Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geography
The nonlinear effect of environmental regulations on urban green transformation in the Yellow River Basin
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Geography
In order to better achieve regional sustainable development, it is extremely important to explore the relationship between environmental regulation (ENR) and urban green transformation. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of research that examines the nonlinear relationship between the ENR and urban green transformation. Taking the Yellow River Basin (YERB) as a case study, this paper uses a panel [...]
Seasonal and interannual dynamics of estuary connectivity along the California coast
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Remote Sensing
Intermittently closed estuaries are globally widespread and ecologically important, yet their mouth-state dynamics are difficult to observe simultaneously at multiple estuaries, limiting understanding of how regional forcing and local controls shape estuary-ocean connectivity. We developed a multi-year record of estuary mouth connectivity for 66 intermittently closed estuaries along the [...]
Encouraging Wildfire Mitigation Action Via National Weather Service Fire Weather Products
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
Wildfire mitigation actions intend to reduce the probability and consequences (risk) of wildfire to critical assets by protecting the life and property of the public and emergency responders during and after a wildfire event. Given mitigation activities span a continuum of timescales from minutes to years and multiple orders-of-magnitude in terms of costs, an opportunity exists to encourage [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Multi-annual sub-pixel land cover mapping with TESSERA latent embeddings
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Geography, Remote Sensing
Mapping land cover in highly heterogeneous landscapes is challenging, and classifications have inherent limitations where the spatial resolution of remotely sensed data exceeds the size of small objects. Sub-pixel land cover fraction maps based on medium-resolution optical remote sensing data like Landsat or Sentinel-2 overcome this limitation but are often not consistently available across [...]
BORDER OPTICS : Satellite Verification of India's Vibrant Villages Programme: A Compositing-Window Robustness Assessment of Border-Village Development
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Ask the Government of India if things have worked out for them with their flagship scheme for the Border Villages, the honest answer (on parliamentary record) is No, it has never been verified anywhere. The Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP-I) has approved around ₹4,800 crore in support of 2,967 villages in five Himalayan border states/union territories including 662 villages marked 'priority' for [...]
What Does a Country-Level Difference-in-Differences on Satellite NO₂ Identify? Baseline Composition, Winter Retrievals and the European Climate Law
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, International and Area Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistics and Probability
Satellite observations make it easy to compare air pollution in countries that adopted a policy with countries that did not. This paper examines what such a comparison identifies. It uses Sentinel-5P TROPOMI tropospheric NO₂ for 2019–2024 and a country-level difference-in-differences (DiD) model of the European Climate Law that compares the EU-27 with nine neighbouring non-EU countries. NO₂ fell [...]
What Did the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam Do to Vegetation? Separating Flood, Reservoir and Irrigation Effects with Satellite Data
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
The Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine was destroyed on 6 June 2023. This could have changed vegetation in three ways: through the flood below the dam, the draining of the reservoir, and the loss of water for the irrigation canals. All three happened inside an active war zone. I tested each pathway separately with MODIS NDVI at 250 m resolution for 2016–2024. Treated land was defined by what [...]
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Do Coastal Rules Reach the People at Risk? Comparing Five Island Jurisdictions
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Hydrology, International and Area Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resource Economics, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Sustainability
Low islands face a rising sea at the same time as the reefs and mangroves that shelter them are under stress. I measured both across 5 island groups in 3 ocean basins (Maldives, Lakshadweep, Seychelles, Fiji and the Canary Islands), testing mangroves and coral reefs as separate pathways. Exposure is the share of people (WorldPop 2020) living on land at or below 1 m, on a bare earth elevation [...]
Testing the Fluorescence Advantage: Does Solar-Induced Fluorescence Signal Agricultural Drought Earlier than NDVI in Marathwada, India?
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
India uses rainfall deficits and vegetation indices such as NDVI to declare drought, and PMFBY crop-insurance payouts depend on these declarations. Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF) is linked to photosynthesis, so many expect it to show drought stress earlier than NDVI. I tested this in the eight districts of Marathwada, Maharashtra, over nine Kharif seasons (2015–2023). I compared [...]
Stolen Strata: Brick Kilns and the Loss of Karewa Tableland in Budgam, Kashmir,1993–2025, with a Correction to an Earlier Estimate
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Karewa tablelands are the flat-topped, scarp-bounded remnants of the old lake and river deposits of the Kashmir Valley. Reporting from Kashmir has said for years that they are being dug away for brick clay and fill, but I did not find a satellite measurement of how much, where and when. This study asks three questions: how much karewa tableland that was vegetated in 2013–2015 is no longer [...]
Ghost Infrastructure: Historical Industrial Geography and the Persistence of Path-Dependent Accessibility in Bochum, Germany
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Statistics and Probability
The complete 69,393 pedestrian street node network from Bochum was used for a Welch's t-test, which revealed as a surprise that street nodes with low accessibility are actually significantly farther from historical industrial sites than street nodes with high accessibility (t=42.887, p<0.00001, Cohen's d=0.589 - medium-to-large effect), which is the opposite of what the original hypothesis [...]
The Cotton Line: Testing the Institutional Persistence of an Erased Colonial Land-Tenure Boundary Across Vidarbha's Agrarian and Vegetation Geography
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, International and Area Studies, Statistics and Probability
Can a provincial boundary abolished in 1956 still be detected in today's farmland? In the nineteenth century Berar, in western Vidarbha, was settled under the Ryotwari land-revenue system. The Central Provinces districts to the east were settled under Malguzari. On district lineage the old line matches the present boundary between Amravati and Nagpur Divisions, which I rebuild as a 384.7 km line [...]
Landslide Susceptibility Modelling and Infrastructure Exposure in the Zillertal, Austrian Alps
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science
Landslides are a major threat in alpine regions, as steep terrain, complex geology and locally concentrated infrastructure increase societal exposure to landslide hazards. This study develops a landslide susceptibility model for the Zillertal (Tyrol, Austria), utilizing a Random Forest modelling approach. A high-resolution landslide susceptibility map was created using seven geomorphometric, [...]