Preprints
There are 7532 Preprints listed.
Estimating CO2 Leakage Fluxes along Legacy Wells Using a Rapid Physics-Based Screening Approach
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Petroleum Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Achieving net-zero targets demands the rapid expansion of CO2 geological storage, but legacy wells in mature petroleum provinces represent a significant containment risk when engineered barriers degrade. At the early assessment stage, storage projects need to rapidly bound plausible leakage magnitudes across large legacy-well inventories when integrity data are sparse; however, suitable modelling [...]
Investigation of Drivers and Sources of Potential Harmful Algal Blooms in Lake Anna, Virginia, 2023–24
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Algal blooms in freshwater reservoirs are an increasing concern because of the risk to aquatic ecosystem health, recreational use, and water quality. Among the taxa that comprise an algal bloom, cyanobacteria are of particular concern due to the potential to produce toxic compounds which can cause acute and chronic illness in humans if ingested through contaminated water or shellfish. When toxins [...]
A Project-based Learning Activity Involving Hybrid Intelligence in the Undergraduate Engineering Class
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Climate, Higher Education, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in academic practice, creating opportunities to support learning and improve educational outcomes. We implemented a project-based learning activity in an undergraduate engineering course in which students used meteorological data to construct a temperature time series and assess local climate change at a selected location from the national [...]
Incomplete coverage of the state of nature across biodiversity credit methodologies: an assessment using the State of Nature metrics framework
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies
Biodiversity credits are growing rapidly, yet the proliferation of methodologies has raised concerns about their quality and integrity. Because biodiversity cannot be reduced to a single common unit, methodologies differ in their choice of indicators; previous comparative studies, however, have examined only aggregation levels or taxonomic focus, leaving unaddressed how comprehensively [...]
Unsupervised Clustering for Identifying Dusty Days and Their Sources: A Long-Term Data Study in Sanandaj, Iran
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Dust storms are a persistent environmental hazard in the Middle East, yet long-term monitoring remains limited by sparse ground observations and the lack of objective, reproducible event definitions. This study develops a transferable, data-driven framework for objectively identifying dusty days in data-scarce regions and explicitly addresses two key issues: defining dust events using defensible [...]
A cascade, not a flood: testing the competing accounts of the 26 August 2026 Lhende Khola–Bhote Koshi disaster
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
On 26 August 2026 a rock–ice mass detached above the Lhende Khola on the China–Nepal border, blocked the channel, and released a flow that travelled about 100 km down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli, killing hundreds of people and removing about a tenth of Nepal's generating capacity in a single morning. Reporting produced mutually incompatible accounts of the cause, while the agency best placed to [...]
The Uncertainty Landscape Beyond Variance
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Mathematics, Statistics and Probability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Modern science has become good at measuring uncertainty. Across statistics, artificial intelligence, economics, Earth observation, environmental modelling and decision science, researchers increasingly invoke uncertainty when interpreting evidence, evaluating predictions and supporting decisions. These disciplines often use the word uncertainty to describe conceptually different scientific [...]
A comprehensive evaluation of inland water quality monitoring using the long-term Landsat archive and mixture density networks
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Nutrient enrichment of inland and coastal waters is visible from space. In these regions, chlorophyll a (chl-a), total suspended solids (TSS), and Secchi depth (ZSD) constitute the most commonly targeted water quality parameters. A growing number of studies have shown that, despite not being strictly optically active, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) can nonetheless be estimated from [...]
Soil Seed Banks of Invasive Plant Species of the Lower Mississippi River Delta
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Life Sciences
Corresponding Author Beth A. Middleton; Email: middletonb@usgs.gov This paper this is a non-peer reviewed preprint submitted to EarthArXiv, and is submitted to PLoS One (in review). Abstract The invasion routes of non-native species into estuaries can be difficult to determine. Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) is an invasive species in North America and occurs sporadically in the remote [...]
Trigger or driver? Tracing the role of climate variability since the Little Ice Age in the abandonment of mountain villages in the Eastern Pyrenees: evidence from historical documents
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Environmental Studies
In recent decades, rural depopulation has emerged as a widespread phenomenon across much of Europe, driven by shared underlying processes but shaped by region-specific dynamics. Understanding how climate variability interacts with socioeconomic dynamics to drive long-term settlement abandonment is critical in the context of current global change. High-mountain regions are particularly sensitive [...]
Recurrent High-Resolution Satellite Observations Quantify Facility-Resolved Annual Large-Emitter Methane Emissions in the Permian Basin
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Repeated high-resolution satellite observations can identify large methane emissions from individual oil and gas facilities, but sparse sampling, intermittent emissions, and variable observation conditions complicate the estimation of annual facility-level emissions. We develop an empirical hierarchical Bayesian method to estimate facility-resolved annual large-emitter methane emissions, with [...]
Quantifying Uncertainty in Climate Sensitivity Metrics Using Large Ensemble Observational Datasets
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Gridded surface temperature observational datasets are an important line of evidence for estimating climate sensitivity metrics. Climate sensitivity metrics are often derived from comparing historical warming in these observations against climate model simulations, an approach that is known to be sensitive to the choice of observational dataset. With observational products now providing large [...]
A coordinated NASA observing system for monitoring the next decade of ice sheet-climate interactions
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Sea level rise is a global problem that is currently shrouded in uncertainty. The next decade of NASA research priorities must address key unknowns and monitor ongoing changes in the ice sheet-ocean system in order to improve sea level rise projections and equip government officials to legislate the appropriate policies. This will require a coordinated observing system that combines satellite [...]
Effect of the interfacial continuity on the elastic full-waveform inversion
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Full-waveform inversion (FWI) routinely assumes welded interfaces between subsurface layers, yet many geological and engineering targets including karst cavities, fractures, and unbonded soil-structure contacts exhibit interfacial slip. We show that this modelling assumption is not merely a geometric detail but introduces a systematic bias in the recovered physical parameters. Using a [...]
The 26 August 2026 Langtang Lirung ice–rock avalanche and its transboundary cascade: a multi-source observational reconstruction in the Bhote Koshi basin
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology
On 26 August 2026, an ice–rock avalanche detached from the northern flank of Langtang Lirung (7,227 m) at about 5,200 m a.s.l., transformed into a debris flow that travelled roughly 22 km in 6–7 minutes, destroyed the Gyirong border port (China) and dammed the river; a flood then propagated a reported ~170 km down the Bhote Koshi–Trishuli–Narayani system into Nepal and India. At least 16 people [...]