Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical and Environmental Geography
Control of natural hazard events through emergency landscaping
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography
Humans reshape the surface of the Earth through efforts to protect people and places from natural hazards. While some hazard defences, such as river levees, are permanent infrastructure, other measures, such as wildfire fighting, are responsive: they occur while a hazard event is in progress, actively intervening in its behaviour to mitigate its impact. Deliberate, concurrent, mitigating [...]
Reduced geomagnetic shielding increased UV-B radiation at Earth’s surface during the Laschamps Event
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Atmospheric Sciences, Biochemistry, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Life Sciences, Paleobiology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability
Exposure to excess UV-B radiation can harm organisms through DNA damage and oxidative stress, and has likely been a key ecological and evolutionary driver throughout Earth’s history. Here, we show UV-B at Earth’s surface was significantly increased during the Laschamps Event, the last major geomagnetic excursion ca. 41ka BP. During the Laschamps, we find significant and prolonged (lasting [...]
Towards Prospective Disaster Risk Management: Mapping Multi-hazard Urban Risk Dynamics Driven by Evolving Exposure and Vulnerability via Earth Observation
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Other Computer Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Risk Analysis, Spatial Science, Structural Engineering
As local governments increasingly adopt geospatial Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment (CDRA) to inform prospective public policy, the reliability of existing static risk intelligence is challenged by the continuous evolution of building exposure, population distribution, and physical vulnerability. Recent multi-temporal datasets of the built environment, derived from Earth Observation, have [...]
Quantifying the Regional Dynamics and Redistribution of Physical Vulnerability in Least Developed Countries
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Civil Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Other Computer Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Structural Engineering
In the margins of the accelerating development of digital technology worldwide are the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), which continually face an exacerbated risk crisis at the intersection of rapid rural-urban growth, underlying physical vulnerability, and intensifying climate hazards. Despite decades of international development commitments, the rate of built-up expansion across LDCs has [...]
City-level temperature reduction from street green space by city typology and climate zone
Published: 2026-03-29
Subjects: Climate, Human Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science
Vegetation in the street can lower temperatures at neighbourhood level and reduce heat stress for pedestrians. Street green spaces (SGS) is thus an urgently needed nature-based solution for adapting to a warming climate, and also has some ability for carbon uptake. This local solution has global potential, but the cooling potential of street green space depends on local context, urban form and [...]
Agricultural expansion and intensification in Brazil: A literature synthesis of dynamics, drivers, and implications
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Brazil’s long-term agricultural development reflects a complex interplay between human-driven land-use change and natural ecosystems. Since the 1960s, agricultural production in Brazil has expanded rapidly, driven by global food demand and national economic growth, through two primary pathways: (1) agricultural expansion via conversion of natural vegetation, particularly forests, and (2) [...]
Geospatial Modelling of Vegetation Dynamics and Carbon Sequestration Capacity in Ekiti State, Nigeria Using MODIS Data and CASA Models.
Published: 2026-03-23
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Accurate estimation of terrestrial carbon sequestration capacity is fundamental to national climate mitigation efforts and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study assessed vegetation dynamics and modelled Net Primary Productivity (NPP) a proxy for carbon sequestration capacity in Ekiti State, Nigeria, over the 11-year period (2014–2024). The study deployed the seasonal and [...]
Wildfire house loss hazard mapping and fuel management scenario planning on a Tasmanian wildland-urban interface using radiant heat and firebrand exposure modelling
Published: 2026-03-03
Subjects: Forest Management, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science
Globally, wildfire disasters are increasing in frequency through a combination of urban expansion into flammable wildlands and climate change. Accordingly, the wildland urban interface (WUI) is a crucial geographic domain for disaster risk reduction. Accurate mapping of wildfire house loss hazard is a basic requirement for effective wildfire risk management. We developed a novel geographic [...]
Visualizing Pyroclimotology
Published: 2026-02-25
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Education, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Background: Wildland fire activity often demonstrates distinct seasonality adhering to the alignment of climatologically favorable fuels, weather, and ignitions. Improved characterization of conditions that increase fire ignition probabilities, extreme fire behavior, and beneficial fire potential would enhance our understanding of fire regimes and provide insight for future wildland fire [...]
What are the drivers of riparian vegetation recruitment and establishment in an alpine embanked river?
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Geomorphology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1 – Rejuvenation operations are often conducted in rivers to manage vegetation encroachment and balance biodiversity benefits and flood risks. Understanding the drivers of vegetation recruitment and establishment is necessary to implement these operations but requires monitoring at spatial and temporal scales that are suited to pioneer riparian environment. 2 – Bi-yearly drone surveys were used [...]
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 [...]
Past, Present and Future of the Indus Water Treaty: Implications for Transboundary Water Governance Challenges and Modernization Prospects
Published: 2025-10-30
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 [...]
Hazomes: Earth’s natural multi-hazard terrestrial disturbance regimes
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Climate, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Ecosystems and societies have evolved together and are shaped by local natural hazard regimes. We introduce hazomes, an Earth classification based on multi‑hazard disturbance patterns. By combining open‑source intensity and return period data for eight hazard types, we identify thousands of distinct terrestrial disturbance regimes. Hazomes aims to deepen insight into ecosystem and societal [...]
Reconstructing Nineteenth-Century River Water Levels with Transformer-Based Computer Vision
Published: 2025-10-11
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography
Nineteenth-century Bavarian Danube gauge charts (1826–1894) were converted into daily water-level series referenced to gauge zero through a semi-automated workflow combining light document pre-processing, dewarping, transformer-based line extraction, pixel-to-curve calibration, and targeted human checks. A curated ground-truth sample supported benchmarking and uncertainty quantification. On three [...]
DOZER: a toy model of coastal hazard mitigation during a storm
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Dynamical Systems, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Motivated by observations of emergency road-maintenance crews in coastal settings, DOZER is a video game in which the player uses a bulldozer to clear sand from a beachfront road during a storm. DOZER is also a toy model in a formal sense: a heuristic tool for insight into the dynamics of real-time intervention in the physical processes of a natural hazard. Here, I introduce DOZER as both a game [...]