Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geomorphology
No detectable precursor in Sentinel-1 backscatter before the 26 August 2026 Langtang Lirung rock–ice avalanche, Nepal
Published: 2026-09-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology
On 26 August 2026 a rock–ice avalanche on the north face of Langtang Lirung, Nepal, initiated a debris flow and flood that ran roughly 100 km down the Lhende Khola, Bhote Koshi and Trishuli. Several contemporaneous reports asserted that satellite radar had tracked a month of accelerating slope movement before failure; that assertion has not been substantiated in published analysis. Using [...]
Deglacial Mass-Movement Floods as a Potential Source of Catastrophic Flood Traditions: A Testable Geomythological Hypothesis
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology
Catastrophic flood traditions occur in many geographically separated cultures, but their possible geological substrates need not be uniform. Existing explanations include river floods, earthquake and volcanic tsunamis, glacial-lake outburst floods, postglacial sea-level rise, and cultural transmission. This paper proposes a complementary, explicitly testable hypothesis: during the terminal [...]
The Vulnerability Spiral: Compound Climate Risk Across Five Islands
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Hydrology, International and Area Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resource Economics, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Sustainability
Small islands are widely assumed to face a compounding climate risk: high physical exposure to sea-level rise, layered on top of degrading natural coastal defenses. That assumption is rarely tested against independent, multi-temporal evidence, and rarely broken down by ecosystem type — so I tested it directly, across five islands spanning three ocean basins: Maldives, Lakshadweep, Seychelles, [...]
Stolen Strata: Quantifying the Anthropogenic Erasure of Kashmir's Karewa Terraces and Its Threat to the Saffron Economy
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Karewa terraces are elevated, flat-topped deposits of intermontane lake-basin age (Pleistocene/Pliocene), and they underlie one of Kashmir's most economically significant agricultural systems — the saffron-growing belt at Pampore. Everyone who follows agriculture in Kashmir already knows these terraces are vanishing under unregulated soil mining and uncontrolled urban expansion; there's ample [...]
A cascade, not a flood: testing the competing accounts of the 26 August 2026 Lhende Khola–Bhote Koshi disaster
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
On 26 August 2026 a rock–ice mass detached above the Lhende Khola on the China–Nepal border, blocked the channel, and released a flow that travelled about 100 km down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli, killing hundreds of people and removing about a tenth of Nepal's generating capacity in a single morning. Reporting produced mutually incompatible accounts of the cause, while the agency best placed to [...]
The 26 August 2026 Langtang Lirung ice–rock avalanche and its transboundary cascade: a multi-source observational reconstruction in the Bhote Koshi basin
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology
On 26 August 2026, an ice–rock avalanche detached from the northern flank of Langtang Lirung (7,227 m) at about 5,200 m a.s.l., transformed into a debris flow that travelled roughly 22 km in 6–7 minutes, destroyed the Gyirong border port (China) and dammed the river; a flood then propagated a reported ~170 km down the Bhote Koshi–Trishuli–Narayani system into Nepal and India. At least 16 people [...]
Landslide Susceptibility Modelling and Infrastructure Exposure in the Zillertal, Austrian Alps
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science
Landslides are a major threat in alpine regions, as steep terrain, complex geology and locally concentrated infrastructure increase societal exposure to landslide hazards. This study develops a landslide susceptibility model for the Zillertal (Tyrol, Austria), utilizing a Random Forest modelling approach. A high-resolution landslide susceptibility map was created using seven geomorphometric, [...]
An Open-Source, Data-Driven Interactive Web Framework for 3D Visualization of Geoheritage Sites: A Case Study of the Grand Canyon Arizona, United States
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Geology, Geomorphology
Effective dissemination, public engagement, and educational utilization of prominent geoheritage sites are often hindered by the steep learning curves, high computational requirements, and licensing costs inherent to professional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D geological modeling software. To bridge this accessibility gap and democratize spatial data, we present a universal, [...]
Desert pavements stabilise arid vegetation patterns
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology
Some vegetation patterns have aridity-dependent morphology. On low-angle arid hillslopes, vegetation organises into bands which follow topographic contours. Terraces emerge with these bands due to vegetation’s drag on sediment-laden runoff, creating a topographic signature of life diagnostic of precipitation rate. Another widespread feature of arid environments is desert pavement, surficial [...]
Data Test of a Hydro-Kinematic State Graph for Landslide Forecasting
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Statistics and Probability
A graph model can make landslide-monitoring relationships explicit, but a graph is not automatically more informative than a well-regularized time-series model. This study tests that distinction on the publicly released Lamosano landslide record from northeastern Italy. The processed dataset contains 161 observations of 11-day horizontal InSAR differential displacement and rainfall from 10 April [...]
Flood Susceptibility Mapping and Engineering Exposure Assessment of Zhob District, Balochistan, Using Sentinel-1 SARValidated AHP and Frequency Ratio Modeling
Published: 2026-08-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology
Zhob District in northern Balochistan was substantially affected by the 2022 Pakistan monsoon floods, yet, unlike comparable districts mapped in the immediate aftermath of the same event (Larkana, Nowshera, Pishin, Quetta), it has lacked a dedicated, district-specific flood susceptibility assessment. This study addresses that gap using a hybrid Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Frequency Ratio [...]
Comparing UNet and HRNet for Geomorphic Feature Extraction from Digital Terrain Model-Derived Land Surface Parameters
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Remote Sensing
Automated extraction of geomorphic features from high spatial resolution terrain data is important for environmental monitoring, geohazard assessment, and landscape change analysis. This study compares two convolutional neural network architectures, UNet and High-Resolution Network (HRNet), for semantic segmentation of mine benches and sinkholes from lidar-derived digital terrain models and land [...]
A heuristic approach to structural consistency of a horizon surface with tectonic faults based on Mallet's discrete model
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Mining Engineering, Theory and Algorithms
The paper addresses the problem of automating the consistency process between reflecting horizon surfaces and the network of tectonic faults in the construction of three-dimensional digital geological models within the explicit (surface-based) approach. The problem is formalized on the basis of Mallet's discrete model (Discrete Smooth Interpolation, DSI). It is shown that the classical [...]
Flooded Rivers, Drying Wetlands, Vanishing Tributaries: Hydrological Paradox of the East Ganga Plains
Published: 2026-08-16
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The East Ganga Plains (EGP) present a striking hydrological paradox: while embanked rivers flood with increasing magnitude, adjacent wetlands and groundwater-fed streams are desiccating, and aquifer storage is declining. Using satellite remote sensing and gravimetry, we document that: (i) wetlands exhibit significant water-cover loss despite stable monsoon rainfall; (ii) small rivers and [...]
PyRiverShift: A Gaussian Transect Decomposition Framework for Quantifying Sub-Pixel Lateral Channel Mobility
Published: 2026-08-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Along many rivers, lateral channel mobility is a key process, yet quantification from freely available multi-decadal 30 m Landsat imagery is constrained by low pixel resolution relative to channel width. We introduce PyRiverShift, a sensor-agnostic spectral decomposition framework. PyRiverShift fits a 1-D Gaussian to NDWI profiles along valley-perpendicular transects, recovering sub-pixel channel [...]