Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
The Indispensable Role of Weather Data in Consumer Spending Prediction: A Robust Machine Learning Assessment
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Meteorology
Accurate forecasting of daily consumer spending is crucial for strategic decision-making in the retail sector, yet the dynamic influence of weather is often underestimated or insufficiently integrated into predictive models. This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of incorporating both historical and 7-day weather forecast data on predicting consumer spending amounts across three diverse [...]
Exploration of Gold, Copper, Magnetite, Hematite, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromite, Antimony, Bauxite, Industrial soils, Nickel, Cobalt, Lead, Lithium minerals using Landsat8 satellite
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Geophysics and Seismology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
In this study, we provided an accurate and complete method for exploration and analysis of Gold, Copper, Magnetite, Hematite, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromite, Antimony, Bauxite, Industrial soils, Nickel, Cobalt, Lead and Lithium minerals in the desired area. Mineral exploration can be done using the seven bands from Landsat8 satellite images, through combination of different maps, a specific color [...]
Aquascan: Graph-Based Learning for Distributed Marine Sensing
Published: 2025-07-04
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Marine monitoring faces unprecedented challenges as climate change and human activities reshape ocean ecosystems. Traditional tracking methods struggle with the scale and complexity of modern marine sensing needs. This paper proposes distributed networks of low-cost drifting sensors and presents a comparative study of heterogeneous graph neural networks (GNNs) versus Kalman filters for predicting [...]
Satellite-based assessment of methane emissions from the Darvaza gas crater
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Methane (CH₄) is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and the gas-burning Darvaza crater in Turkmenistan is a rare and persistent emitter. There are substantial uncertainties regarding the date of the crater formation (assumed to be either in 1963 or 1971), the ignition of the fire, and the relation between the fire intensity and methane release. In this study, we reconstruct the fire history [...]
Assessing the potential of the MTG-FCI geostationary mission for the detection of methane plumes
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring
The Flexible Combined Imager on the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG-FCI) provides geostationary observations over Europe and Africa, the Middle East, and parts of South America, and the surrounding waters. The FCI samples the visible, near-infrared and shortwave infrared spectral windows with a spatial resolution at nadir between 500 and 1000 m, and a 10-min temporal sampling. This configuration [...]
Extrapolation Approaches for Creating Comprehensive Measurement-Based Methane Emissions Inventories
Published: 2025-06-07
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Measurement-based methane emissions inventories are essential for U.S. oil and natural gas operators to track their progress toward emissions targets, demonstrate the impact of improved operational and monitoring practices, and enable the scientific community to monitor methane budgets at various scales. However, translating raw emission measurement data, whether from continuous monitoring [...]
High-Resolution Methane Detection with the GHGSat Constellation
Published: 2025-05-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Monitoring
GHGSat operates a constellation of small satellites designed to detect and quantify methane emissions with high sensitivity compared with existing satellite technologies. An important feature of GHGSat measurements is the high spatial resolution (~25m), which enables attribution of emissions to specific facilities and subsequent corrective action from the operator. The GHGSat constellation [...]
Mapping the health harm of Bangladeshi brick kilns
Published: 2025-05-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Bangladesh suffers from poor air quality, with brick kilns as major contributors that remain difficult to regulate. We combine remotely-sensed data, machine learning, and air-quality models to locate 9,187 clay brick kilns (2014–2024), estimating their technology, activity status, and health effects. Active kilns peaked in 2019 and have since declined by 4% annually. Kiln emissions cause [...]
The Interplay of Vegetation and Land-Atmosphere Feedbacks in Flash Drought Prediction
Published: 2025-05-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Monitoring
Flash droughts, known for their rapid onset and intensification, pose a significant threat to agriculture and water resources. The 2011 Texas flash drought, with its widespread agricultural losses exceeding $7.6 billion and severe ecological consequences, was a stark demonstration of their devastating impacts. This study investigates the crucial role of vegetation in numerical modeling of flash [...]
From natural variability to flow homogenisation: how dams, water diversions, and climate change reduced seasonal flows in Australia’s Murrumbidgee River
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
River regulation and climate change have profoundly altered seasonal flow dynamics globally, with cascading ecological impacts on freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. Magnitude and timing are key components of the flow regime, connecting rivers with floodplains and driving feeding and breeding cues for aquatic organisms. We investigated the separate and combined effects of water resource [...]
Enhancing and Interpreting Deep Learning for Sea Ice Charting using the AutoICE Benchmark
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Analysis, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Oceanography
Accurate mapping of sea ice is crucial for marine navigation and monitoring climate change. Automating sea ice mapping remains challenging due to remotely-sensed signal ambiguity, the dynamic nature of sea ice, and limited field measurements. The AutoICE challenge recently introduced a benchmark to advance deep learning for sea ice mapping. Top-performing solutions used the U-Net architecture [...]
Impact of GHG mitigation measures in sanitation service chains: focusing on septic tanks and sewers
Published: 2025-03-26
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability
Sanitation service chains (SSC) in many cities in low- and middle-income countries are complex and comprise poorly managed non-sewered and sewered sanitation technologies that emit greenhouse gases (GHG). In this study, we aimed to estimate the impact of GHG mitigation measures along SSCs where both non-sewered and sewered sanitation were widely used, and to account for the interdependencies of [...]
Enhancing the Normalized Difference Water Index for Improved Urban Flood Detection
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Accurate urban flood detection is crucial for effective disaster management and urban planning. Traditional indices like the Normalized Difference Water Index and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index often produce inaccurate results due to spectral confusion in urban areas and sensitivity to shadows. Moreover, MNDWI's reliance on the Shortwave Infrared band limits its use with certain [...]
Mercury budget in global rivers at present-day: impacts from reservoirs and dams
Published: 2025-03-14
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
Many world rivers are currently polluted by mercury (Hg) compounds, leading to the bioaccumulation of methylmercury (MeHg) in the food web, which poses potential health risks to humans. However, the riverine Hg budgets of global scale remain poorly understood due to limited observations, complicating efficient environmental governance. Here, we employ a process-driven Hg model to track its [...]
Modern Cave Monitoring Informs Interpretations of Past Climate Change: Applications to Titan Cave, Wyoming
Published: 2025-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Speleology
Monitoring of cave environments is an essential process for deciphering records of past climate change preserved in the geochemical composition of speleothems, or mineral cave deposits. This study presents data from a multi-year monitoring effort in Titan Cave, Wyoming, a site of interest due to the abundance of speleothems suitable for paleoclimate reconstruction. Titan Cave exhibits annual cave [...]