Preprints
There are 7124 Preprints listed.
Comparative Machine Learning approach to seasonal ENSO Forecasting with Time-Series Performance Evaluation
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Education, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is one of the most important climate phenomena that affects weather conditions worldwide. It influences monsoon seasons, droughts, and crop productivity. Forecasting of ENSO processes is rather difficult since the system is inherently nonlinear. Moreover, the Spring Predictability Barrier limits the predictive capacity of forecasters during the boreal [...]
Remotely sensed evapotranspiration for corporate water stewardship: Opportunities and limitations in agricultural landscapes
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Corporate water stewardship (CWS), in which companies engage in or incentivize actions to advance sustainable water resource management, can positively affect water resources, reduce water-related business risks, and support Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and sustainability reporting efforts. Agricultural landscapes affect diverse industries including finance, technology, fuel [...]
Facility scale detection and quantification of gas flaring using imaging spectrometers
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Globally, over 140 billion cubic meters of natural gas are flared each year, according to the VIIRS Nightfire (VNF) data product derived from satellite observations by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the most widely used instrument for global flare monitoring. Although VIIRS routinely tracks global flaring activity through nighttime observations, its coarse spatial [...]
Understanding Microplastics Discourse Through Social Sensing: Insights from Geotagged Social Media
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Microplastics have emerged as a growing global environmental and public health concern due to their widespread presence and increasing potential for human exposure through food, water, and air. Recent scientific evidence and expanding media coverage have heightened public awareness and debate surrounding their ecological and health impacts. However, a systematic understanding of how public [...]
Wildlife tourism in times of crisis: A critical discourse analysis of media coverage during the Covid-19 pandemic
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Geography
Tourism is a growing, if controversial, approach to wildlife conservation. Constructed on neoliberal ideological assumptions, tourism-as-conservation-strategies can reinforce social inequalities and patterns of historical oppression. This model of conservation and economic development is also vulnerable to global market trends and disruptions. In this paper we use content and critical discourse [...]
The Role of Humidity in Past and Future Fire Weather Trends in the Contiguous United States
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Other Earth Sciences, Risk Analysis
There has been evidence of increasing fire activity in the United States since approximately the 1980s, now estimated to cause tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of damage per year. Weather is one of the key drivers of fire activity, with hot, dry, and windy weather commonly associated with high-risk conditions. We are still, however, developing an understanding of how these weather [...]
Integrating climate projections and machine learning to predict survival of drought resistant trees for climate smart reforestation
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Plant Sciences
Climate smart reforestation faces critical uncertainty about tree survival under future drought conditions. Predicting which trees will survive is essential for guiding species selection and management interventions. This study develops an explainable machine learning framework that integrates long term empirical forestry data with climate projections, functional traits, and management practices [...]
Predictive performance of wildfire structure exposure modeling in the western US
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
As development expands and extreme wildfire events worsen, people and property are increasingly exposed to wildfire hazards, necessitating comprehensive and accurate community and structure risk assessment tools. A variety of modeling frameworks and indices have been applied to support community wildfire planning, but few have been evaluated against subsequent fire events, which is a key gap for [...]
Navigating the Complexity of Environmental Migration In the Context of Climate Change: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Concepts and Methods
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
This article, from the perspective of a collective of researchers from the French National Research Institute for Development and collaborators, presents and discusses the conceptual and methodological frameworks they have developed to study environmental migration and (im)mobilities. It is based on a workshop organised within the IRD’s CoSav Migrations network, which brought together researchers [...]
A comprehensive study of the CO2-O2 isotope exchange technique to standardize triple oxygen measurements in CO2
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry
A research roadmap for assessing the feasibility of warming Mars
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Planetary Sciences
This roadmap outlines research pathways to determine whether Mars could be warmed withnon-biological methods. It does not presuppose that warming Mars is desirable; its purposeis to identify what would need to be true for Mars to be warmed, what it would cost, and whatcould go wrong. Three complementary research tracks appear promising. Solid-stategreenhouse membranes offer local warming, aiding [...]
A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Diagnosing Inconsistencies in Remote Sensing-Based Ecosystem Assessment
Published: 2026-05-05
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography
Remote sensing-based ecosystem assessment increasingly relies on the integration of spectral, structural, and model-derived datasets; however, inconsistencies among these data sources can produce divergent representations of vegetation dynamics and carbon processes. This study proposes a multi-dimensional framework to diagnose such inconsistencies by integrating scale, dimensional, and variable [...]
Vehicle-Based Methane Detection, Attribution, and Quantification in the Upstream Oil and Gas Sector: Method Overview and Controlled Release Validation
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Vehicle-based measurement systems occupy an important niche in the multi-scale methane measurement landscape between component-level technologies (e.g. OGI) and aerial-based methods. Performance evaluations are often limited to one dimension (e.g. quantification), while methodological opacity limits interpretation and inter-comparisons between technologies. Here, we develop a vehicle-based [...]
Sustained Decline of Annual Snow Cover Area in the Sikkim Himalaya (1987–2025): Multi-Sensor Remote Sensing on Google Earth Engine, Machine Learning, and Projections to 2100
Published: 2026-05-04
Subjects: Climate, Glaciology, Hydrology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Remote Sensing
Snow cover is a critical component of the Himalayan cryosphere, providing freshwater to millions of people across South Asia and regulating regional climate through albedo feedbacks. Sikkim, a small but ecologically significant state in the Eastern Himalaya, has experienced accelerating glacial retreat and mounting hydrological stress in recent decades. This study presents a comprehensive, [...]
Closing the Digital Gap in Nigerian Land Records: An Open-Source QGIS Plugin for Cadastral Survey Archiving and Spatial Management
Published: 2026-05-03
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Secure, retrievable cadastral records are foundational to land tenure security and effective land administration, yet most private cadastral surveying firms in Nigeria maintain survey records exclusively on paper, a structural limitation that prevents spatial querying, concurrent access, and long-term integrity verification across the 50-year archival period required by the Survey Co-ordination [...]