Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Water Resource Management
A Vision for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Great Lakes Research and Management
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Water Resource Management
The Laurentian Great Lakes are a vital freshwater resource and a regionally significant natural system facing complex, persistent, and compounding challenges from climate change, nutrient loading, and invasive species. The increasing availability of observational data, coupled with advances in computational power and machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods, presents an [...]
Widespread reliance of rainfed crops on upwind irrigated agriculture in India
Published: 2026-02-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Rainfed crops account for approximately 40% of India’s food production and support 60% of its livestock. Although linked to oceanic monsoon rainfall, their productivity also depends on terrestrial evaporation, particularly in the non-monsoon season. However, the degree to which rainfed crops also rely on moisture sourced from upwind irrigated areas, remains largely unknown. Using a combination of [...]
A Benchmark Dataset of Agricultural Weather Stations over the Contiguous United States for Evapotranspiration Applications
Published: 2026-01-17
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Agricultural weather data are fundamental for the accurate estimate of evapotranspiration (ET), irrigation scheduling, and water-use accounting. In particular, reference ET provides a standardized atmospheric demand for water loss from a hypothetical well-watered grass (ETo) or alfalfa (ETr); however, weather stations may not adequately represent such climatic conditions. Weather data commonly [...]
Use of Low Impact Development Systems to Enhance Recharge using Stormwater in a Heavily Groundwater-Depleted Region of the Gulf Coast Aquifer
Published: 2026-01-17
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Water resources in the Houston Metropolitan Area, otherwise known as Greater Houston, have been under enormous stress for decades due to an increase in population and uncertain climate conditions. Rapid urbanization has also increased impervious cover, leading to excess stormwater runoff. Implementing managed aquifer recharge (MAR) through the use of low impact development (LID) strategies can [...]
Evidence of low watershed resilience across the Western United States
Published: 2026-01-15
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Vulnerable waters, including headwater streams and non-floodplain wetlands, are essential to watershed level resilience but notoriously difficult to measure over large spatial scales. Although individually small, vulnerable waters as a whole are integral in regulating hydrologic and biogeochemical processes. In the relatively small proportion of vulnerable waters that are continuously monitored, [...]
Global assessment of terrestrial water cycle resilience
Published: 2026-01-10
Subjects: Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Green water - transpiration, soil moisture, and land precipitation - is critical for Earth system stability and ecosystem productivity. Despite evidence of considerable and widespread change globally, its resilience, or ability to absorb and recover from disturbances, is not yet well understood. Here, we assess green water resilience using early warning signals (EWS) applied to global satellite [...]
Assessing the riverine flood forecast skill of GloFAS and Google Flood Hub with impact data and discharge observations to support early actions in Mali
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Water Resource Management
Riverine floods are among the most destructive and frequent natural hazards in Mali. To reduce their impacts, the Mali Red Cross implemented an Early Action Protocol (EAP) to enable anticipatory actions through pre-defined triggers and forecast information. Currently, the protocol relies on upstream water levels from the National Directorate of Hydraulics (DNH) to predict downstream flooding. [...]
FloodSim Sandbox: An Immersive Interactive Simulation Framework for Urban Flood Risk Management
Published: 2025-12-28
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
FloodSim Sandbox is an AI-augmented, immersive digital twin framework for real-time flood visualization, analysis, and decision support. Developed within Unreal Engine 5, it integrates multi-source geospatial data, physically based fluid simulation, and multimodal AI reasoning to model flood dynamics in a high-fidelity digital twin of Iowa City. The system procedurally generates terrain and [...]
GIFIS: A Generalized Immersive Flood Information System Specification
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Other Computer Sciences, Water Resource Management
This study introduces Generalized Immersive Flood Information Specification (GIFIS), a vendor-agnostic, JSON Schema–based framework for encoding, validating, and exchanging hydrologic and environmental data for reproducible and interoperable virtual and augmented reality applications. By defining standardized semantics for entities such as sensor datasets, hydrological model outputs, warnings and [...]
Community-Oriented Data Integration and Communication Framework for Streamflow Forecast Models and Flood Inundation Map Products
Published: 2025-12-24
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Water Resource Management
Access to critical flood risk information is often limited by expert-driven workflows that require specialized software, representing a barrier to stakeholder engagement and effective science communication. This study presents a generalized web-based framework that integrates federal datasets for real-time scenario-based flood forecasting and mapping at the CONUS scale. By leveraging [...]
The puzzling yet tractable diversity of global groundwater sustainability challenges
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Global groundwater sustainability is a grand challenge that requires diverse approaches to account for local contexts. Yet, global groundwater assessments often focus solely on aggregate physical trends in storage, levels, and fluxes, overlooking the diversity of social-ecological functions provided by groundwater and their associated sustainability challenges. Here, we introduce groundwater [...]
Evaluating Trade-offs Between Irrigation Profit and Streamflow Depletion Using a Hydro-Economic Model
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Groundwater overexploitation can reduce flows in connected rivers through streamflow depletion, which threatens ecosystems and downstream users who often rely on these flows for their economic wellbeing. Quantifying groundwater-surface water interactions and their economic trade-offs remains challenging for sustainable water management. This study integrates analytical groundwater and streamflow [...]
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 [...]