Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geomorphology
Paleoecology indicates wave climate as key factor in coral reef development
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Stratigraphy
The Last Interglacial (~125,000 years ago) experienced global temperatures warmer than today, making it a natural analog for future climate scenarios. Contemporary coral reefs preserve ecological signals that offer valuable insights into past climate dynamics. Here, we examine the fossil reefs of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao to reconstruct wind and wave conditions during this period. While modern [...]
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 [...]
DOZER: a toy model of coastal hazard mitigation during a storm
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Dynamical Systems, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Motivated by observations of emergency road-maintenance crews in coastal settings, DOZER is a video game in which the player uses a bulldozer to clear sand from a beachfront road during a storm. DOZER is also a toy model in a formal sense: a heuristic tool for insight into the dynamics of real-time intervention in the physical processes of a natural hazard. Here, I introduce DOZER as both a game [...]
Surging glaciers in Svalbard: Observing their distribution, characteristics and evolution
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Geomorphology, Glaciology
Glacier surges are episodes of significantly increased ice flow due to ice-dynamical feedbacks, and are often repeated in a quasi-periodical manner. Ice mass is redistributed during a surge, which leads to surface lowering at high elevation as ice is transferred down-glacier and thickening nearer the terminus. In this paper, we review different approaches for monitoring and detecting glacier [...]
High-resolution Digital Terrain Model and Land-surface Parameters of São Sebastião and Ilhabela, southeastern Brazil
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Effective disaster risk management and detailed environmental studies in landslide-prone regions require high-resolution and accurate Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). This work describes the development of a 2~m-resolution lidar-based DTM and an extensive set of land-surface parameters (LSPs) for the municipalities of São Sebastião and Ilhabela, southeastern Brazil. The dataset was generated from [...]
How do climate, geomorphology, and land-use control sediment yield generation in an anthropogenically modified landscape?
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology
Understanding the controls on sediment yield (SY) is essential for water resource management. However, in the Cauvery basin in India, progress is hindered by fragmented studies that lack an integrated analysis. This research quantifies sub-catchment SY using long-term gauging data and employs Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) and multiple regression (MLR) to evaluate geomorphic, climatic, [...]
Paleoseismology of the Zougahana fault, northern Aso outer rim, and its role in the tectonics of northern Kyushu
Published: 2025-07-31
Subjects: Geomorphology, Tectonics and Structure
The Kumamoto earthquake (Mj 6.5, Mj 7.3) occurred on 14 and 16 April 2016, with the epicenter on the Futagawa and Hinagu faults, central Kyushu Island, southwest Japan. Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar analyses detected many phase discontinuities in the source region. Phase discontinuities and ruptures were also confirmed at the Zougahana fault on the northeastern rim of Aso [...]
Holocene relative sea-level changes from the Atlantic coast of South America
Published: 2025-07-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology
Holocene sea-level changes along the Atlantic coast of South America reflect a complex interplay between glacio-isostatic adjustment (GIA), regional tectonics, and local sedimentary processes. However, the uneven spatial and temporal resolution of existing sea-level data has hindered regional-scale assessments. Here, we compile and standardize 1108 relative sea-level (RSL) data points from [...]
Dynamics of the last ice sheet on the northern fringe of Poland: reconstruction inferred from landform analysis and 10Be surface exposure dating
Published: 2025-06-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology
The paper presents new results of glacial landforms mapping and analysis based on high resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and 10Be surface exposure dating of erratic boulders on the northern fringe of Poland. We aimed to reconstruct the main ice-marginal positions, local ice flow directions and timing of the ice margin oscillations during the last deglaciation. A total number of 715 [...]
Topographic evidence for recent intraplate reactivation in NW Uruguay
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Located in eastern South America, Uruguay has been considered tectonically inactive since rifting in the Late Cretaceous. Here, we use a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) and field observations to investigate the presence of recent tectonic activity in the Basaltic Plateau, northwest Uruguay. Based on topographic-, drainage network- and field-based data, we identify evidence for [...]
The geomorphological and sedimentological legacy of the historical Lake Lorsch within the Weschnitz floodplain (northeastern Upper Rhine Graben, Germany)
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology
The artificial historical Lake Lorsch (1474/79 to 1718/20 CE) in the northeastern Upper Rhine Graben (Germany) is known from various historical sources, e.g. for fish farming, as a significant anthropogenic imprint of the Weschnitz floodplain. Nevertheless, there have been no geomorphological and sedimentological investigations about the (quasi-)natural context for the creation of the lake, its [...]
Linked canyons and fans communicate through a migrating bedrock-alluvial transition
Published: 2025-06-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The evolution of net-erosional fluvial landscapes is often treated separately from net-depositional fluvial landscapes, using different methods and different data input. Yet these landscapes are often tightly linked by means of a moving-boundary bedrock-alluvial transition. We consider a linked canyon-fan system in the setting of a Basin and Range province, basing our work loosely on Rainbow [...]
Spatiotemporal dynamics of floodplain patterns during the last 400 years south of Leipzig - A regional scale analysis
Published: 2025-06-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Elster-Pleiße floodplain south of Leipzig has undergone significant hydromorphological changes over the past centuries, influenced by both natural processes and anthropogenic interventions. This study employs high-resolution LiDAR-based fluvial-geomorphological mapping (1x1 m resolution) and old maps analyses to reconstruct past river dynamics and identify shifts in channel morphology. [...]
Unprecedented decline in modern coral reef communities could indicate the onset of the Anthropocene
Published: 2025-06-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Stratigraphy
Coral reefs have experienced widespread and accelerated decline, driven by a combination of global and local anthropogenic stressors. To contextualize these changes, we compared the composition of coral reef communities on Curaçao between 1973 and 2023 with that of corals preserved in fossil reefs from the Last Interglacial period (128–116 ka). These fossil reefs, exposed along the island’s [...]
Coral microatoll partial mortality after multi-hour subaerial exposure: Implications for relative sea-level studies
Published: 2025-05-30
Subjects: Geomorphology, Marine Biology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Some intertidal corals, known as microatolls, have a distinct morphology that reflects changes in local relative sea level. While past observations have shown that the top surface of these corals may be killed by subaerial exposure, little is known about the exact oceanographic or environmental conditions that cause a coral to die down to a particular level. Here, we combine field surveys, [...]