Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Water Resource Management
Spatiotemporal connections in high precipitation events in Iran: Application of complex networks
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Study region A relatively large area covering east and west Asia, north Africa, and Europe. Study focus This study examines the complex correlation patterns of high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study region. For this purpose, the Complex Networks Theory is used to find the links between high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study area with different time lags. [...]
Linking Water Temperature Variability to Water Quality Dynamics in Beck Lake, an Urban Inland Lake in Chicago (2020–2024)
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Abstract This study examines the effect of climate variability on water quality in Beck Lake, an inland urban lake in Chicago, Illinois, from 2020 to 2024. The lake is maintained by the Chicago Park District and contains aquatic life such as Bluegill, Largemouth Bass, and Northern Pike. To determine climate influence, satellite-derived water temperature data were analyzed using time series [...]
Reducing the global human footprint on lake water quality near river inlets
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Human activities have degraded lake water quality globally, leading to toxic algae proliferation and anoxia. The spatial variability of these impacts within lakes and the potential for targeted nutrient pollution reduction to improve water quality remain however underexplored at the global scale. Using 742 million chlorophyll-a (chl-a) estimates from six satellite sensors (daily, 1–4 km [...]
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 [...]
Past, Present and Future of the Indus Water Treaty: Implications for Transboundary Water Governance Challenges and Modernization Prospects
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: International and Area Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Water Resource Management
The Indus Water Treaty has been applauded as a successful water sharing agreement to allocate the water of Indus River system between India and Pakistan. Yet a set of diplomatic, water resources, and climatic challenges have culminated into the current state of suspension and raise questions over the future of the transboundary water governance. This paper presents a critical spatio-temporal [...]
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 [...]
Machine Learning Generated Streamflow Drought Forecasts for the Conterminous United States (CONUS): Developing and Evaluating an Operational Tool to Enhance Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Streamflow Drought Early Warning for Gaged Locations
Published: 2025-09-19
Subjects: Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Forecasts of streamflow drought, when streamflow declines below typical levels, are notably less available than for floods or meteorological drought, despite widespread impacts. To address this gap, we apply machine learning (ML) models to forecast streamflow drought 1-13 weeks into the future at > 3,000 streamgage locations across the conterminous United States (CONUS). We applied two ML [...]
Governing transboundary river barriers: adaptive management challenges in South and Southeast Asia
Published: 2025-08-30
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Hydrology-Based Coastal Risk Assessment in Charleston, South Carolina: Sea-Level Rise, Land Subsidence, Nuisance Flooding, and the Overlooked Role of Groundwater Attenuation
Published: 2025-08-29
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Charleston, South Carolina is among the most flood-exposed cities on the United States Atlantic coast. Tide-gauge records show mean sea level rising at 3.51 mm per year since 1921, while InSAR analyses identify localized subsidence exceeding 4 mm per year, producing effective relative rise of 7 to 8 mm per year. This acceleration explains the increase in nuisance flooding from fewer than 5 days [...]
Undrainable pore spaces comprise half of US groundwater storage
Published: 2025-08-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Groundwater is vital to global freshwater access, streamflow generation, and biogeochemical cycling, but not all groundwater can be drained due to adhesive and capillary forces. Quantifying the proportion of groundwater that can be drained—and is, thus, theoretically recoverable—is critical for characterising groundwater’s role in earth system processes. Unfortunately, estimates of theoretically [...]
Participatory assessment of French Reed Beds (FRB) as natural based solution for rural sanitation in arid environments: insights from Ouijjane project in Morocco
Published: 2025-08-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Rural improved sanitation remains a major challenge to achieving the UN SDG 6 goal. In this regard, this study evaluates, with local stakeholders, an operational rural sanitation project in Ouijjane commune, Morocco, using French Reed Bed (FRB) technology. Data from project documentation, as well as field interviews and focus group discussions, were used to carry out a participatory evaluation. [...]
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 [...]
Assessing Climate and Watershed Controls on Rain-on-Snow Runoff Using XGBoost-SHAP Explainable AI (XAI)
Published: 2025-06-28
Subjects: Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Water Resource Management
Rain-on-snow (ROS) events significantly impact hydrological processes in snowy regions, yet their seasonal drivers remain poorly understood, particularly in low-elevation and low-gradient catchments. This study uses an XGBoost-SHAP explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) model to analyze meteorological and watershed controls on ROS runoff in the Great Lakes Basin. We used daily discharge, [...]
Lagged impacts of groundwater pumping on streamflow due to stream drying: Incorporation into analytical streamflow depletion estimation methods
Published: 2025-06-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Water management often requires accounting for reductions in streamflow caused by groundwater pumping (‘streamflow depletion’). Since streamflow depletion cannot be quantified from observational data, it is typically modeled. Analytical depletion functions (ADFs) are a low-cost, low-complexity approach for estimating streamflow depletion with utility for decision support, but ADFs adopt several [...]
Agri-food corporations’ role in water sustainability and water resilience of global supply chains
Published: 2025-05-24
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Agriculture is both a major contributor to water scarcity and highly vulnerable to it. The agri-food sector accounts for approximately 70% of global human water abstraction and 90% of water consumption, with irrigation practices leading to detrimental effects such as reduced streamflow, groundwater depletion, and environmental degradation. As water stress impacts crop and livestock productivity, [...]