Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Direct mapping of plantation forest aboveground biomass change with deep learning and SAR-optical fusion
Published: 2026-06-03
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
Accurately tracking changes in forest aboveground biomass (ΔAGB) is necessary for understanding global carbon dynamics. Traditional approaches estimate ΔAGB indirectly by differencing two independent biomass predictions, compounding uncertainty and reducing accuracy. Here, we develop a Mixture-of-Experts (MOE) machine learning framework that uses multi-sensor fusion of Sentinel-1 C-band SAR, [...]
Comparing Process-Based and Machine Learning Models for Streamflow Prediction in the Kaligandaki River Basin, Nepal
Published: 2026-06-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Reliable daily streamflow prediction is critical for hydropower operations, flood risk management, and irrigation planning in monsoon-dominated Himalayan river basins. While both process-based and machine learning (ML) approaches have been used for such tasks, systematic comparisons that decompose the sources of performance differences remain scarce. This study evaluates seven configurations: a [...]
Annual electricity access rate dataset for Africa from 2000-2021
Published: 2026-06-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Accurate and spatially explicit electricity access data are essential for electrification planning and policy evaluation in Africa, yet existing data are often survey-based, infrequent, and temporally inconsistent. This study presents a harmonized Electricity Access Rate (EAR) dataset for Africa spanning 2000-2021, derived from satellite-based nighttime luminosity observations and gridded [...]
Global Temperature Anomalies in Practice: An Open, Reproducible Framework for Baseline Harmonisation and ENSO-Aware Visualisation
Published: 2026-06-01
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences
We present a reproducible pipeline for downloading, processing, and harmonising global temperature anomaly series from HadCRUT5, GISTEMP, NOAAGlobalTemp, Berkeley Earth, and ERA5. All datasets are aligned to a common 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline to enable direct comparison. The workflow also integrates the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) to annotate El Niño and La Niña phases in the figures, [...]
Engineering AI-Assisted Client-Side Scientific Workflows: WebGPU Inference Architecture and Framework for Privacy-Preserving Hydrological Analysis
Published: 2026-05-30
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Software Engineering
Deep learning has demonstrated strong potential for improving hydrological predictions, yet its practical adoption remains limited by software complexity, infrastructure requirements, data governance constraints, and fragmented analytical workflows. This study presents Hydro AI Lab, an AI-assisted client-side scientific workflow platform that enables end-to-end hydrological analysis, including [...]
HydroModelSpec: Toward Standardized Machine Learning Model Exchange in Hydrology
Published: 2026-05-30
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Software Engineering
The rapid growth of deep learning models for hydrological forecasting (e.g., CNNs, LSTMs, Transformers) has created a fragmented ecosystem where trained models remain tied to their original frameworks, environments, and institutions. Despite substantial investments in model development, the hydrological community lacks a generalized structure for packaging models with their architecture, training [...]
Awareness and Action: An Exploration Between Public Perception and Space Industry Priorities Regarding Sustainability
Published: 2026-05-30
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability
As issues regarding sustainability continue to grow more urgent and prevalent to everyday life, it is important to recognize whether society fully understands what is occurring. The low earth orbit is at threat of overcongestion, and the environment is experiencing higher rates of pollution due to rocket launches, calling for the need for the government and public to engage in this issue. [...]
Resolving the SAI Trilemma with a Novel Core–Shell Mineral Aerosol: DoloSil-20, a Silica-Passivated Dolomite Architecture for Simultaneous Optical Efficiency, Thermal Neutrality, and Ozone Safety
Published: 2026-05-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Conventional stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) strategies based on liquid sulfate aerosols (H2SO4.H2O) introduce well-documented risks of catalytic ozone destruction and stratospheric near-infrared heating. From a materials-science perspective, the core challenge is one of multi-objective material selection: identifying a particle composition that simultaneously optimizes optical performance, [...]
NOVEL & RAPID PROCESSING OF UAS IMAGERY FOR TARGETED CYANOBACTERIAL HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOM SAMPLING
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are an efficient way to monitor and sample algal biomass including cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CyanoHABs). However, conventional methods to create a UAS orthophoto of homogeneous water surfaces often produce a patchy, smoothed, or spatially inaccurate output. In this study, we developed a novel method to interpolate a spectral index from a central pixel in [...]
Development and Evaluation of the High-Resolution MUSICA UK Domain: A Case Study of Global and Regional Biomass Burning Impacts
Published: 2026-05-28
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Regional air quality models provide insights into local pollution and exposure, but limitations in representing large-scale atmospheric processes and long-range transport can introduce inconsistencies across spatial scales, which can be addressed using multi-scale chemical transport models. We develop the first UK-specific regionally refined grid (UKne30×16; ∼7 km), alongside a global uniform [...]
Wildfire smoke offsets decades of progress in reducing ozone exposure across the United States
Published: 2026-05-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Sciences
Ground-level ozone (O3) pollution has declined in the U.S., yet the progress has stalled in recent years, coinciding with increasing wildfire smoke. Using ensemble machine learning models trained on surface observations, we develop a gridded daily smoke O3 dataset across the contiguous U.S. from 2006-2023. We estimate that wildfire smoke placed an additional 29 million people each year in areas [...]
Multidimensional Inconsistency in Forest Ecosystem Representation: An NLP-Assisted Thematic Review
Published: 2026-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography
Forest ecosystem monitoring increasingly relies on multisensor remote sensing approaches integrating optical imagery, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and LiDAR observations to assess biomass, degradation, and ecosystem condition. However, these systems frequently generate inconsistent representations of the same ecosystem due to differences in sensor sensitivity, ecological complexity, scale [...]
Spatiotemporal Evolution of Urban Thermal Conditions, Vegetation Dynamics, and Built-up Expansion in Ahmedabad, India (2000–2025) Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Analysis.
Published: 2026-05-11
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Rapid urban expansion has substantially altered urban thermal conditions across many semi-arid cities. This study examined spatiotemporal variation in land surface temperature (LST), vegetation cover, and built-up intensity across Ahmedabad, India, between 2000 and 2025 using multi-temporal Landsat imagery and the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Spatial analysis revealed progressive expansion [...]
Extreme Heat and Rainfall Risk Attributed to Cumulative CO2 Emissions from Fossil Fuel Producers
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Legal and political approaches to climate accountability require demonstrating that a particular emitter contributed to a climate impact, but quantitative solutions to this attribution challenge remain nascent. This study leverages the proportionality of global warming to cumulative CO2 emissions to develop statistical models that directly predict extreme climate risk from cumulative emissions. [...]
Polar ice-cores unravel the formation of a UV window during magnetic field collapse ~ 42 ka BP
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
During geomagnetic excursions (GEs), compromised magnetic field and increased cosmic-ray bombardment can deplete the ozone layer forming ‘UV window(s)’ in the Earth’s atmosphere. Here, using triple sulfur-isotope systematics in polar ice-core sulfate record spanning 600 years of the Laschamp GE, we provide direct evidence of the formation of a UV window. Several events of UV-induced anomalous [...]