Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Monitoring
Coral reef commitments are largely absent from national biodiversity and climate frameworks
Published: 2025-11-22
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: 2025-11-21
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: 2025-11-12
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 [...]
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: 2025-10-24
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: 2025-10-22
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: 2025-10-15
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: 2025-10-15
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: 2025-10-15
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: 2025-10-06
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 [...]