Preprints
There are 6534 Preprints listed.
Emergent Spatio-Semantic Structure in Large Language Model Embedding Spaces
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Geographic Information Sciences
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in geospatial applications typically as generators of geographic text or as natural language interfaces to spatial data. Here, we explore whether LLM embedding spaces can instead function as geospatial representations that can be exploited directly. Using embeddings extracted from Airbnb property descriptions in London, we show that [...]
Household water storage compromises drinking water safety in a “safely managed” system
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Public Health
While nearly three-quarters of the globe use safely managed drinking water services, water quality can deteriorate between the point of service provision and point of consumption due to intermittent supply and the need to store water at the household level. To test if water storage contributes to waterborne pathogen hazards, we estimated prevalence and concentration of enteric pathogens in piped [...]
Mapping Temperature Deviation and Elderly Vulnerability using Open Source Technology: A One-Week Analysis of Manhattan, New York City
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing
This paper outlines a research method for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing real-time temperature data for cities using open data and open source technology. The system collects temperature data for each census tract in Manhattan three times daily via the OpenWeather API and stores observations in a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. A one-week pilot study (November 15-22, 2025) analyzed 8,990 [...]
A bias-corrected & downscaled massive ensemble to diagnose uncertainty in climate impact projections
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Projections of climate change and climate impacts requires bias-corrected, downscaled output from ensembles of earth system models (ESMs). Potential impacts are uncertain due to modeling differences between ESMs, internal variability stemming from the chaos of the earth system, and differences in the historical reference datasets used to bias-corrected and downscale ESM output. Here, we introduce [...]
Backstress governs transient postseismic creep in the continental lithospheric mantle
Published: 2026-02-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding the physical processes that control how the continental lithospheric mantle responds to sudden stress changes during the earthquake cycle is essential for interpreting postseismic deformation and constraining the rheological behaviour of the mantle. Laboratory studies have revealed that long-range elastic interactions among dislocations generate backstresses that strongly influence [...]
Machine Learning and Explainable AI for Agricultural Drought Prediction: A Comparative Analysis of Gradient Boosting Methods Using Multi-Source Earth Observation Data
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences
Drought monitoring and prediction remain critical challenges in climate science and agricultural management, particularly under accelerating climate change. This study presents a comprehensive machine learning framework for drought susceptibility mapping in Iowa, USA, using multi-source Earth observation data and explainable artificial intelligence. We systematically evaluated eleven supervised [...]
Projected spatial reorganization of Köppen–Geiger climate zones under climate change and consequences for population and economic exposure
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Sustainability
Climate change is expected to reorganize macro-climatic regimes at the planetary scale, with implications that extend beyond physical climate variables to the spatial configuration of human systems. While projected shifts in temperature and precipitation are well documented, their translation into categorical climate-regime transitions and associated socio-economic exposure remains insufficiently [...]
Quantifying the Causal Strength of Compound Drought–Heatwaves: Implications for Fire Events and Cropland Productivity
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology
Compound drought and heatwave (CDHW) events represent one of the most disruptive forms of climate extremes, as the simultaneous occurrence of dry and hot conditions signifies their impacts far beyond those of individual events. Yet, despite their increasing significance, the causal influence of CDHW frequency and severity on fire activity and crop yield variability remains poorly quantified, [...]
The Role of Flexure Margins in Controlling Open Fracture Distribution: Insights from Analogue Modeling of Orthogonal Rift and Pull-Apart Systems
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Hydrocarbon exploration in Basement Fracture Reservoirs faces significant challenges in predicting fracture connectivity below seismic resolution. This study utilizes analogue sandbox modeling to compare the spatial distribution of open fractures in orthogonal normal fault systems and pull-apart basins. Methodological innovation is implemented through the use of a 1 mm thick gypsum layer atop 8 [...]
Cross-referencing astronaut-observed lunar impact flashes with seismic data - lessons from Apollo for Artemis
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology
During their orbits of the Moon in 1972, Apollo astronauts reported three impact flashes on the lunar surface, associated with meteoroids striking the surface and vaporizing. We examined data from the Apollo seismic network to investigate whether these flashes produced detectable moonquakes whose locations and timing could be independently validated. No candidate matches were found, though stream [...]
Biochar granulation and particle size influence hydrological performance of green roof substrates
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Materials Science and Engineering, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Green roofs are increasingly being implemented in cities to improve stormwater management and provide additional ecosystem services. Biochar, a carbon-rich material derived from pyrolyzed biomass, has emerged as a promising substrate additive to improve hydrological performance of green roofs; however, unprocessed biochar is susceptible to erosion loss. Biochar granulation and particle size [...]
Directional Peak Factors of Strong-Motion Response Spectra: A Stochastic Field Representation on the Circle
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Structural Engineering
Directional variability in horizontal earthquake ground motions is often addressed using orientation-independent intensity measures obtained by rotating the two horizontal components and summarizing the resulting response spectra. In contrast, the stochastic structure of directional peak factors, which connect second-order response measures to extreme response levels, has received limited [...]
Rotation-Invariant Ground-Motion as Directional Selection Operators: A Closed-Form Framework for RotD Response Spectra
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering
Horizontal earthquake ground motion is inherently two-dimensional, yet most engineering applications rely on scalar intensity measures. Rotation-invariant response spectra such as RotD50, MaxRotD50, and RotD100 are widely used to remove dependence on sensor orientation. They are often treated as direction-free scalars, which they are not. In this study, directional pseudo-spectral acceleration is [...]
Assessing and Correcting Bias in Gridded Reference Evapotranspiration over Agricultural Lands Across the Contiguous United States
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Gridded reference evapotranspiration (ETo) data are widely used for agricultural water management and remote sensing ET (RSET) models, but biases can arise in agricultural regions where coarse-resolution meteorological inputs fail to capture local microclimates. We investigated biases in the gridMET ETo product across irrigated agricultural areas of the contiguous United States (CONUS) by [...]
Technical Note: Benchmark time-temperature paths provide a shared framework for evaluating and communicating thermochronologic data interpretation
Published: 2026-02-19
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a set of six time-temperature (tT) histories, called benchmark paths, that can be used as a shared framework for evaluating the sensitivity of a thermochronologic system to the variables inherent in the interpretation of thermochronologic data (e.g., kinetics models, mineral compositions or geometries, etc.) . These benchmark paths span 100 Myr, include monotonic and nonmonotonic [...]