Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Reduced geomagnetic shielding increased UV-B radiation at Earth’s surface during the Laschamps Event
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Atmospheric Sciences, Biochemistry, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Life Sciences, Paleobiology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability
Exposure to excess UV-B radiation can harm organisms through DNA damage and oxidative stress, and has likely been a key ecological and evolutionary driver throughout Earth’s history. Here, we show UV-B at Earth’s surface was significantly increased during the Laschamps Event, the last major geomagnetic excursion ca. 41ka BP. During the Laschamps, we find significant and prolonged (lasting [...]
Direct quantification of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence using compact solar-blind optical radiometers
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Optics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
Remote sensing of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provides a non-invasive, quantitative measure of plant photosynthetic activity, linking leaf-level physiology to canopy and ecosystem behavior and the global carbon cycle. Current SIF measurements rely on hyperspectral retrievals of the weak fluorescence signal from small changes in Fraunhofer lines or atmospheric absorption features [...]
Climate Change Driven Disruptions in Health Service Uptake and Gender Role Inequities in SubSaharan Africa: A Scoping Review
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Background SubSaharan Africa (SSA) faces deeply intersecting crises in which high climate vulnerability interacts with entrenched gender role inequities, severely compromising population health and resilience. Climatedriven shocks including droughts and floodsdisrupt health systems and disproportionately affect women and girls due to preexisting socioeconomic and cultural [...]
Living on the Edge: Unequal Rise of Global Population Exposure on Steep Terrain
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
The global population living on steep terrain is rising, so is their landslide risk. However, hotspots and driving mechanisms of increasing exposure remain poorly understood. We assess changes in global gridded population and settlement characteristics on steep terrain (≥ 10◦ hillslope inclination) aggregated over topographic catchments (mean area ∼10,000 km2) for 1975–2025. We find that about [...]
Soil Remineralization in Agroecological Systems: A Critical Review
Published: 2026-04-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil degradation threatens global food security, human nutrition, biodiversity, water resources, and climate stability by depleting soil organic matter, exhausting nutrient reserves, and disrupting carbon and nitrogen cycles. Conventional input‑intensive agriculture has delivered yield gains but has also contributed to widespread micronutrient deficiencies, nutrient loading of waterways, soil [...]
Continuous Water Surface Elevation Estimates Using Deep Learning with Legacy Altimetry and Surface Water and Ocean Topography Data
Published: 2026-04-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
We present the development of a high-temporal-resolution global dataset of daily river water surface elevation (WSE), spanning January 2008 through May 2025. By utilizing a deep learning framework to integrate legacy satellite altimetry and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission data, we produced a continuous record covering 9,184 river reaches, 5,926 rivers, and 1,342 basins. The [...]
Airborne imaging spectrometer measurements of methane releases under turbulent conditions
Published: 2026-04-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
Methane plume detection and quantification from airborne and spaceborne platforms offers a promising approach for monitoring localized greenhouse gas emissions. Its performance must be demonstrated under realistic but controlled conditions. An airborne demonstrator of a compact shortwave infrared imaging spectrometer developed for the AIRMO Earth observation mission was therefore evaluated during [...]
Assessing Causality in PM2.5 and NO2 Changes One Year After New York City’s Congestion Pricing Policy
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Sciences
On January 5, 2025, New York City implemented the Central Business District Tolling Program (CBDTP), a congestion pricing policy targeting lower Manhattan. We evaluate its air quality effects after one year using ground-based and satellite observations. Using New York City Community Air Survey (NYCCAS) real-time PM2.5 monitors, we compare PM2.5 concentrations during the first year of CBDTP [...]
Spaceborne imaging spectrometry of methane plumes: Quantifying the benefit of aerosol lidar
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physics
Column averaged mixing ratios of trace gases, such as methane (XCH4), from spaceborne pushbroom spectrometers can be used to detect corresponding plumes and retrieve enhancements (ΔXCH4), i.e., the difference between plume and background XCH4. Over the global dust belt, however, significant scattering by dust aerosols may cause biased XCH4 that may propagate into biased ΔXCH4. To correct this, a [...]
A Meteorological Indicator for Particulate Matter Emissions: Adapting the Hot-Dry-Windy Index to Predict Feedlot Evening Dust Peaks
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Particulate matter emissions from cattle feedlot operations pose significant challenges to both livestock productivity and air quality in surrounding communities. The evening dust peak (EDP) has been documented for decades, but comprehensive long-term studies examining its meteorological drivers are very limited. While laboratory and field-scale investigations have demonstrated that feedlot [...]
Hydrogeology and assessment of the effect of oil-production activities in the Midway Valley area, western Kern County, California
Published: 2026-04-16
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The southwestern San Joaquin Valley, California includes oil fields and oil-field water disposal facilities, (ponds and injection wells). The Tulare Formation and overlying alluvium comprise the main aquifers in the study area and are commonly used for produced water disposal. Water quality in the aquifers is naturally brackish (total dissolved solids (TDS) 3,000-10,000 mg/L) across most of the [...]
Accretionary Pedogenesis and Holocene Climate Evolution in Black Soil Region of Northeast China: Evidence from a Sedimentary Profile
Published: 2026-04-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The black soil region of the Songnen Plain, one of the world's three major black soil belts, is critical for China's grain security, yet the formation mechanism of its thick, organic-rich soils remains insufficiently quantified. In this study, we investigate the ZYHPM01 profile in the eastern Songnen Plain using grain-size end-member analysis (EMA), multi-proxy geochemical tracers, and [...]
Geostatistical Assessment of Shallow Groundwater Risk in Urban Coastal Virginia: A Case Study from Virginia Beach
Published: 2026-04-14
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
Urban groundwater assessments in coastal cities often rely on public monitoring datasets that are spatially uneven and temporally discontinuous. This study evaluates shallow groundwater risk in Virginia Beach, Virginia, using 30 years of records (1991–2020) from 121 monitoring wells for groundwater levels and 55 wells with groundwater‑quality data for chloride (Cl), iron (Fe), and manganese (Mn). [...]
Structural–carbon decoupling and forest structural thinning in degrading forests of Southwestern Nigeria using GEDI LiDAR and multi-sensor data fusion
Published: 2026-04-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography
Accurate monitoring of forest degradation requires indicators that capture both structural condition and carbon dynamics. While canopy height derived from spaceborne LiDAR is widely used as a proxy for forest condition, its ability to represent aboveground biomass (AGB) under ongoing degradation remains uncertain. This study examines the relationship between canopy height and AGB in tropical [...]
HydroScholar AI: A Collaborative Agent for End-to-End Automated Hydrological Research Lifecycle
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hydrological research relies on multi-stage computational workflows that are often slow, fragmented across disparate tools, and inconsistently documented, limiting reproducibility. This study presents HydroScholar AI, an agentic, human-in-the-loop platform that consolidates the plan-to-paper research lifecycle into a single interactive automated framework. From a natural-language prompt, the [...]