Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Remote Sensing
National scale sub-meter time series mangrove mapping using Landsat imagery and deep transfer learning
Published: 2025-12-16
Subjects: Geography, Remote Sensing
Current mangrove time-series products are constrained to 25 m resolution, hindering precise delineation of boundaries, small patches, and internal structures, thus compromising area estimates and ecological assessments. Key barriers are the paucity of historical high-resolution imagery and high-quality labeled samples. To this end, we developed the Sub-meter Mangrove Transfer Learning Mapping [...]
CLOSDI: A Novel Spectral Index for Cloud Shadow Detection in Sentinel-2 Imagery using NDVI and EVI2
Published: 2025-12-13
Subjects: Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
The presence of clouds and their shadows represents one of the main limitations for the spectral analysis of Sentinel-2 imagery. Although the Scene Classification Layer (SCL), generated by the Sen2Cor algorithm, includes specific classes for cloud shadows and dark area pixels, several studies have revealed limitations in its detection capabilities. This work proposes a new spectral index—the [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Reducing the global human footprint on lake water quality near river inlets
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Human activities have degraded lake water quality globally, leading to toxic algae proliferation and anoxia. The spatial variability of these impacts within lakes and the potential for targeted nutrient pollution reduction to improve water quality remain however underexplored at the global scale. Using 742 million chlorophyll-a (chl-a) estimates from six satellite sensors (daily, 1–4 km [...]
Spatio-temporal Analysis of Vegetation Disturbance and Recovery in the Cerrado-Amazon Transition Using Landsat Time Series and Deep Learning
Published: 2025-10-21
Subjects: Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Cerrado-Amazon Transition (CAT) represents the world’s largest tropical ecotone, demarcating the boundary between the Brazilian Cerrado and Amazon biomes. Extensive deforestation and degradation within the CAT are driving irreversible ecological transformations and significant biodiversity loss. The escalating incidence of fire and agriculture-induced deforestation has rendered the CAT a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
High-resolution Digital Terrain Model and Land-surface Parameters of São Sebastião and Ilhabela, southeastern Brazil
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Effective disaster risk management and detailed environmental studies in landslide-prone regions require high-resolution and accurate Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). This work describes the development of a 2~m-resolution lidar-based DTM and an extensive set of land-surface parameters (LSPs) for the municipalities of São Sebastião and Ilhabela, southeastern Brazil. The dataset was generated from [...]
Household climate adaptations reflect patterning in climate events
Published: 2025-07-26
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
It is well-documented that households respond to climate events with climate adaptations, risk-management strategies like livelihood diversification, migration, or remittances – sending money and goods across distances. However, the focus is largely on responses to single climate events, while suggestive evidence indicates that temporal and spatial patterns across multiple events – including [...]
The air pollution benefits of low severity fire
Published: 2025-07-02
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Remote Sensing
Larger and more frequent wildfire events in Western North America in recent years have resulted in extensive human and environmental damage, and are reversing decades of air quality improvements. Fuels treatments, including the use of prescribed fire, can reduce the extent and severity of future wildfires, but air quality trade-offs resulting from application of these treatments -- more initial [...]
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 [...]