Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
The Invisible Depletion: Compound Drought, Groundwater Collapse, and Maladaptation in the Middle East and Southwest Asia
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
The Middle East and Southwest Asia (MESWA) region is experiencing severe hydro-climatic non-stationarity, transitioning from cyclical precipitation deficits and surpluses to a state of structural water bankruptcy. This review synthesizes the compounding atmospheric and anthropogenic drivers of this crisis, highlighting the region’s shift towards a regime defined by frequent, concurrent extremes [...]
Geodetic and gravimetric constraints on regional glacier mass changes in High Mountain Asia
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Hydrology
Regional glacier assessments often require mass-change estimates over periods that differ from the intervals measured geodetically. We quantify how native cumulative-mass adjustments and within-interval variation contribute to the regional estimates obtained by adding GRACE. A linear joint inversion represents glacier, lake, non-glacier and exterior mass across High Mountain Asia. Geodetic-only, [...]
Scalable and locally mass-conservative simulation of basin-scale variably saturated groundwater flow
Published: 2026-10-26
Subjects: Hydrology
Groundwater is the largest store of liquid fresh water, yet because it is hidden beneath the surface, it is primarily understood through models of porous-media flow. Richards' equation, a physically faithful description of variably saturated groundwater flow, remains costly for basin-scale groundwater modelling. Consequently, operational models use reduced physics, either by assuming linearity or [...]
Erosion-induced momentum production and system acceleration govern landslide mobility
Published: 2026-10-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geotechnical Engineering, Glaciology, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Erosion can fundamentally alter landslide acceleration through the produced momentum. However, existing analytical landslide velocity models do not account for the energy dissipation associated with erosion-induced system acceleration. Here, I present a novel, complete dynamical velocity model for erosive landslides that incorporates two intrinsically coupled mechanically essential processes: [...]
Contour-crossing calculations quantify decadal changes in the pCO2 impacts of inorganic chemical weathering in the North American Arctic
Published: 2026-10-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Degradation of Arctic permafrost is altering biogeochemical dynamics by exposing previously frozen sediment to water, acids, and oxidants. While thaw-driven enhancement of carbonate and silicate mineral weathering results in drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2), acting as a negative feedback on modern climate change, enhancement of sulfide mineral oxidation increases pCO2 and acts as a [...]
NepalDTM: A National 8-Metre Bare-Earth Digital Terrain Model of Nepal from Multi-Source Satellite Data Fusion
Published: 2026-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
NepalDTM is an open bare-earth elevation model of Nepal stored on an 8 m grid. Where the NASA High Mountain Asia 8 m stereo mosaic has a usable height, that mosaic is the surface. Elsewhere the surface is Copernicus GLO-30. A histogram gradient-boosting model, trained on 6,230,548 ICESat-2 points and 7,035,904 GEDI points, predicts how far the surface sits above the ground and subtracts that [...]
Hydrometeorological Consistency and Structural Differences in High-Resolution Atmospheric Forcing Products over the Gulf Coast
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology
Kilometer-scale meteorological forcing products are increasingly used in hydrologic applications, yet comparable resolution does not ensure consistent atmospheric structure or derived diagnostics. This study compares AORC and NLDAS-3 across the U.S. Gulf Coast and Southeast (Texas to the Carolinas) from 2001–2020 using a common spatial footprint and paired days. Relative to AORC, NLDAS-3 exhibits [...]
GROW-Qual: A global observational groundwater quality dataset linked to water table dynamics and Earth system variables
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Groundwater underpins freshwater supply, food production and ecosystem health across the globe. Yet, groundwater levels and quality are increasingly threatened by overextraction, contamination, and climate change. Understanding how water table dynamics and quality are interlinked and affected by these pressures requires integrated observational groundwater datasets combined with Earth system [...]
Hydroclimatic change reorganizes karst spring discharge in the Alpine region across discharge regimes and karst-system properties
Published: 2026-10-19
Subjects: Hydrology
Karst springs are important water resources for the Alpine region and are particularly sensitive to hydroclimatic change due to their comparably short response times. Yet how their hydroclimatic responses differ among discharge regimes and karst systems with different storage properties remains poorly understood. We analyzed 85 karst springs across the wider Alpine region over 2003-2022 to assess [...]
Leveraging satellite data and machine learning to quantify rooftop rainwater harvesting reliability and tank requirements for schools and health care facilities in Uganda
Published: 2026-10-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Many schools and health facilities in Uganda lack a reliable water supply, yet most have roofs that could collect rain. For 41,592 facilities (32,881 schools and 8,711 health facilities), we estimated how much water their roofs can supply, how large a tank each one needs, and how often that supply fails. Roof areas came from AI-derived building footprints (Google Open Buildings v3) and daily [...]
A Community-Oriented Flood Map Visualization and Evaluation Framework
Published: 2026-10-15
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Software Engineering
Flood inundation maps are essential for preparedness, response, and long‐term risk mitigation, yet many existing visualization platforms remain limited by rigid data structures and region‐specific workflows. This study introduces FIMApp, a client‐side, web‐based framework and platform for integrating, visualizing, and comprehensively evaluating flood map products using standardized, portable data [...]
Active hazardous slow faults drive drainage evolution in the Atacama Desert
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Tectonics and Structure
The Atacama Desert of the Central Andean forearc is the driest non-polar region on Earth, where extremely low erosion rates preserve geomorphic markers over Myr timescales. Between 19°S and 20°S, subtle Quaternary east-vergent reverse faults deform the west-sloping landscape and disrupt drainage development. This setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate fault evolution, uplift [...]
Lixa v0.1.2: an open-source, image-informed framework for closed-loop design of leaching processes for domestic critical-mineral recovery, from the pore to the plant scale
Published: 2026-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Leaching takes a metal out of a rock and into a solution. In the United States, rare earth elements, lithium and scandium occur mostly in rocks where the metal is thinly spread through a porous matrix: weathered clays, coal ash, lithium claystones and bauxite residue. For such rocks the leaching recipe (reagent, concentration, temperature, particle size, liquid-to-solid ratio and contact time) [...]
Historical and projected freshwater withdrawals and irrigation consumptive use for Arizona, 1896–2099
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology
Sustainable water management needs spatially resolved withdrawal estimates, yet such data remain scarce worldwide. In Arizona, USA, decades of aquifer overdraft and Colorado River over-allocation have outpaced local withdrawal data, constraining policymaking. We present annual freshwater withdrawal and irrigation consumptive use estimates for Arizona at 2 km resolution over 1896–2099, partitioned [...]
Probabilistic Streamflow Forecasts for Mississippi River Navigation Risk and Parametric Insurance
Published: 2026-10-11
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Mississippi River navigation is disrupted by both low and high water extremes, yet shippers, ports, and terminals lack a simple instrument to transfer that risk. We test whether probabilistic forecasts of monthly streamflow can provide useful navigation-risk information. Using pretrained Chronos-2 at three major Mississippi River subbasin outlets, we compute navigation risk probabilities, [...]