Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical and Environmental Geography
Enhancing the Normalized Difference Water Index for Improved Urban Flood Detection
Published: 2025-03-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Accurate urban flood detection is crucial for effective disaster management and urban planning. Traditional indices like the Normalized Difference Water Index and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index often produce inaccurate results due to spectral confusion in urban areas and sensitivity to shadows. Moreover, MNDWI's reliance on the Shortwave Infrared band limits its use with certain [...]
Understanding Compound Climate Hazards and Exposure from a Spatial Perspective: A Case Study for the Dosso Region, Niger
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Compound climate hazards—where extreme events co-occur— pose increasing risks to our socio-ecological systems, yet their spatial dynamics remain poorly understood. We introduce a novel metric to quantify simultaneous drought and heatwave exposure, applying it to Niger’s Dosso region over a 24-year period (2000–2023) using remote sensing and GIS-based techniques. Our analysis reveals distinct [...]
Flood type drives river-scale plastic deposition
Published: 2025-03-05
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Plastic pollution is considered a global environmental challenge, prompting international regulation efforts such as the UN plastic treaty to end plastic pollution. River basins, with high population densities and poor waste management, are particularly exposed to plastic pollution. Floods amplify plastic presence in rivers by mobilizing previously deposited and introduce new plastics. Yet, the [...]
Where has all the Sinter gone? From the Pink and White Terraces, the Greatest Tourist Attraction of the Southern Hemisphere
Published: 2025-02-02
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geology, Geomorphology, Other Geography, Paleontology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
Debate continues over the silica sinter Pink and White Terraces, the greatest tourist attraction of the southern hemisphere. The 1886 Tarawera eruption may or may not have destroyed them by burial or eruption. This research compiles surviving sinter. The volume is unexpectedly tiny, which bears on the debate. A database was developed including photography. A forensic approach was taken to [...]
Hypereutrophication, Hydrogen Sulfide, and Environmental Injustices: Mechanisms and Knowledge Gaps at the Salton Sea
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is undergoing significant environmental degradation, which has adverse health effects on nearby rural communities, who are primarily Latinx and Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian. Over the past two decades, the lake’s water levels have steadily dropped. Water conditions in the Sea, characterized by low oxygen and high nutrient levels, favor the [...]
Site Planning for a Network of Government-operated Weather Stations in the Dominican Republic Using Zonal Statistics from Geospatial Sources, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making, and Neighborhood Analysis
Published: 2024-12-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Many weather station networks lack sufficient representativeness, and their station density is often inadequate to capture spatial and climatic variability effectively. Optimal site selection is therefore essential to enhance spatial coverage and improve data quality. This study proposes a methodology for identifying optimal sites for a meteorological station network in the Dominican Republic, [...]
Sensing the dynamic nature of fragmented croplands in India through earth observation: a comprehensive review
Published: 2024-11-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Fragmentation or the breakdown of landholdings to smaller parcels has an adverse impact on crop yields and productivity because of its uneconomic operational sizes. This comprehensive review reflects the insights into the complex dynamics of small landholding (SLs) in India by leveraging earth observation (EO) based sensing technology through synthesizing existing literature, methodologies and [...]
Advancing vegetation monitoring with virtual laser scanning of dynamic scenes (VLS-4D): Opportunities, implementations and future perspectives
Published: 2024-10-07
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Virtual Laser Scanning (VLS) is an established and valuable research tool in forestry and ecology, widely used to simulate labelled LiDAR point cloud data for sensitivity analysis, model training and method testing. In VLS, vegetation has traditionally been modelled as static, neglecting the influence of vegetation dynamics on LiDAR point cloud representations and limiting applications to [...]
Mercury records from natural archives reveal ecosystem responses to changing atmospheric deposition
Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography
Global ecosystems face mercury contamination, yet long-term data is scarce, hindering understanding of ecosystem responses to atmospheric Hg input changes. To bridge data gap and assess ecosystem responses, we compiled and compared a mercury accumulation database from peat, lake, ice, and marine deposits worldwide with atmospheric mercury deposition modeled by GEOS-Chem, focusing on trends, [...]
Remote sensing and spatial analysis reveal unprecedented cyanobacteria bloom dynamics associated with elephant mass mortality
Published: 2024-05-07
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The 2020 mass mortality of 350 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Botswana sparked global concern, with cyanotoxins in watering holes (pans) being a suspected cause, though evidence remains inconclusive. Combining remote sensing and spatial analysis, we examined the relationship between the ecohydrology of ~3,000 pans and the locations of deceased elephants. Our analysis revealed a [...]
Can multi-scale thermal infrared imaging help validate and monitor water stress in alluvial forests?
Published: 2024-04-13
Subjects: Geomorphology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Alluvial forests are fragile and sensitive to drought induced by climate change and exacerbated by altered flow regimes. Our ability to detect and map their sensitivity to drought is therefore crucial to evaluate the effects of climate change and adjust management practices. In such a context, we explore the potential of multi-scale thermal infrared imagery (TIR) to diagnose the sensitivity of [...]
Designing and describing climate change impact attribution studies: a guide to common approaches
Published: 2024-01-06
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Public Health, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Impact attribution is an emerging transdisciplinary sub-discipline of detection and attribution, focused on the social, economic, and ecological impacts of climate change. Here, we provide an overview of common end-to-end frameworks in impact attribution, focusing on examples relating to the human health impacts of climate change. We propose a typology of study designs based on whether [...]
Mapping the Landscape of Water and Society Research: Promising Combinations of Compatible and Complementary Disciplines
Published: 2023-10-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) [...]
Groundwaterscapes: A global classification and mapping of groundwater’s large-scale socioeconomic, ecological, and Earth system functions
Published: 2023-09-20
Subjects: Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater is a dynamic component of the global water cycle with important social, economic, ecological, and Earth system functions. We present a new global classification and mapping of groundwater systems, which we call groundwaterscapes, that represent predominant configurations of large-scale groundwater system functions. We identify 18 groundwaterscapes, which offer a new lens to [...]
Global trade and the resilience of food supply to extreme weather exposure
Published: 2023-08-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Physical and Environmental Geography, Sustainability
Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather events, potentially threatening crop yields and global food security. A key benefit of international trade is risk sharing, because global aggregate production is more stable than that of individual countries which may be adversely affected by extremes. However, countries vary in the degree to which they source commodities from trading [...]