Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Remote Sensing
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: 2025-07-25
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: 2025-07-01
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: 2025-06-05
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 [...]
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: 2025-03-20
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 [...]
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 [...]
Influence of snowpack properties and local incidence angle on SAR signal depolarization: a mathematical model for high-resolution snow depth estimation
Published: 2025-02-26
Subjects: Remote Sensing
Recently, Dual-Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been shown to be effective for large-scale snow cover monitoring, but it faces significant challenges when applied to finer resolutions, which are crucial for applications such as avalanche forecasting. In this study, we propose a novel mathematical model to retrieve snow properties from Sentinel-1 SAR data, leveraging variations in [...]
A review of open data for studying global groundwater in social-ecological systems
Published: 2025-02-05
Subjects: Hydrology, Remote Sensing, Water Resource Management
Global data have served an integral role in characterizing large-scale groundwater systems, identifying their sustainability challenges, and informing on socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of groundwater. These insights have revealed groundwater as a dynamic component of both the water cycle and social-ecological systems, leading to an expansion in groundwater science that increasingly [...]
SpartANN - Spectral Pattern Analysis and Remote-sensing Tool with Artificial Neural Networks
Published: 2025-01-28
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Geography, Remote Sensing, Software Engineering
Remote sensing, particularly from satellite observation, has become the standard tool for monitoring the planet with a steady increase of data production, and has seen wide application in ecosystem services analysis and management. Many remote sensing applications involve image classification, using methods from simple regressions to complex machine learning approaches that require advanced user [...]
Site Planning for a Network of Government-operated Weather Stations in the Dominican Republic Using Zonal Statistics from Geospatial Sources, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making, and Neighborhood Analysis
Published: 2024-12-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Many weather station networks lack sufficient representativeness, and their station density is often inadequate to capture spatial and climatic variability effectively. Optimal site selection is therefore essential to enhance spatial coverage and improve data quality. This study proposes a methodology for identifying optimal sites for a meteorological station network in the Dominican Republic, [...]
Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Forests are in decline worldwide due to human activities such as agricultural expansion, urbanization, and mineral extraction. Forest loss due to generally temporary causes, such as wildfire and forest management, is important to distinguish from permanent land use conversion due to the differing ecological and climate impacts of these disturbances and for the purposes of developing effective [...]