Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
AI learns to forecast global flood events from historical news
Published: 2026-03-09
Subjects: Hydrology
Validation of ICESat-2 ATL13 Version 7 Water Surface Elevation on Small High-Latitude Rivers: A Case Study of the River Dee and River Don, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Published: 2026-03-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Satellite Laser Altimetry represents an attractive opportunity to supplement the sparsely distributed in situ gauge network used to monitor rivers. The performance of satellite laser altimetry on small, high latitude streams has however been characterized as being poor. This research will be validating ICESat-2 ATL13 version 7 measured water surface elevations (WSE) for the River Dee (average [...]
snowman: an open-source R package for automated 30-m snow and ice cover mapping using the Landsat archive
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Glaciology, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Seasonal snow and ice cover are critical components of the cryosphere yet mapping their dynamics at ecologically relevant spatiotemporal scales remains challenging. Here I present snowman, an open-source R package and algorithm for automated mapping of snow and ice cover dynamics at 30-m resolution using Landsat satellite imagery (1982–present). The algorithm combines globally trained [...]
Discharge Deficits in the Nepali Himalaya Linked to Greening and Warming
Published: 2026-03-05
Subjects: Hydrology
Anthropogenic climate change and rapid infrastructure development have drastically altered the hydrology of many watersheds, influencing the speed at which water is absorbed, stored, and distributed. In this work, we use long-term daily discharge records in the Nepali Himalaya alongside rainfall and snowmelt data to explore whether there have been large-scale shifts in the conversion of upstream [...]
Processing flaws and uneven Sentinel-1 coverage distort global flood trend interpretations
Published: 2026-03-04
Subjects: Hydrology
Mutual interactions between aquifer thermal energy storage and groundwater extraction: global sensitivity insights
Published: 2026-02-28
Subjects: Hydrology
Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) is increasingly deployed in groundwater protection zones, motivating a quantitative assessment of thermal impacts on public-supply wells and the influence of supply-well pumping on ATES performance. In the Campine Basin (Belgium), we simulate three settings: balanced operation, seasonal imbalance, and multi-system deployment. Using a groundwater flow and [...]
Declining Snowpack in the Presence of Stable Precipitation May Not Negatively Impact Baseflow or Floodplain Vegetation in the Middle Fork Rock Creek Watershed, Montana, USA
Published: 2026-02-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation
In the age of snow droughts and megafires, water availability and changes in precipitation, snowpack, and baseflows are active areas of research. Headwater streams are where all large rivers begin, but their seasonal water availability is difficult to measure because they are so abundant and remote. Remote sensing can help monitor small streams semi-arid areas if there is an appropriate proxy for [...]
Dynamic critical groundwater depth as a predictor of irrigation-intensified salinization in lowland Hungary
Published: 2026-02-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Hydrology, Soil Science
Shallow groundwater in continental lowland environments sustains upward capillary fluxes that transport dissolved salts to the land surface. However, the depth below which this capillary-driven contribution becomes negligible, often parameterized as the extinction depth in groundwater model ET packages, has been treated as a static, soil-dependent parameter. We argue that salinization risk is [...]
Decadal Trends in the Quality of Groundwater Used for Public Drinking-Water Supply in California, 2004–2023, California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment Program, Priority Basin Project
Published: 2026-02-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology
This study provides a comprehensive assessment of decadal changes in the quality of groundwater used for public drinking-water supply at 444 monitoring sites across California during 2004–2023. We assessed decadal step trends in groundwater quality for 145 water-quality constituents and geochemical indicators statewide and across geographic and land-use based network groups. We evaluated the [...]
Data-driven control reveals distributed flood adaptation priorities across large river networks
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dynamical Systems, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
In the face of growing flood risks, decentralized adaptation measures like detention storage, enhanced infiltration, and floodplain reconnection have the potential to mitigate flood impacts at the river basin scale. However, optimal spatial allocation of flood control measures is complicated by the high dimensionality of hydrologic systems and the sensitivity of proposed strategies to climate [...]
Biochar granulation and particle size influence hydrological performance of green roof substrates
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Materials Science and Engineering, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Green roofs are increasingly being implemented in cities to improve stormwater management and provide additional ecosystem services. Biochar, a carbon-rich material derived from pyrolyzed biomass, has emerged as a promising substrate additive to improve hydrological performance of green roofs; however, unprocessed biochar is susceptible to erosion loss. Biochar granulation and particle size [...]
Assessing and Correcting Bias in Gridded Reference Evapotranspiration over Agricultural Lands Across the Contiguous United States
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Gridded reference evapotranspiration (ETo) data are widely used for agricultural water management and remote sensing ET (RSET) models, but biases can arise in agricultural regions where coarse-resolution meteorological inputs fail to capture local microclimates. We investigated biases in the gridMET ETo product across irrigated agricultural areas of the contiguous United States (CONUS) by [...]
Channel Change and Sediment Transport in the Puyallup River Watershed through 2022
Published: 2026-02-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
The Puyallup River drains a 990 square mile watershed in western Washington, with headwaters on the glacier-covered flanks of Mount Rainier. Major tributaries include the White, Carbon, and Mowich Rivers. In the levee-confined reaches of the lower watershed, loss of flood conveyance due to sand and gravel deposition has been a chronic issue. Over much of the 20th century, flood conveyance was [...]
Multi-Sensor Fusion of Sentinel-2 Imagery and ICESat-2 Satellite Laser Bathymetry for Benthic Habitat Classification in Key Largo, Florida Keys
Published: 2026-02-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Multispectral imagery has traditionally been used to classify benthic habitats; however, many challenges exist when using this method alone including the overlap of spectral signatures among habitat types, and the loss of signal due to water depth in coastal areas. The authors propose an innovative method that combines multispectral imagery from Sentinel-2 (Tile 17RNJ, January 30, 2024) with [...]
Two-thirds of global coastline affected by climate-driven saline groundwater intrusion by end of century, reaching far inland by 2300
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Fresh groundwater is a vital resource along global coastlines where already over a third of the world’s population lives. Saline groundwater intrusion, driven by sea-level rise, groundwater abstraction, and reduced recharge, threatens the potability of coastal groundwater. Yet, the global potential for intrusion remains uncertain. Using a global groundwater model, we assess climate-driven saline [...]