Preprints
There are 6640 Preprints listed.
Inequality’s contribution to global catastrophic risk
Published: 2026-03-13
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Inequality is rising and so is global catastrophic risk. These two problems are not independent from each other. Inequality has historically been a major driver of social instability, and is increasing the risk of global catastrophes today. We demonstrate this by drawing on the rich literature around societal collapse and global catastrophe from both past and modern societies, highlighting the [...]
A Physics-Informed Data Science Approach to Quantifying Rain-Snow Fraction Dynamics in the Central Himalayas
Published: 2026-03-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mountain studies worldwide have documented increases in rainfall fraction as an impact of climate change. Most mountain systems show an increasing trend in rainfall fraction due to shifting snow precipitation to rain. In Nepal, which occupies an 800 km-long belt of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, the precipitation phase trend is not well known. This study conducts a precipitation phase study in the [...]
Interpretable Relations between Tropical Sea Surface Temperature and U.S. Precipitation in Winter Season Forecasts
Published: 2026-03-13
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We explore the large-scale relations between anomalies of global tropical sea surface temperature (SST) and U.S. precipitation to assess the sources of December-February (DJF) predictability and skill. Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) is applied to forecasts from NOAA's latest seasonal prediction system, the Seamless System for Prediction and EArth System Research (SPEAR). We find that DJF [...]
A terrain-aware approach for image-based urban flood monitoring
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Urban nuisance flooding is widespread, yet quantitative observations of its magnitude and spatial variability remain limited. Most image-based approaches provide only relative measures of flooded image fraction, while quantitative methods require surveyed ground control and three-dimensional reconstruction. We introduce a terrain aware, perspective weighted framework that converts flooded image [...]
Interactive effects of landscape position and soil diversity drive the spatial variability of soil organic carbon concentration in subalpine soils of Switzerland
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Soil Science
Subalpine soils store a significant amount of soil organic carbon (SOC), yet the factors driving its landscape-scale variability remain poorly constrained. Although topography, soil type, soil texture, and moisture are recognised as key drivers of SOC concentration, their interactive effects in subalpine environments remain largely unexplored. In particular, the extent to which soil type shapes [...]
Complete electrification worsens the net energy prospects of a transition based on wind and solar energy.
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mitigating climate change largely relies on substituting fossil fuels with low-carbon, electricity-producing energy sources. This mass electrification deeply alters sectoral energy demand, as some sectors can be more efficiently electrified than others. Building transition infrastructure – such as solar and wind farms, grid extensions, and electric vehicles – at a sufficient pace to achieve [...]
Nationwide deadwood mapping reveals rising mountain forests vulnerability
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences
Forest mortality is increasing globally under climate change, making detailed, large-scale monitoring essential for understanding ecosystem responses and guiding adaptive forest management. Here, we present a spatio-temporal assessment of standing deadwood in Switzerland from 2018 to 2023, derived from centimeter-scale high-resolution aerial imagery. We reveal a consistent upslope concentration [...]
Multi-decadal Barrier Island Fate Varies as a Function of Management Strategy
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Barrier islands are highly dynamic components of sandy coastlines, making up 10% of coastlines globally. Barriers provide recreational opportunities, protect mainland communities from storms, support tourism, and provide ecologically important habitat. Using a spatially explicit barrier island model, CASCADE, calibrated to represent the historical dynamics of Ocracoke, a barrier island in the [...]
Evaluating global spectral unmixing techniques using imaging spectroscopy data for retrieval of green, non-photosynthetic vegetation, and soil fractional cover
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Soil Science
Global estimates of fractional cover of green vegetation (GV), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and soil provide valuable information about the Earth system. As the new generation of Earth visible-to-shortwave infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectrometers take orbit, global fractional cover data will be obtainable with new and improved spectral unmixing algorithms. Using an ASD Field Spectrometer [...]
HIGH-RESOLUTION DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL FOR THE ITALIAN TERRITORY
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
High-resolution digital terrain models are essential for environmental planning and territorial analyses, and provide foundations for geomorphological and hydrological applications, including flood and landslide modelling and geo-hydrological hazard and risk assessments. In Italy, airborne LiDAR surveys have improved the representation of terrain morphology in the last decade, but their coverage [...]
Fast and Slow Groundwater Reservoir Dynamics Revealed by Seismic Velocity Changes and Bayesian ICA in a Taiwan Mountain Ridge
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mountain block recharge (MBR) is an important but difficult-to-observe component of mountain water budgets, especially in steep terrain where groundwater measurements are sparse. In such settings, relative seismic velocity changes (dv/v) derived from ambient-noise interferometry provide a potential proxy for hydrological storage variations, but interpretation is complicated because each frequency [...]
Stealth pressurisation of boiling magma limits geodetic detectability of volcanic eruptions
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Volcanology
Crystallisation-driven volatile exsolution (second boiling) is widely invoked to pressurise shallow magma reservoirs, yet its ability to generate eruption-triggering overpressure and detectable ground deformation is poorly quantified. We couple phase equilibria with thermal and viscoelastic models of sill-like intrusions to map pressure evolution and geodetic detectability of second boiling. [...]
Open-source GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Flood Risk Model for data-constrained environments
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Flooding poses a major hazard across diverse environments and can be particularly difficult to estimate in urban/urbanizing cities without detailed hydrodynamic data/models. This paper presents a GIS-based, multi-criteria model that integrates openly available hydrological, soil, land cover, and drainage network data to produce a relative Flood Risk Index (FRI) at high spatial resolution. A [...]
Mathematical Modeling of Coupled Heat and Mass Transfer with Phase Transitions in Heterogeneous Porous Soils: Mechanism of Soil Moisture Diffusivity Collapse during Freezing
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A mathematical model of coupled heat and mass transfer with water–ice–vapor phase transitions in heterogeneous porous soils is developed. The model comprises the Richards equation, the water vapor diffusion equation, and the heat transfer equation, coupled through a temperature-dependent hydraulic conductivity governed by the Kozeny–Carman relation and thermodynamic phase equilibrium described by [...]
crstools 1.0.0: an R package for cartographic analyses
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Spatial analyses are central to ecological studies, underpinning applications ranging from species distribution modelling to conservation planning and macroecological inference. However, most of these require translating processes occurring on a spherical surface into a planar map, inevitably introducing distortion biases. Projection choice can therefore influence both visual interpretation and [...]