Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Sustainability
BORDER OPTICS : Satellite Verification of India's Vibrant Villages Programme: A Compositing-Window Robustness Assessment of Border-Village Development
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Ask the Government of India if things have worked out for them with their flagship scheme for the Border Villages, the honest answer (on parliamentary record) is No, it has never been verified anywhere. The Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP-I) has approved around ₹4,800 crore in support of 2,967 villages in five Himalayan border states/union territories including 662 villages marked 'priority' for [...]
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, [...]
Reimagining Multifunctional Green Space Design Approaches in Climate Resilient Cities
Published: 2026-09-03
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Urban landscapes exacerbate the impacts of extreme temperatures and weather, and are hotspots for air pollution, flooding, and temperature spikes. Natural systems such as multifunctional green spaces can play a key role in protecting vulnerable urban landscapes while also improving urban livability.
CRS Methodology to the Realmonte Salt mine, southwestern Sicily: an application for hydrogen storage potential site in Italy.
Published: 2026-08-22
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geology, Mining Engineering, Multivariate Analysis, Risk Analysis, Sustainability
As Sicily expands its renewable energy portfolio, the need for large-scale energy storage becomes increasingly urgent to ensure supply-demand balance. Hydrogen storage in salt caverns represents a promising solution in this context. This study presents the first real-world application of the Common Risk Segment (CRS) methodology, originally developed for oil and gas exploration and recently [...]
Mineral stability and porosity dynamics in Halite- and Kainite-bearing rocks after hydrogen batch reaction test: a case study of Realmonte mine, Sicily (Italy)
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Mineral Physics, Mining Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Risk Analysis, Stratigraphy, Sustainability
Underground hydrogen storage in salt caverns is among the most mature geological storage options, yet the behaviour of potash-salt lithologies under hydrogen exposure remains entirely uncharacterised. This study presents a multi-technique characterisation, performed on selected representative samples, of Messinian halite and kainite-bearing evaporites from the Realmonte mine (Sicily) subjected to [...]
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 [...]
Quantifying causal effects of green–blue–gray landscape change on urban thermal outcomes: A spatiotemporal causal machine learning analysis across city scales
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Optimizing urban green–blue–gray (UGBG) landscapes has become increasingly important for mitigating surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensity under rapid urbanization. However, the causal effects of landscape pattern changes on SUHI remain poorly quantified, particularly regarding their heterogeneity among spatial configuration, urban scales, and temporal periods. This knowledge gap limits the [...]
From linguistic evaluation to mechanistic verification: testing LLM-generated farm recommendations
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Large language models (LLM) are increasingly used to generate farm-management advice, but their biophysical consequences remain largely unverified. We introduce a process-based verification framework that combines management portfolios generated by ChatGPT and Claude with the process-based model LandscapeDNDC across 11 contrasting agroecosystems. The LLMs produced agronomically plausible [...]
Increasing lithium mining could threaten endemic species in biodiversity hotspots
Published: 2026-07-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Electric vehicles (EVs) are being rapidly deployed as a technological solution to the climate crisis. However, mineral extraction to supply EV battery production can cause serious environmental damage, threatening ecosystems and biodiversity from local to global scales. Lithium, a key EV battery component, is experiencing an enormous mining boom, which could drive species population declines and [...]
A scoping review to map research gaps and opportunities relating to heat-related health hazards in countries surrounding Lake Victoria, Africa.
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Public Health, Physical and Environmental Geography, Sustainability
Urban populations in sub-Saharan Africa are at rising risks of climate-related health hazards due to global climate change and uncontrolled rapid urbanization. Despite the increasing recognition of these challenges, the extent to which urban climates impact health outcomes in Africa remains poorly understood. East African countries surrounding the Lake Victoria Basin (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, [...]
Spatially Distributed Land-Use Efficiency Assessment under SDG Indicator 11.3.1: The Case of Greater Manila Area, Philippines
Published: 2026-06-06
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 11.3.1 assesses urban land-use efficiency (LUE) through the relationship between land consumption rate (LCR) and population growth rate (PGR), commonly expressed as LCRPGR. However, city-level implementation produces a single value that can mask where efficient or inefficient urban development occurs. This study develops and demonstrates a spatially [...]
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. [...]
A Blueprint for Integrated Climate Intelligence
Published: 2026-05-13
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Planetary Sciences, Sustainability
Climate information is advancing faster than the decision systems designed to use it. Emergency response operates on timescales of hours, whereas societal adaptation unfolds over decades. Yet climate science, impact assessment and policy remain poorly integrated, limiting coherent action across timescales. We argue that artificial intelligence should be developed not only as a domain-specific [...]
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 [...]
Remotely sensed evapotranspiration for corporate water stewardship: Opportunities and limitations in agricultural landscapes
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Corporate water stewardship (CWS), in which companies engage in or incentivize actions to advance sustainable water management, can positively affect water resources, reduce water-related business risks, and support Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and sustainability reporting. Agricultural landscapes affect diverse industries including finance, technology, fuel production, insurance, [...]