Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
A Vision for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Great Lakes Research and Management
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Water Resource Management
The Laurentian Great Lakes are a vital freshwater resource and a regionally significant natural system facing complex, persistent, and compounding challenges from climate change, nutrient loading, and invasive species. The increasing availability of observational data, coupled with advances in computational power and machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods, presents an [...]
Hybrid Physics–AI Ecosystem Simulations Improve Biogeochemical Predictions in Temperate Shelf Seas
Published: 2026-02-03
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biochemistry, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Marine Biology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biogeochemical models form a core part of marine forecasting and climate projections, yet they suffer from persistent biases in predicting key ecosystem variables, creating challenges across regional and global scales. To address this, we developed an AI-augmented three-dimensional hybrid framework that integrates machine-learning corrections directly into a process-based model’s productivity [...]
Coordinated satellite, aircraft, and ground-based observations of a large transient methane release
Published: 2026-02-01
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy
We present results from a Very Large Methane Release (VLMR) experiment evaluating methane retrievals from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) Advanced Baseline Imagers (ABIs) and multiple low-Earth-orbit imagers with high point-source detection limits. The experiment coordinated observations of a U.S. gas pipeline blowdown with nine satellites, two aircraft, and a [...]
Advancing continuous in-situ quantification of microbial contamination in environmental waters using tryptophan-like fluorescence - Sensor design and validation
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Microbial contamination of recreational and source waters poses persistent public health risks, yet conventional monitoring based on laboratory culture methods provides delayed results and limited temporal resolution. These constraints hinder timely identification of short-duration contamination events and effective management of recreation advisories. This study evaluates the performance of a [...]
A Benchmark Dataset of Agricultural Weather Stations over the Contiguous United States for Evapotranspiration Applications
Published: 2026-01-17
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Agricultural weather data are fundamental for the accurate estimate of evapotranspiration (ET), irrigation scheduling, and water-use accounting. In particular, reference ET provides a standardized atmospheric demand for water loss from a hypothetical well-watered grass (ETo) or alfalfa (ETr); however, weather stations may not adequately represent such climatic conditions. Weather data commonly [...]
The Future of EO-Enabled SDG 11.3.1 Monitoring Through Uncertainty-Aware Forecasting of Urban Land-Use Efficiency
Published: 2026-01-17
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Natural Resource Economics, Sustainability
Earth observation (EO) has become central to monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG Indicator 11.3.1, which assesses land-use efficiency (LUE) through the ratio of land consumption rate (LCR) to population growth rate (PGR). Current EO-based implementations remain predominantly retrospective and deterministic, relying on historical mappings of [...]
Evidence of low watershed resilience across the Western United States
Published: 2026-01-15
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Vulnerable waters, including headwater streams and non-floodplain wetlands, are essential to watershed level resilience but notoriously difficult to measure over large spatial scales. Although individually small, vulnerable waters as a whole are integral in regulating hydrologic and biogeochemical processes. In the relatively small proportion of vulnerable waters that are continuously monitored, [...]
Facilitating AI-Driven Sustainability: A Service-Oriented Ar-chitecture for Interoperable Environmental Data Access
Published: 2026-01-12
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Meteorology, Software Engineering, Sustainability
Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly agentic AI, have created opportunities to enhance global sustainability by improving the efficiency and accuracy of environmental monitoring and response systems. Agentic AIs autonomously plan and execute towards specific goals with minimal or no human intervention; however, accessing environmental data is challenging and requires expertise, [...]
VRFIS: An Immersive Framework for Real-Time Flood Monitoring, Visualization, and Interactive Environmental Analysis
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology
The rapid evolution of Mixed Reality (MR) technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), offers powerful new means of visualizing and interacting with geographic and environmental data. This paper presents Virtual Reality Flood Information System (VRFIS), an immersive information platform developed using Unreal Engine 5 and Google Photo Realistic 3D Tiles to enable real-time exploration of [...]
FloodSim Sandbox: An Immersive Interactive Simulation Framework for Urban Flood Risk Management
Published: 2025-12-28
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
FloodSim Sandbox is an AI-augmented, immersive digital twin framework for real-time flood visualization, analysis, and decision support. Developed within Unreal Engine 5, it integrates multi-source geospatial data, physically based fluid simulation, and multimodal AI reasoning to model flood dynamics in a high-fidelity digital twin of Iowa City. The system procedurally generates terrain and [...]
GIFIS: A Generalized Immersive Flood Information System Specification
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Other Computer Sciences, Water Resource Management
This study introduces Generalized Immersive Flood Information Specification (GIFIS), a vendor-agnostic, JSON Schema–based framework for encoding, validating, and exchanging hydrologic and environmental data for reproducible and interoperable virtual and augmented reality applications. By defining standardized semantics for entities such as sensor datasets, hydrological model outputs, warnings and [...]
Coral reef commitments are largely absent from national biodiversity and climate frameworks
Published: 2025-11-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Climate, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oceanography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Sustainability
Global agreements under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) call for integrated action on biodiversity loss and climate change. Yet national implementation remains poorly understood, even for ecosystems highly vulnerable to warming, such as tropical coral reefs. Bleaching-level heat stress has affected over 85% of global reefs [...]
Access to Monitoring Data Reduces Methane Intensity at Operational Oil and Gas Facilities
Published: 2025-11-20
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Methane intensity is defined as methane gas emitted to the atmosphere per oil and gas product throughput at various steps in the supply chain. It is the standard metric used by industry stakeholders to assess methane emissions performance. Many studies have assessed the capabilities of methane emission measurement systems, but no studies have quantified the effect on methane intensity of oil and [...]
A generalized additive mixed-effect modeling approach for characterizing Sentinel-2 surface reflectances of visible light from Torch Lake in Antrim County, Michigan, 2019-2025
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Statistical Methodology, Statistics and Probability
A generalized additive model (GAM) and three generalized additive mixed-effect models (GAMMs) were developed and compared to describe variations of surface reflectances of visible light from Torch Lake in the blue, green, and red bands from Sentinel 2 satellite imagery. All models included fixed effects associated with water-depth intervals, satellite orbits, trend, and smooth effects associated [...]
Quantification Error Model for Aerial LiDAR Methane Emission Rate Estimates
Published: 2025-11-11
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Statistical Models
Accurate characterization of methane emission rate quantification error (QE) is essential for building measurement-based emissions inventories that benchmark emissions, guide mitigation, and satisfy reporting frameworks such as OGMP 2.0. Previous studies have summarized QE using distributions of errors from controlled release experiments, but with limited consideration of environmental conditions [...]