signals that were actually affected by a slew of unique conditions. And NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) data are no exception. When we observe an increase in CYGNSS surface reflectivity, we most often attribute it to either an increase in soil moisture or in [...]
VRFIS: An Immersive Framework for Real-Time Flood Monitoring, Visualization, and Interactive Environmental Analysis
Published: 2026-01-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology
The rapid evolution of Mixed Reality (MR) technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), offers powerful new means of visualizing and interacting with geographic and environmental data. This paper presents Virtual Reality Flood Information System (VRFIS), an immersive information platform developed using Unreal Engine 5 and Google Photo Realistic 3D Tiles to enable real-time exploration of [...]
FloodSim Sandbox: An Immersive Interactive Simulation Framework for Urban Flood Risk Management
Published: 2025-12-28
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
FloodSim Sandbox is an AI-augmented, immersive digital twin framework for real-time flood visualization, analysis, and decision support. Developed within Unreal Engine 5, it integrates multi-source geospatial data, physically based fluid simulation, and multimodal AI reasoning to model flood dynamics in a high-fidelity digital twin of Iowa City. The system procedurally generates terrain and [...]
Liquefaction as an energetic instability of saturated granular systems – Density control and static enthalpy equilibrium
Published: 2025-12-28
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mining Engineering, Other Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Liquefaction of saturated granular materials is commonly interpreted within stress-based frameworks that rely on the existence of an intact grain skeleton. At the onset of liquefaction, however, the contact network collapses and effective stress ceases to be a meaningful state variable. This work reformulates liquefaction as an enthalpy-driven instability of the coupled grain–water system and [...]
Spatial Patterns of Glacier Meltwater and Mountain Wetland Connectivity in the Peruvian Andes
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Statistical Models
High-altitude wetlands are critical ecosystems that store water, regulate downstream flows, and sustain biodiversity. Their persistence is tightly linked to continuous water inputs from precipitation, groundwater, snow and glacier melt, making them highly vulnerable to climate-driven shifts in mountain hydrology. Rapid glacier retreat, altered precipitation regimes, and rising temperatures are [...]
A variational approach at uncertainty estimation in data-driven rainfall-runoff modeling
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hydrology
Reliable uncertainty estimation is essential for decision making, evaluating model performance, and defining the limits of what can be inferred from data. While uncertainty estimation typically requires specifying prior assumptions about distributional form, we introduce an approach to learn the structure of uncertainty directly from data. Specifically, we introduce a variational long short-term [...]
Caravan-Qual: A global scale integration of water quality observations into a large-sample hydrology dataset
Published: 2025-12-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Protecting and improving surface water quality is contingent upon understanding the trends and spatial patterns in physical, biological, and chemical conditions and their underlying drivers. This requires observational data, spanning a diverse range of water quality constituents, coupled with contextual environmental data. Here we present the first global-scale integration of water quality into [...]
The puzzling yet tractable diversity of global groundwater sustainability challenges
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Global groundwater sustainability is a grand challenge that requires diverse approaches to account for local contexts. Yet, global groundwater assessments often focus solely on aggregate physical trends in storage, levels, and fluxes, overlooking the diversity of social-ecological functions provided by groundwater and their associated sustainability challenges. Here, we introduce groundwater [...]
Evaluating Trade-offs Between Irrigation Profit and Streamflow Depletion Using a Hydro-Economic Model
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Groundwater overexploitation can reduce flows in connected rivers through streamflow depletion, which threatens ecosystems and downstream users who often rely on these flows for their economic wellbeing. Quantifying groundwater-surface water interactions and their economic trade-offs remains challenging for sustainable water management. This study integrates analytical groundwater and streamflow [...]
Spatiotemporal connections in high precipitation events in Iran: Application of complex networks
Published: 2025-11-29
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: 2025-11-25
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 [...]