Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
The mortality burden of airborne fine mineral dust in the United States
Published: 2026-09-19
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Regulation under the Clean Air Act has reduced combustion-derived fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the United States, leaving windblown mineral dust—driven by drought, shrinking water bodies, and fallowed farmland—as a growing and largely unregulated share of what remains. Existing mortality burden estimates have had to borrow concentration–response functions from total PM2.5 and disagree [...]
Evaluating Biochar Crediting Protocols for Durable Carbon Removal
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
As biochar expands as a source of carbon credits it has become increasingly clear that there are major differences among biochar protocols. This variation can make it challenging for producers to choose protocols and can make it difficult for buyers to understand the comparative value of different certified biochar credits, and in both these cases investor confidence is jeopardized. Here we [...]
Variance-ranked sound speed bases misclassify the surface duct: limits of profile RMSE as a proxy for acoustic prediction skill in the Bay of Bengal
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Geography, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Sound speed profile (SSP) estimation from surface observables is operationally mature and is evaluated almost universally by profile root-mean-square error. Using 19,934 Argo profiles from the Bay of Bengal (2005–2020), season-stratified empirical orthogonal function (EOF) bases, and BELLHOP transmission loss (TL) at 500 Hz, 1500 Hz and 3500 Hz over 24 held-out locations, we show that this metric [...]
A Formal Framework for Measuring Institutional Collapse under a Nuclear Winter Scenario
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
A medium-scale regional nuclear exchange could plausibly loft ~16 Teragrams (16 * 10¹² grams, Tg) of soot into the stratosphere, sufficient to reduce conventional agricultural output past the ~30% threshold at which large-scale starvation emerges. Alternative food-production methods could restore sufficient caloric supply in the United States, but scaling them to ~70% of pre-shock capacity [...]
Inside the Extinction Envelope: A Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis of Paleoclimate Extinction Markers with Comments on the Necessary Array of Last-Threshold Interventions
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Every element of the causal chain that produced the five largest mass extinctions of the last half-billion years is presently active in the Earth system. The rate of the modern perturbation exceeds every peer-reviewed paleoclimate reference case. A six-intervention portfolio, deployed together at wartime industrial scale beginning now, is the physically necessary and sufficient response. The [...]
Assessing Challenges for U.S.-Based Polar Early Career Scientists During Science Policy Changes
Published: 2026-09-13
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geography, Glaciology, Hydraulic Engineering, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Early-career researchers (ECRs) play a critical role in sustaining polar and cryosphere research in the United States. Since January 2025, changes in U.S. science policy and federal research funding have created substantial uncertainty for researchers, particularly those in the early stages of their careers. To assess the impacts of these changes, we conducted a community-driven survey of [...]
A safe and just operating space for water at municipal scale: population, agriculture and mining in Chihuahua, Mexico, to 2050
Published: 2026-09-08
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Water allocation decisions in Mexico are taken municipality by municipality, yet water scarcity is assessed at national or basin scale. We operationalize a safe and just operating space for water for each of the 67 municipalities of Chihuahua, Mexico's largest and driest mining state, with both bounds drawn from national law rather than imposed by the analyst: an ecological ceiling equal to the [...]
Beyond climate-change risk: subjective attribution, multidimensional impact appraisal, and adaptation advocacy among Swedish forestry professionals
Published: 2026-09-08
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Adaptation may depend on whether decision-makers recognise climate change, but also on whether they attribute experienced changes to climate change and how they appraise consequences across valued domains. We analysed survey data from 140 Swedish forestry professionals to examine whether stronger subjective attribution of experienced forest changes to climate change is associated with more [...]
A Framework for Experiential Environmental Health Through Theater
Published: 2026-09-03
Subjects: Education, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Extreme weather events, including wildfires, are becoming more frequent, intense, and consequential for human health. Scientific advances have improved our ability to characterize hazards and the socioeconomic constraints shaping exposure, but these dimensions are not always integrated throughout the development of environmental health knowledge. Meanwhile, broader publics, although often not [...]
Manufactured vulnerability in the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna delta: engineered drivers and coastal displacement in south-west Bangladesh
Published: 2026-08-29
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Displacement from the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna delta in south-west Bangladesh is usually attributed to sea-level rise, cyclones and salinity. The evidence assembled here points to a jointly produced process, in which hazards act together with engineered landscape change, governance arrangements and the interval households spend unable to return. Peer-reviewed and grey literature for Khulna, [...]
Beyond 2030 Agendas: Toward Conditional Convergence in Global Sustainability Governance
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
As major sustainable-development frameworks approach 2030, “Beyond 2030” conversations are emerging across the UN system. This review synthesizes seven tracks — Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) under the [...]
Annual high-resolution global ambient population estimates from 1975 to 2024
Published: 2026-08-13
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Gridded population data support assessments of human exposure, settlement change, infrastructure demand, and access to services, yet global datasets combining annual coverage over multiple decades with fine spatial resolution remain limited. LandScan Mosaic Time Series provides 50 annual estimates of global ambient population distribution at 3 arc-second resolution from 1975 through 2024. The [...]
Strengthening informal urban functions for climate-resilient cities
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Informal workers provide essential urban functions, yet climate hazards can disrupt the conditions that sustain them. We propose the informal urban function as an analytical unit linking worker conditions, functional performance, and sustainability outcomes. The framework identifies structural conditions shaping capacity, climate pathways leading to continuity, erosion, disruption, or [...]
Solar versus Diesel Powered Water Pumps in Meeting Sustainability Goals in Somalia, a qualitative study
Published: 2026-07-23
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Somalia endowed with high solar energy is still using diesel energy as the major source of energy to pump drinking water. This put the country under question from achieving SDG 6 which targets universal access to clean and sustainably managed water. Therefore, this study gathers qualitative data from relevant key stakeholders in Puntland, Somalia through individual in-depth interviews and analyze [...]
Local thermal externalities of hyperscale datacenters: causal satellite evidence and implied cooling costs
Published: 2026-07-22
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Hyperscale datacenter construction converts agricultural or greenfield land into continuous heat rejection campuses, yet no causal estimate of the resulting local thermal effect exists. This paper applies a Callaway and Sant'Anna (2021) staggered difference-in-differences estimator to spatially differenced Landsat satellite thermal imagery across 59 datacenter sites in the United States, with [...]