Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Study on Land-use Change (LUC)-induced carbon emissions
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Studies
Land-use change (LUC)-induced carbon emissions (ELUC, defined as net carbon emissions and removals) have accounted for approximately one-third of global anthropogenic carbon emissions since industrialization. While its contribution has declined in recent decades, ELUC still represents a significant component of the global carbon budget, comprising 11% of anthropogenic emissions during 2012–2022. [...]
Global Environmental Benefits of Plant-Based Diets: A Multi-Regional Input Output Analysis
Published: 2026-01-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Food Science, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Sustainability
The global food system, especially animal husbandry, is a major driver of negative environmental impacts. This paper investigates the potential of adopting more plant-based diets (vegan, vegetarian, no beef) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land use and related biodiversity loss, and water stress within global food supply chains. This is achieved by combining Multi-regional Input Output [...]
Assessing Climate-Driven Flood Risk with the Community Resilience and Adaptation Spatial Infrastructure Database (CRASID) in Urban and Rural Great Lakes Settings
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Climate change is intensifying flooding in the Great Lakes watershed, threatening critical infrastructure and limiting access to emergency health services. Existing U.S. flood risk tools, such as FEMA’s Hazus and the National Risk Index, and newer models from the First Street Foundation, provide valuable coverage but often emphasize economic impacts while overlooking community-level [...]
Misalignments between national mangrove monitoring capacities and climate policy ambitions
Published: 2025-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Ambitious global targets for mangrove conservation have advanced rapidly in recent years, yet the implementation of these commitments depends largely on national monitoring systems and policy processes. Despite widespread reliance on country-reported data for setting and evaluating targets, little is known about how national mangrove statistics are generated or how they interact with climate [...]
Dynamic estuarine Chlorophyll-a estimation-based time series harmonized Landsat- Sentinel images
Published: 2025-12-11
Subjects: Environmental Studies
This research develops a vigorous approach to estimate Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration in the dynamic, optically complex waters (or Case 2 water including coastal waters, estuaries and inland water bodies) of Ganh Rai Bay, Vietnam by leveraging time series harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (TM-HLS) imagery. One of the fundamental challenges while conducting this method to compute Chl-a signal [...]
China’s Water Renaissance: Conflict Resolution, Environmental Reform, and the Clean-Energy Transition in Contemporary China (2020–2025)
Published: 2025-12-05
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Between 2020 and 2025, China accelerated a sweeping transformation of its water governance, environmental law, and clean-energy infrastructure. Anchored in the doctrine of ecological civilization, the country strengthened basin-scale legislation—including the landmark Yangtze River Protection Law—restored degraded river systems, expanded monitoring networks, and advanced nature-based solutions. [...]
Spatiotemporal connections in high precipitation events in Iran: Application of complex networks
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Study region A relatively large area covering east and west Asia, north Africa, and Europe. Study focus This study examines the complex correlation patterns of high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study region. For this purpose, the Complex Networks Theory is used to find the links between high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study area with different time lags. [...]
Governing the cryosphere beyond political timeframes
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Glaciology, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Sustainability
Cryospheric systems are nearing irreversible thresholds, yet political processes remain misaligned with the long timescales of ice loss. Using COP30 as context, we argue that cryosphere science must inform governance capable of linking near-term decisions with long-term stability in a rapidly changing world.
Paying for Drawdown: the Value of Commitment on the Cost of Ending Global Warming
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Environmental Studies
This paper develops a mechanism to pay for drawing down excess atmospheric carbon dioxide while avoiding third party payments. Assuming this mechanism, the paper investigates the costs of reversing global warming under different levels of commitment. The costs are based on simulated auctions for emissions and carbon removal to reach a climate goal by a particular date. The paper describes a [...]
It’s Not Just Risk—It’s Responsibility: Changing Drivers of Home Flood Protection
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Private household adaptation is a critical yet underutilised element of flood resilience. Property-level measures might reduce up to 80\% of damage if adopted in a timely manner. However, socio-behavioural factors serve as constraints to adaptation. Among them, a lack of risk awareness is considered a primary barrier. Empirical research typically relies on a single snapshot of data, implicitly [...]
Why are farmers in South India shifting from conventional ‘Green Revolution’ agriculture to natural farming? A mixed-methods study
Published: 2025-11-04
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Introduction: The Green Revolution contributed to significant increases in crop production and yield in India. However, it also resulted in negative social and environmental consequences. In response, alternative farming practices have emerged which are based on agroecological principles, such as natural farming. In the recent years government policies at state and national level are also [...]
Nature’s role in national security
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
The ability of a nation to protect its citizens, institutions, and interests from domestic and foreign threats is one of the foundational responsibilities of any government. However, the ability of sovereign nations to ensure national security for their citizens and institutions has been increasingly challenged by various forms of anthropogenic global change. While the link between climate change [...]
Blue Nitrogen: Global Rates and Economic Importance
Published: 2025-10-26
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Life Sciences
Nitrogen pollution drives widespread coastal ecosystem collapse. In this paper, we argue that mangrove forests represent an undervalued natural mitigation solution for nitrogen pollution. By performing a comprehensive meta-analysis, we reveal that mangroves remove 870 Gg N annually, which represents an economic value reaching $8.7 billion via nitrogen credit-based valuation. This value is more [...]
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 [...]
Contrasting patterns of deforestation and reforestation in India’s tropical dry woodlands
Published: 2025-10-07
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Tropical dry woodlands are key ecosystems for global biodiversity, carbon storage, and forest-based livelihoods in some of the poorest regions of the world. Many of these woodlands have been historically converted and degraded, and while recovery occurs in some areas, the pressure on remaining tropical dry woodlands remains high. Despite this, our understanding of spatial patterns of tropical dry [...]