Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Water Resource Management
Groundwater Potential Mapping in Northwestern Nigeria: A Comparison of the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Galileo-Enhanced CAT-XGB
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Global water scarcity intensifies the need for high-resolution groundwater assessment tools, yet traditional approaches struggle to reconcile qualitative expert weights with the extensive spatial coverage offered by remote sensing data. This study presents a comparative framework evaluating expert-driven Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (a ten-layer Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)) against [...]
Understanding Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Urban Water Bodies via Multi-Classifier Machine Learning Approaches in Semi-Arid Ahmedabad City
Published: 2026-10-08
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
The research examines the spatiotemporal change of water bodies in Ahmedabad city in western part of India which is a rapidly urbanizing area. It integrates high-resolution remote sensing data with modern machine learning approaches. Understanding the long-term pattern is crucial to understanding and managing the water resources in the changing climate, also city experiences the low precipitation [...]
Impact of Soil Data Representation on Streamflow Modelling: A Contiguous-Object Connectivity Approach Case Study in Switzerland
Published: 2026-10-05
Subjects: Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Hydrological models often rely on soil data to represent water partitioning, storage and release within a catchment. However, differences in soil data representation may be obscured by calibration when performance is evaluated primarily against streamflow. This study investigates how alternative soil datasets influence streamflow performance, internal hydrological processes, and parameter [...]
Orientations to navigate the complexity of freshwater resilience in social-ecological systems
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Hydrology, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Resilience is a widely applied and diversely interpreted concept in freshwater science with applications that span disciplines, analytical frameworks, scales of analysis, and system delineations. This diversity leads to an equally rich variety of resilience insights which are difficult to compare, aggregate, synthesize, and apply in decision-relevant contexts. Here, we seek to support greater [...]
Groundwater-dependent ecosystems are missing from global research and policy agendas
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Hydrology, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
A groundwater-dependent ecosystem (GDE) can be a stream or wetland sustained by groundwater, a terrestrial ecosystem that relies on groundwater for root water uptake, or the biodiversity that lives within aquifers. These ecosystems perform hydrological, ecological, and climate functions, and are meaningful to people through recreational, spiritual, and cultural practices. Traditionally studied at [...]
National-scale mapping locates the mismatch between perceived and assessed flood risk in India
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Flood risk management assumes that people in hazardous places recognize the danger they face, but evidence on flood risk perception remains sparse in South Asia, home to much of the world's flood-exposed population. India has more than 600 million people exposed to inland flood hazards and the highest flood-related mortality in Asia, yet no national evidence base on flood risk perception. Here we [...]
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 [...]
Investigation of Drivers and Sources of Potential Harmful Algal Blooms in Lake Anna, Virginia, 2023–24
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Algal blooms in freshwater reservoirs are an increasing concern because of the risk to aquatic ecosystem health, recreational use, and water quality. Among the taxa that comprise an algal bloom, cyanobacteria are of particular concern due to the potential to produce toxic compounds which can cause acute and chronic illness in humans if ingested through contaminated water or shellfish. When toxins [...]
Mapping one million small reservoirs in Brazil highlights widespread environmental and policy implications
Published: 2026-08-21
Subjects: Water Resource Management
Small dams and reservoirs disrupt hydrological connectivity and increase evaporative water loss across Brazil, yet most remain unmapped. Applying deep learning to Sentinel satellite data from 2021, we created a comprehensive map of 1.1 million small on-stream reservoirs (smaller than 50 ha). Their 7,597 km^2 cumulative surface area surpasses the combined area of Brazil’s three largest mega-dam [...]
Flooded Rivers, Drying Wetlands, Vanishing Tributaries: Hydrological Paradox of the East Ganga Plains
Published: 2026-08-16
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The East Ganga Plains (EGP) present a striking hydrological paradox: while embanked rivers flood with increasing magnitude, adjacent wetlands and groundwater-fed streams are desiccating, and aquifer storage is declining. Using satellite remote sensing and gravimetry, we document that: (i) wetlands exhibit significant water-cover loss despite stable monsoon rainfall; (ii) small rivers and [...]
PyRiverShift: A Gaussian Transect Decomposition Framework for Quantifying Sub-Pixel Lateral Channel Mobility
Published: 2026-08-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Along many rivers, lateral channel mobility is a key process, yet quantification from freely available multi-decadal 30 m Landsat imagery is constrained by low pixel resolution relative to channel width. We introduce PyRiverShift, a sensor-agnostic spectral decomposition framework. PyRiverShift fits a 1-D Gaussian to NDWI profiles along valley-perpendicular transects, recovering sub-pixel channel [...]
A Blueprint for Modern Floodplain Management: System Requirements and Architecture for AI-Ready Platforms
Published: 2026-07-29
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Floodplain managers play a critical role in mitigating flood risks and ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local regulations. Their daily work often depends on a patchwork of standalone tools, manual processes, and legacy systems that have evolved over time to meet regulatory and community needs. To establish a foundation for next-generation technological solutions, we synthesized [...]
Detecting illegal water abstractions using Earth Observation and artificial intelligence: challenges, research gaps, and future directions
Published: 2026-07-28
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Water scarcity and unsustainable withdrawals are major environmental challenges, particularly in semi-arid and Mediterranean regions where agriculture places strong pressure on limited hydrological resources. Illegal or unreported water abstractions intensify these pressures by undermining ecosystem stability, policy compliance, and long-term water security. Although Earth Observation (EO) and [...]
CSUFlow25: Colorado Streamflow Ungaged Prediction Models
Published: 2026-07-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
CSUFlow25 is an updated set of statistical models for predicting streamflow in ungaged basins in Colorado, USA. It builds on the earlier CSUFlow18 models (Eurich et al., 2021) by extending the streamflow record from water years 2001–2018 to 2001–2024, expanding the pool of candidate predictor variables, and increasing the number of streamflow metrics predicted. Models were developed from a [...]
Quantifying Watershed Criticality via Deep Learning and Explainable AI for Groundwater Resilience
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Groundwater is a vital freshwater resource that supports drinking water supply, agricultural sustainability, ecosystem functioning, and drought resilience. As water scarcity and climate change impacts intensify, sustainable groundwater management plays an important role in groundwater management, with groundwater storage (GWS) acting as a key indicator of groundwater resilience. This study [...]