Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geographic Information Sciences
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 [...]
Longitudinal assessment of research in GIScience domain shows a positive impact of reproducible research practices
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences
Reproducibility is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of rigorous science, prompting many publishers to require full documentation, data and software access, and archiving of study materials. Yet prior work shows that such practices, that are essential for communicating research transparently, remain comparatively low in the Geographic Information Science (GIScience) research community. To [...]
Ecosystem extent mapping in a global monitoring context
Published: 2025-10-03
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
The vital role of ecosystems in maintaining biosphere stability is now recognised globally. Updates in policy frameworks on biodiversity and environmental decline include information on ecosystem extent (EE) as a core assessment indicator, e.g., the Global Biodiversity Framework indicator A2 ‘Extent of natural ecosystems’. The recently proposed System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – [...]
Impact of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Services: A Multi-Module InVEST-LCM Analysis
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing
Land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics influence ecological processes and the provision of essential ecosystem services (ESs). So, understanding how LULC changes influence ESs is critical for sustainable land management and conservation planning, especially in rapidly urbanizing watersheds. Despite studies examining individual ecosystem services, there remains a notable research gap in [...]
The Grand Challenges of WPI-AIMEC: Executive Summary
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Climate, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Marine Biology, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Remote Sensing, Sustainability
The ocean has a heat capacity 1,000 times greater than that of the atmosphere and stores 50 times more carbon comparatively, thus, constituting a major sink of anthropogenically released greenhouse gases. Warming effects of human activities on the climate system are now undeniably shown to impact marine life and ecosystems, both directly via warming of the ocean and/or indirectly altering ocean [...]
Multilingual Community Visualizations (MCV): A GIS Dashboard for Linguistic Research and NWS Operations
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The NWS is actively expanding its multilingual outreach to better serve the 68.8 million U.S. individuals who speak a language other than English at home. Among these, 26.3 million individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) are of particular concern, as they often rely entirely on translated forecasts to make life-saving decisions. Yet identifying where these populations are concentrated [...]
Spatiotemporal dynamics of floodplain patterns during the last 400 years south of Leipzig - A regional scale analysis
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Elster-Pleiße floodplain south of Leipzig has undergone significant hydromorphological changes over the past centuries, influenced by both natural processes and anthropogenic interventions. This study employs high-resolution LiDAR-based fluvial-geomorphological mapping (1x1 m resolution) and old maps analyses to reconstruct past river dynamics and identify shifts in channel morphology. [...]
Natural forests of the world - a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Informed decisions to reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and curb carbon emissions require not just knowing where forests are, but understanding their composition. Identifying natural forests, which serve as critical biodiversity hotspots and major carbon sinks, is particularly valuable. We developed a novel global natural forest map for 2020 at 10 m resolution. This map can support [...]
Mapping Responsible AI Workflows for Geospatial Data Science: Developing the I-GUIDE Data Ethics Toolkit
Published: 2025-04-24
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Library and Information Science, Sustainability
AI workflows in geospatial data science promise substantial societal benefits yet pose persistent challenges of ethical risk, transparency, and reproducibility. Current guidance, ranging from high‑level principles to isolated documentation templates, remains difficult to translate into day‑to‑day research practice, especially for teams operating under tight deadlines. This paper reports the [...]
Four-Decade Analysis of Fire Behavior in the Brazilian Caatinga Biome 1985-2023
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Forest Management, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
The Caatinga, unique in northeastern Brazil, has species adapted to the semi-arid climate. Recurrent fires put its biodiversity at risk, highlighting the need for urgent measures to protect this fragile ecosystem. This study analyzed four decades of fire behavior in the Caatinga biome (1985-2023) using data from the MapBiomas Fire project and spatial analysis, revealing a worrying dynamic of [...]
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: 2025-03-21
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 [...]
locationallocation: solving Maximal Coverage Location-Allocation geospatial infrastructure assessment and planning problems
Published: 2025-03-20
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Geographic Information Sciences, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Spatial Science
Assessing and planning infrastructure and networks over space conditional to a spatially distributed demand and with consideration of accessibility and spatial justice goals and under infrastructure allocation constraints is a key policy objective. Potential applications extend to the domains of public infrastructure assessment and planning (public services provision, e.g. transport, social [...]
A Data-Driven Method for Improving Historical Maps' Positional Accuracy
Published: 2025-03-16
Subjects: Engineering, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Other Engineering
Positional accuracy improvement (PAI) of historical maps involves correcting their inherent geometric distortions, which often limit their usability in modern applications. Although resurveying an entire map provides the most accurate solution for PAI, it is costly, time-consuming, and often impossible. This study proposes a cost-effective, alternative data-driven method, using Generalized [...]
Reflections on the first State of the Map Conference in Malawi
Published: 2025-03-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
State of the Map (SotM) conferences are important events that enable OpenStreetMap (OSM) contributors and users to present and discuss their work. However, when international SotM conferences are held in the Global North countries, participation by African geospatial scientists is not guaranteed due to various barriers, including travel costs and visa restrictions. Conversely, locally held SotM [...]