Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Statistical Models
A Two-Stage Fitting Method for Truncated Stem Diameter Distributions
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Forest Management, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Stem diameter distributions underpin growth projections, harvest scheduling, and carbon accounting, yet permanent sample plot inventories are routinely truncated by merchantability limits and maximum expected diameters. The accepted remedy is to fit truncated versions of the desired density, but those forms are seldom documented or supported in common software, so practitioners often default to [...]
Factors Affecting Aboveground Carbon Storage in Mixed Oak-Pine Forests: A Multiple Regression Analysis of Southeastern U.S. Forest Inventory Data
Published: 2025-11-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Multivariate Analysis, Natural Resources and Conservation, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models
This study investigated the factors affecting aboveground carbon storage in mixed oak-pine forests of the southeastern United States, with a particular focus on the influence of stand age. Using data from 946 Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots collected from 2009 to 2019, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the relative importance of various forest and topographic [...]
A Weighted Fitting Approach for Diameter Distributions from Horizontal Point Sampling
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Horizontal point sampling (HPS) produces size-biased tallies that cannot be fit directly with standard probability distributions without distorting diameter distribution estimates. Previous work resolves this by deriving bespoke size-biased probability density functions (PDFs) for each assumed distribution. We revisit the problem and formalise a weighted non-linear least squares approach that [...]
Scalable and robust Gaussian processes for reanalysis of urban air temperature with crowdsourced meteorological data
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistical Models
Crowdsourced air temperature data from networks like Weather Underground offer dense spatial coverage and are increasingly used to study the canopy urban heat island (CUHI) effect. However, these observations are noisy: siting conditions, environmental interference, and sensor failures introduce spatially and temporally varying bias. This complicates interpolation, limiting our ability to [...]
Strengthening ITF and Weakening AMOC: Time Series Evidence of Trends and Causal Pathways to Agulhas Variability
Published: 2025-06-18
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Oceanography, Statistical Models
Multi-decadal observations of major ocean circulation systems reveal contrasting trends and complex inter-basin connectivity patterns that challenge traditional conceptualizations of global ocean circulation. Using non-parametric trend analysis, multi-method causality testing, and wavelet coherence techniques, we analyzed volume transport time series spanning 1984--2023 for the Indonesian [...]
Space-time data-driven modeling of wildfire initiation in the mountainous region of Trentino–South Tyrol, Italy
Published: 2025-05-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Multivariate Analysis, Probability, Statistical Models
Wildfires are complex hazards occurring worldwide, leading to substantial economic losses, fatalities, and carbon emissions. The interplay of climate change, land use alterations, and socioeconomic pressures is expected to further increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires. In this context, developing reliable, dynamic prediction tools is essential for risk mitigation. This work presents a [...]
Modeling Daily Plume Specific Smoke Concentrations for Health Effects Studies with Estimates of Fire Size, Plume Age, and Fuel Type
Published: 2025-05-14
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Public Health, Statistical Models, Transport Phenomena
Inhaling smoke PM2.5 can cause adverse health effects ranging from acute (e.g., lung irritation) to chronic (e.g., lung cancer). Acute health effects have immediate implications for public health, requiring rapid response to minimize harm during an exposure window. Estimating acute health effects requires short-term (e.g., daily) estimates of fire-specific smoke PM2.5 concentrations at ground [...]
Fingerprinting subduction margins using PCA profiles: A data science approach to assessing earthquake hazard
Published: 2025-01-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Tectonics and Structure
Giant earthquakes (MW ≥ 8.5) along subduction margins pose great hazards to coastal societies. While it is generally accepted that geological margin properties play a role, the controls on giant earthquake occurrence remain undetermined. Their long intermittence times and the comparatively short earthquake record obscure any correlations between margin properties and seismicity. This work [...]
An updated version of the SZ-plugin: from space to space-time data-driven modeling in QGIS
Published: 2025-01-14
Subjects: Geology, Geomorphology, Software Engineering, Statistical Models
The geospatial community usually makes use of GIS environments to handle databases and pre-process their information. Actual analyses, especially data-driven ones, are performed outside GIS platforms. This interrupts the flow of information and the processing chain in a number of I/O operations that inevitably slow down the overall analytical protocols. The first version of the SZ-plugin [...]
Projecting Global Changes in Land Use and Ecosystem Services Using SEALS (Spatial Economic Allocation Landscape Simulator)
Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Spatial Science, Statistical Models
Understanding how economic systems and ecosystems interact across space is crucial to ensure societal needs are met without compromising environmental quality. Spatially explicit economic models usually describe human activities and ensuing land-use dynamics at a resolution that this is too coarse (typically 10-1000 regions) to understand how these affect many biophysical processes, including [...]
Functional regression for space-time prediction of precipitation-induced shallow landslides in South Tyrol, Italy
Published: 2024-12-10
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Statistical Models
Shallow landslides are geomorphic hazards in mountainous terrains across the globe. Their occurrence can be attributed to the interplay of static and dynamic landslide controls. In previous studies, data-driven approaches have been employed to model shallow landslides on a regional scale, focusing on analyzing the spatial aspects and time-varying conditions separately. Still, the joint assessment [...]
On weighted ensembles of streamflow: bias correct separately and prefer constrained weights for more reliable and predictable outputs
Published: 2024-08-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Statistical Models, Water Resource Management
It has become more and more common in hydrology to consider multiple estimates of hydrological variables – ensembles – over single model runs. Ensemble members represent different realisations of various model structures, input data, and/or parametrisations. Improved predictions can be made using weighted ensembles with wide variety of model averaging methods found in the literature, but only a [...]
Uncertainty-aware sample mass determination for particle size analyses of gravel-dominated soil
Published: 2024-08-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Probability, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Stratigraphy
Determining particle size distributions (PSD) of soils is a basic first step in many geotechnical analyses and guidance is given in different national standards. For ambiguous reasons, the recommended minimum sample mass (m_min) for the PSD-analyses of soils with a main component of gravel or greater is based on equations including the soil's maximum grain diameter (D_max). We claim that the [...]
Automatic identification of streamlined subglacial bedforms using machine learning: an open-source Python approach
Published: 2024-06-16
Subjects: Geomorphology, Glaciology, Statistical Models
Subglacial processes exert a major control on ice streaming. Constraining subglacial conditions thus allows for more accurate predictions of ice mass loss. Due to the difficulty in observing large‐scale conditions of the modern subglacial environment, we turn to geologic records of ice streaming in deglaciated environments. Morphometric values of streamlined subglacial bedforms provide valuable [...]
Estimating the mass eruption rate of volcanic eruptions from the plume height using Bayesian regression with historical data: the MERPH model
Published: 2024-04-18
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Volcanology
The mass eruption rate (MER) of an explosive volcanic eruption is a commonly used quantifier of the magnitude of the eruption, and estimating it is importance in managing volcanic hazards. The physical connection between the MER and the rise height of the eruption column results in a scaling relationship between these quantities, allowing one to be inferred from the other. Eruption source [...]