Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Recent climate change reduced Spanish forests' carbon sink capacity
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Forests play a crucial role as carbon sinks and are central to climate mitigation strategies, yet their long-term reliability in this function is increasingly uncertain under climate change. Using deep learning techniques on a multi-source dataset—combining multi-spectral satellite data, airborne laser scanning, and ground-based measurements—we produced the most up-to-date high-resolution maps of [...]
Linking Water Temperature Variability to Water Quality Dynamics in Beck Lake, an Urban Inland Lake in Chicago (2020–2024)
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Abstract This study examines the effect of climate variability on water quality in Beck Lake, an inland urban lake in Chicago, Illinois, from 2020 to 2024. The lake is maintained by the Chicago Park District and contains aquatic life such as Bluegill, Largemouth Bass, and Northern Pike. To determine climate influence, satellite-derived water temperature data were analyzed using time series [...]
Two-thirds of new fossil fuel infrastructure targets critical ecosystems, elevating health risks for millions
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
While the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate change is well established, the elevated risks to fenceline communities and critical ecosystems remain underexplored at a global scale, limited to a handful of prior coarse assessments. Here we map over 18,000 operating fossil fuel facilities across 170 countries, and assess their placement in surrounding populations and ecosystems, [...]
The Tocantins Framework: A Machine Learning-Based Assessment of Intra-urban Thermal Anomalies
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Statistics and Probability, Sustainability
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect has been extensively studied at the city scale. Yet, the Intra-Urban Heat Island and the Intra-Urban Cool Island effects remain poorly characterized due to the absence of standardized quantification frameworks. This study introduces the Tocantins Framework, a dual-metric system combining machine learning and spatial morphology to identify and quantify [...]
Extratropical forcing of low-latitude subsurface oxygenation under future warming
Published: 2025-11-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The global ocean is losing oxygen under climate warming, yet most climate models project rising oxygen levels in low-latitude subsurface waters (~100–500 m), partly due to their enhanced ventilation. However, underlying drivers for the enhanced ventilation remain unclear. Here we demonstrate that the enhanced tropical subsurface ventilation is driven by extratropical forcing. While extratropical [...]
Spatiotemporal dynamics of air pollution and vegetation health in a rapidly urbanizing city in northeastern Bangladesh
Published: 2025-11-08
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Geography
Air pollution poses a significant environmental concern and is recognized as the fourth leading risk factor affecting human health. Understanding the levels of air pollution and its relationships with vegetation is crucial for assessing health risks under rapid urbanization. In this study, using the extracted imagery from the Sentinel-5 and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [...]
A proof-of-stake blockchain framework for transparent climate data verification
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Trust in climate data remains a significant barrier to effective climate action. Skepticism about data manipulation and politicization reduces confidence and hinders evidence-based policy. Existing climate data systems lack transparent verification and accessible analytical tools, limiting accountability and stakeholder engagement. This study presents a reproducible framework that applies [...]
A climate-biodiversity funnel that accelerates action towards global goals
Published: 2025-11-06
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Joint action on climate and biodiversity is urgently needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement (PA) and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF). Here, we analyse interlinkages between targets in these two landmark international agreements. We find recognition of climate-biodiversity interactions in the agreement texts (three KM-GBF Targets and four PA Articles), [...]
Factors Affecting Aboveground Carbon Storage in Mixed Oak-Pine Forests: A Multiple Regression Analysis of Southeastern U.S. Forest Inventory Data
Published: 2025-11-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Multivariate Analysis, Natural Resources and Conservation, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models
This study investigated the factors affecting aboveground carbon storage in mixed oak-pine forests of the southeastern United States, with a particular focus on the influence of stand age. Using data from 946 Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots collected from 2009 to 2019, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the relative importance of various forest and topographic [...]
Arctic Plastification: Climate-driven amplification of plastic pollution through accumulation and fragmentation
Published: 2025-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Rapid warming of the Arctic, known as Arctic Amplification, is reshaping ice, ocean, and coastal systems in ways that alter how plastic pollution accumulates and transforms in the region. As global plastic emissions continue to rise, more debris is transported northward by rivers and ocean currents. At the same time, the loss of sea ice, coastal erosion, and the formation of new shorelines are [...]
Emerging Remote Sensing Tools for Comprehensive Cryosphere Assessment
Published: 2025-10-27
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This review synthesizes current remote sensing (RS) applications for monitoring Earth's cryosphere, encompassing ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, snow cover, permafrost, and mountain ice features. It examines how satellite-based technologies, including radar interferometry, laser altimetry, passive microwave sensors, and optical imagery, have revolutionized cryospheric science by enabling [...]
Climate factors related to the dengue incidence in Costa Rica and future projections under scenario SSP5-8.5.
Published: 2025-10-24
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistics and Probability
This article has three objectives: 1) modeling the climate-dengue relationship at the smallest administrative division (districts) using high-resolution data; 2) use of an objective algorithm for the selection of predictors that results in parsimonious models, cross-validated to prevent overfitting; and 3) using estimates from CMIP6 climate models to provide mid-century (2035-2065) potential [...]
Rethinking livestock futures: Integrating climate impacts and genomic technologies into global food security models
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
With the projected increase in the global population and food demand on a planet in climate crisis, the debate about the role of livestock continues to intensify. Animals farmed for food are both a victim and a contributor of climate change (CC), with animals suffering from heat stress due to CC but also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Livestock studies have demonstrated [...]
Assessing Volcanic Hazards and Financial Exposure: A Closer Look at Insurance Industry Preparedness
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Volcanology
Within the insurance and reinsurance sectors, volcanoes and their secondary impacts are often an overlooked risk due to the long return periods associated with large explosive eruptions, and relatively low economic and insured losses from eruption events compared to other natural hazards such as large magnitude earthquakes. However, with continued population growth, globalisation and climate [...]
Machine learning approaches to Landsat change detection analysis
Published: 2025-10-15
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
The Landsat mission has captured images of the Earth’s surface for over 50 years, and the data have enabled researchers to investigate a vast array of different change phenomena using machine learning models. Landsat-based monitoring research has been influential in geography, forestry, hydrology, ecology, agriculture, geology, and public health. When monitoring Earth's surface change using [...]