Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
Unified Cross-Modal Learning for Hydrological Processes Using Multi-Task Transformer Framework
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Most deep learning studies in hydrology adopt single-task frameworks that address individual variables such as rainfall or streamflow independently, limiting opportunities for shared learning across related environmental processes. This study introduces a unified multi-task, multi-modal deep learning framework capable of jointly performing 24-hour horizon streamflow forecasting and rainfall [...]
ForestCast: Forecasting Deforestation Risk at Scale with Deep Learning
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring
Deforestation is a major threat to biodiversity and the stability of the climate. Current monitoring solutions provide reactive alerts only after deforestation has occurred, rendering them largely insufficient for prevention. Proactive deforestation prevention necessitates forecasting at-risk areas, however, previous forecasting efforts have been constrained by their reliance on simple [...]
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 [...]
Complex Realities, Simple Signals? Global Evaluation of Early Warning Signals for Forest Mortality Events
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Sustainability
Forests around the world are increasingly experiencing large-scale regional mortality events as a result of droughts and heat waves. Despite their considerable impacts on the material, non-material, and regulatory contributions of forest ecosystems to people, these mortality events remain difficult to predict. Temporal Early Warning Signals (EWS) based on the concept of Critical Slowing Down [...]
Global Alpine Treeline Elevational Transects
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Alpine Treeline Ecotone (ATE) is an important ecological transition zone at the juncture of montane forests and alpine tundra. It serves as a crucial habitat for diverse species and a sensitive indicator of climate change. Consistent characterization of the elevational gradients of ATE is challenging due to complex topography and data limitations. This study introduces a comprehensive [...]
HydroVerse VR Equipment Hub: An Integrated Virtual Reality Framework for Training and Workforce Development in Environmental Monitoring
Published: 2025-10-21
Subjects: Adult and Continuing Education, Computer Engineering, Educational Methods, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Environmental monitoring is critical for managing ecosystems and addressing global challenges such as climate change and pollution. However, training professionals in this field is often hampered by remote locations, hazardous field conditions, and limited access to specialized equipment. In response, this paper presents the HydroVerse VR Equipment Hub, an immersive virtual reality framework for [...]
Multi-Task Learning as a Step Toward Building General-Purpose Hydrological Forecasting Systems
Published: 2025-10-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis
Streamflow and soil moisture are two critical variables in the hydrological cycle, linked through infiltration, runoff generation, and groundwater recharge. Traditional forecasting approaches often treat them independently, overlooking interdependencies and limiting predictive skill. This study investigates Multi-Task Learning (MTL) for daily prediction of both variables using the CAMELS dataset [...]
A Collaborative Assessment of Coastal Ocean Acidification Monitoring in Maine & Standard Operating Procedures and Best Practices for the Collection of Continuous pH Data in Coastal Marine Environments
Published: 2025-10-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The ‘Sensor Squad’ of the Maine Ocean Climate Collaborative is the product of a 2023 Maine Coastal and Marine Climate Action Fund grant to conduct “A two-year pilot project designed to address and overcome technological barriers to ocean acidification data collection, develop protocols to elevate quality assurance and ensure comparable data, and meet regularly to discuss project results and data [...]
Machine learning approaches to Landsat change detection analysis
Published: 2025-10-14
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 [...]
Global deep learning model for delineation of optically shallow and optically deep water in Sentinel-2 imagery
Published: 2025-10-14
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
In aquatic remote sensing, algorithms commonly used to map environmental variables rely on assumptions regarding the optical environment. Specifically, some algorithms assume that the water is optically deep, i.e., that the influence of bottom reflectance on the measured signal is negligible. Other algorithms assume the opposite and are based on an estimation of the bottom-reflected part of the [...]
Transformer Assisted U-Net for Marine Litter Detection on Sentinel-2 Imagery
Published: 2025-10-05
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring
The contamination of marine environments with man-made litter is a growing nation-wide concern. Satellite imagery combined with deep learning–based detection models has emerged as a robust and cost-effective solution for large-scale marine litter monitoring. In this article, we present a novel deep learning-based scheme to detect marine litter using Sentinel-2 imagery based on the Deep UNet [...]
Insights from the Unseen - Occlusion in Forest Laser Scanning
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Laser scanning is a powerful tool for assessing the structural complexity of forests and its role in ecosystem processes and functioning. Laser scans are however highly affected by occlusion (where objects block laser pulses), resulting in data gaps within the 3D representation of the forest. Although occlusion is a well-known and frequently discussed challenge for estimating forest structural [...]
Detection of coastal flooding with TinyCamML: a low-cost, privacy-preserving cellular-connected camera with onboard ML
Published: 2025-09-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Systems and Communications
Chronic flooding is an issue for low-lying coastal communities globally, and it is expected to worsen with rising sea levels. In contrast to floods driven by extreme storms, predicting when and where these floods occur can be difficult as they can be hyper-local and short-lived, depending on the flood drivers (e.g., tides, rain). These factors make it difficult to measure the full spatial and [...]
Quantification of natural CO2 emissions from mofettes using a low-cost sensor network at the Starzach site in south-west Germany
Published: 2025-09-04
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Meteorology
We present a top-down method to derive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from mofettes, using only point measurement time series at irregular locations. Notably, no wind vector information is needed, as gas transport is derived from cross-correlations between sensor stations and subsequently integrated using Gauss’ divergence theorem. The method is applied to an existing low-cost sensor network at [...]
A Quantitative Analysis of Light Pollution in Gurgaon and a Deepened Understanding of its Impacts
Published: 2025-09-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences
Light pollution is an emerging environmental and health challenge in rapidly urbanizing Indian cities. This study quantifies night-sky brightness across Gurgaon using a low-cost, Arduino-based Sky Quality Meter (SQM) and integrates these measurements with perception surveys from 91 residents. A total of 62 ground-based data points were collected, revealing distinct spatial variations: highly [...]