Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Between extraction and protection: Public support for natural resource regulation and environmental governance across Africa, a continental analysis with West Africa as a case study
Published: 2026-04-23
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Natural resource extraction is central to development strategies across Africa, yet it generates persistent conflicts over environmental costs, benefit distribution, and governance legitimacy. Public attitudes toward this trade-off have remained largely unmeasured at the continental scale. This paper provides the first cross-national quantitative analysis of citizen preferences for environmental [...]
‘Egg that tastes like egg’: An ethnographic and economic inquiry into the assets and challenges of the organic farming market in the Canary Islands
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Environmental Studies
The development of self-sufficient organic food systems has become an important focus in the Canary Islands, where reliance on imported foods and conventional agriculture are predominant. This study examines the main challenges and opportunities in the market through eleven on-site, semi-structured interviews combined with participant observation. Thematic analysis was conducted and findings were [...]
Structural–carbon decoupling and forest structural thinning in degrading forests of Southwestern Nigeria using GEDI LiDAR and multi-sensor data fusion
Published: 2026-04-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography
Accurate monitoring of forest degradation requires indicators that capture both structural condition and carbon dynamics. While canopy height derived from spaceborne LiDAR is widely used as a proxy for forest condition, its ability to represent aboveground biomass (AGB) under ongoing degradation remains uncertain. This study examines the relationship between canopy height and AGB in tropical [...]
River Paradigm for Sedentary Mammoth Hunters
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Simple forensic systems analysis of Upper Paleolithic mammoth procurement, including analysis of foraging radii, taphonomic representation, portability, caloric costs, hunting and transportation energetics, labor economics, socio-economic and personal vulnerability to predators, and material-handling logistics, prove Upper Paleolithic Mammuthus primigenius were not often hunted, scavenged, [...]
Coupling Coordination and Driving Mechanisms of Land Use and Ecosystem Service Value in the Central Yunnan Urban Agglomeration
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Environmental Studies
ABSTRACT Research Content: This study focuses on the Central Yunnan Urban Agglomeration, analyzing the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics, coupling coordination relationship, and driving mechanisms of land use and ecosystem service value (ESV) from 2010 to 2024. It aims to provide a scientific basis for regional territorial spatial optimization and ecological civilization [...]
Balancing Food Production and Environmental Sustainability in Ethiopian Agriculture: A Systematic Review
Published: 2026-04-08
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Ethiopia faces the dual challenge of increasing food production for a rapidly growing population while preserving the natural resource base that sustains its agricultural systems. This systematic review synthesizes evidence from 130 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2025 to examine the relationship between agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability in Ethiopia. [...]
The Anthropocene as a Multi-Level Stability Landscape Regimes, Transitions, and Reorganization of the Human–Earth System
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Understanding the evolution of the human–Earth system over decadal-to-centennial timescales remains a central challenge in Earth system science. The Anthropocene is commonly described using trajectories, tipping elements, and scenario pathways, which capture non-linear dynamics but do not provide a unified representation of regime structure and transitions at planetary scale. Here we introduce a [...]
Rethinking land take futures: A cellular automata-based spatial planning approach to model urban expansion and densification under divergent growth scenarios
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Spatial Science
Land take - the conversion of greenfield land into built-up areas - poses critical challenges for sustainable urban development. Addressing this issue requires understanding the balance between outward urban expansion and inward urban densification. This study employs a Multinomial Logistic Regression-based Cellular Automata (MNL-CA) model to simulate two different future scenarios of urban [...]
Seventeen city types define distinct pathways for climate mitigation and adaptation worldwide
Published: 2026-03-31
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Planetary Sciences
Understanding that cities are main arenas of climate action, it remains unclear which cities should focus on what kind of action taking a global comparative lens. Recent contributions identified four different types of cities across seven world regions, while others specified a huge case study literature database on cities and climate change biased towards established, stagnant, and megacities, [...]
No place to hide? Regional resilience and vulnerability to global catastrophic risk
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Sciences, Geography, Public Health
What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk (GCR)? We provide the first systematic study of what locations are more resilient to a range of catastrophic threats. We reviewed the literature on resilience factors against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, [...]
SIM4Action: An Interactive Platform for Social-Environmental Systems Mapping and Causal Analysis
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Life Sciences
SIM4Action is an open-source, browser-based platform for participatory analysis of complex socio-environmental systems through interactive causal network graphs. Existing systems mapping tools require practitioners to combine separate software for map construction, network analysis, and causal simulation; none provides an integrated workflow accessible to non-technical stakeholders. SIM4Action [...]
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) [...]
Sustaining Life on the Fault Line: Women’s Social Reproduction and Grassroots Disaster Governance in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Published: 2026-03-19
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations
Mainstream disaster resilience studies overwhelmingly privilege top-down institutional frameworks, leaving the socio-economic and care-oriented contributions of women undertheorized as constitutive forces in how resilience is actually produced at the community level. This study examines how women’s everyday practices and organizational capacities shape disaster preparedness, response, and [...]
WITHDRAWN: Sustaining Life on the Fault Line: Women’s Social Reproduction and Grassroots Disaster Governance in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Published: 2026-03-19
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
HIGH-RESOLUTION DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL FOR THE ITALIAN TERRITORY
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
High-resolution digital terrain models are essential for environmental planning and territorial analyses, and provide foundations for geomorphological and hydrological applications, including flood and landslide modelling and geo-hydrological hazard and risk assessments. In Italy, airborne LiDAR surveys have improved the representation of terrain morphology in the last decade, but their coverage [...]