Preprints
There are 6693 Preprints listed.
A Systematic Review of Arsenic, Lead, and Manganese Occurrence through Drinking Water in East Africa
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Toxic metals (TMs) harm human health, causing cancers, irreversible neurocognitive impairment, and cardiovascular disease. Drinking water is an important source of exposure to TMs. However, current peer-reviewed literature does not adequately capture or synthesize the extent of TM occurrence in drinking water in East Africa. The goal of this systematic review is to report and synthesize available [...]
Trade Openness, Monetary Policy Shocks, and Welfare in Malawi: A Structural VAR Approach.
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: International and Area Studies
Small open economies face complex interactions between external trade dynamics and domestic monetary policy. For Malawi, persistent inflation, exchange rate instability, and dependence on primary commodity exports raise important questions about the relative roles of trade openness and monetary policy in shaping welfare outcomes. This study examines how trade and monetary shocks affect welfare, [...]
Uncertainty-Aware Bayesian Machine Learning for Landslide Susceptibility Mapping: in the Chattogram Metropolitan Hill System, Bangladesh
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Landslide-prone hilly regions experiencing rapid urban expansion need susceptibility models that provide both robust predictive performance and transparent uncertainty estimates. This study develops an uncertainty-aware probabilistic framework for landslide susceptibility mapping in Bangladesh’s Chattogram metropolitan hill system, incorporating 14 conditioning factors: geomorphological, [...]
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 [...]
An assessment of small rural and micro-enterprises as pathways out of poverty. Insights from KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: International and Area Studies
Rural poverty continues to pose a significant development challenge in South Africa, marked by pronounced inequality, persistent unemployment, and substantial dependence on social grants. The present study investigates whether household-level micro and small enterprises (MSEs) function as effective pathways out of poverty or primarily as coping mechanisms for survival in the Izingolweni area of [...]
Sustainable Design from Waste Up: Irradiated Graphite Disposal Assessments to Inform Reactor Design and Operation
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
As Gen IV graphite-moderated reactor technologies advance to demonstration and deployment, the question must be answered of how, where, and when to dispose of the irradiated graphite waste produced from the operation of these facilities. This work presents an integrated assessment involving the entire graphite lifecycle in nuclear power production: impurity measurement of graphite grades, reactor [...]
Accuracy, Robustness and Comprehensibility – Challenges in bottom-up energy system models
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Electrical and Computer Engineering
This work provides a comprehensive framework for addressing key research gaps in bottom-up energy system modeling. While the field has experienced significant advancements in recent decades, largely due to improvements in computational capabilities and data availability, current models face persistent challenges in accuracy, robustness, and comprehensibility. While numerous review papers have [...]
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) [...]
Atsusa samusa mo higan made: Statistical validation of a Japanese weather proverb across eight stations over 76 years
Published: 2026-03-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Background: Weather proverbs encode centuries of observational knowledge, yet few have been subjected to rigorous statistical testing. The Japanese proverb atsusa samusa mo higan made ("heat and cold last only until the equinox") asserts that seasonal temperature transitions coincide with the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Despite growing international interest in weather folklore verification, [...]
Geospatial Modelling of Vegetation Dynamics and Carbon Sequestration Capacity in Ekiti State, Nigeria Using MODIS Data and CASA Models.
Published: 2026-03-23
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Accurate estimation of terrestrial carbon sequestration capacity is fundamental to national climate mitigation efforts and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study assessed vegetation dynamics and modelled Net Primary Productivity (NPP) a proxy for carbon sequestration capacity in Ekiti State, Nigeria, over the 11-year period (2014–2024). The study deployed the seasonal and [...]
Ice Surface Change Drives Subglacial Hydrologic Reorganization and Interior Speedup in Northwest Greenland
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
ABSTRACT. Changes in ice surface elevation and slope influence subglacial water pressure and sliding velocity. Leveraging decadal scale changes in ele- vation observed by the Ice, Cloud, and land-Elevation satellite (ICESat) and ICESat-2 missions, we use coupled subglacial hydrology–ice dynamics model- ing applied to a section of the northwest Greenland Ice Sheet to explore i) how decadal scale [...]
How well do global ocean approaches constrain local pCO2?
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The ocean absorbs 29% of humanity’s annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and the future of climate change is strongly dependent on how this sink evolves. Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) approaches to enhance this sink are actively being developed. In the interest of understanding how well state-of-the-art global products and models can help to distinguish mCDR signals from [...]
Spatiotemporal Assessment of Urbanisation and Deforestation Impacts on Forest Structure and Vegetation Health in Ekiti State, Nigeria Using Multi-Sensor SAR, Optical, and GEDI Data.
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Nigeria’s urban population is projected to reach 70% by 2050, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable land management strategies. This study integrates multi-sensor SAR (ALOS PALSAR, Sentinel-1), optical imagery (Landsat, Sentinel-2), and spaceborne LiDAR (GEDI) to quantify the impacts of urbanization and deforestation on forest structure in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Using Random Forest and [...]
On the Origin of Directional Variability in Earthquake Response Spectra: A Stochastic Covariance Framework
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology
Directional variability of horizontal earthquake response spectra is commonly described using rotation-based measures such as RotD50 and RotD100, yet its physical and statistical origin remains unclear. This study shows that directional anisotropy arises fundamentally from finite-sample fluctuations of the covariance matrix of filtered ground-motion response. Even under perfectly isotropic [...]
A universal law for non-breaking surface wave decay
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Fluid Dynamics, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
Macroscopic friction can emerge from microscopic fluctuations whose mean vanishes but whose autocorrelation does not. Here we use this statistical-mechanical route to resolve a sixty-year-old problem in ocean wave physics, how non-breaking surface waves lose energy to upper-ocean turbulence. The Navier-Stokes equations contain a stochastic vortex force (the coupling between wave orbital motion [...]