Preprints
There are 7893 Preprints listed.
DispSAC: Surface-wave dispersion inversion using soft actor-critic reinforcement learning
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Surface-wave inversion (SWI) is widely used to image shear-wave velocity structure in the crust and upper mantle. Locally linearized methods offer computational efficiency but can be sensitive to the initial model and regularization, whereas Bayesian sampling methods can characterize model uncertainty at substantial computational cost. Neural networks provide another route to efficient inversion, [...]
Hydrogeochemical Vectoring to Concealed Porphyry Copper Systems Using Unsupervised Machine Learning: A Case Study from Central British Columbia, Canada
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Geochemistry, Geology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
Environments with thick cover present a challenge to surficial exploration efforts the Canadian Cordillera has extensive Quaternary glacial till and sediment cover, making it difficult to find hidden ore bodies. An alternative is using hydrogeochemistry as an exploration tool, to detect anomalies associated with mineralization. This study demonstrates the hydrogeochemical vectoring to [...]
Encouraging Wildfire Mitigation Action Via National Weather Service Fire Weather Products
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
Wildfire mitigation actions intend to reduce the probability and consequences (risk) of wildfire to critical assets by protecting the life and property of the public and emergency responders during and after a wildfire event. Given mitigation activities span a continuum of timescales from minutes to years and multiple orders-of-magnitude in terms of costs, an opportunity exists to encourage [...]
Sparse validation can mask process errors in urban flood modelling: evidence from large multimodal model-assisted video observations
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Hydraulic Engineering
Urban flood models support drainage-system planning and flood risk management. However, due to the scarcity of monitoring data, model calibration and validation often rely on sparse observations, leaving the process fidelity of models insufficiently assessed. Here, we used large multimodal model-assisted video interpretation to derive minute-level ordinal inundation observations and evaluate the [...]
Assessing the carbon footprint of a large international research program: study case of the BRIDGES kick-off meeting
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
There is a rising concern in the academic community about the environmental impact of research activities. Carbon footprints are typically evaluated at the laboratory or institutional level, but there are lacking an evaluations at the level where research is actually performed, i.e. at the level of research projects. In this work, we focus on the french BRIDGES international research program as a [...]
Skillful Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Prediction with AI Weather--Climate Models Forced by Dynamically Predicted SSTs
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
AI weather-climate models are far cheaper than dynamical seasonal prediction models and have shown skillful tropical cyclone (TC) prediction under persisted sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, but their skill under dynamically predicted ocean boundary conditions, benchmarked against an established dynamical seasonal prediction system, is untested. We evaluate eight seasonal hindcast [...]
Groundwater-dependent ecosystems are missing from global research and policy agendas
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Hydrology, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
A groundwater-dependent ecosystem (GDE) can be a stream or wetland sustained by groundwater, a terrestrial ecosystem that relies on groundwater for root water uptake, or the biodiversity that lives within aquifers. These ecosystems perform hydrological, ecological, and climate functions, and are meaningful to people through recreational, spiritual, and cultural practices. Traditionally studied at [...]
Assessing Spatial and Temporal Variability of Vertical Land Motion Along Coastal Massachusetts Using Sentinel-1 InSAR and GNSS Time Series Analysis
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Vertical land motion (VLM) is a critical component of relative sea-level rise (RSLR) assessments and can vary substantially across local to regional scales and over multi-year to decadal timescales due to differences in geology, natural processes, and anthropogenic influences. Coastal Massachusetts (MA) is a low-lying, geologically diverse region encompassing densely urbanized shorelines, [...]
MilAMin in the browser: a million unknowns a minute in TypeScript and WebAssembly
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Tectonics and Structure
In 2008 MILAMIN showed that a finite element code written in native MATLAB, a language then held to be too slow for large problems, could set up, solve and post-process one million unknowns per minute on a desktop, provided every stage of the pipeline gets equal care. This note brings the same pipeline to the web browser: Triangle meshing, 7-node Crouzeix-Raviart elements, supernodal Cholesky [...]
Early Hadean Earth conditions were ideal for prebiotic chemistry
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The time at which surface conditions favorable for prebiotic chemistry were established on Earth remains debated. Following magma-ocean solidification, high atmospheric pressure modulated the release of water from Earth’s primary crust. Here, we model the coupled formation of early oceans and felsic crust under these conditions. Our calculations show that a hydrated primary crust forms, resulting [...]
National-scale mapping locates the mismatch between perceived and assessed flood risk in India
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Flood risk management assumes that people in hazardous places recognize the danger they face, but evidence on flood risk perception remains sparse in South Asia, home to much of the world's flood-exposed population. India has more than 600 million people exposed to inland flood hazards and the highest flood-related mortality in Asia, yet no national evidence base on flood risk perception. Here we [...]
From buffer-based tables to dynamic response curves for soil-specific lime requirement estimation using machine learning
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Accurate estimation of lime requirement (LR) remains a major challenge in acid soils, as conventional buffer-based approaches, particularly the Shoemaker–McLean–Pratt (SMP) method, rely on a single equilibrium measurement and predefined target pH values, limiting their ability to capture the diversity of soil neutralization responses. This study evaluated whether machine-learning (ML) models can [...]
In-context learning for small-sample soil mid-infrared spectroscopy: evaluating TabPFN across an integrated soil-acidity panel
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Soil acidity diagnosis requires several interdependent laboratory measurements, limiting throughput. Mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy can estimate this panel from one scan, but practical use depends on robust calibration. Deep learning has surpassed conventional methods in many data-rich fields; however, adapted deep learning architectures such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are [...]
Perceptions of Drought Risk Management in Zambia: Reflections from the Historic 2023/2024 Drought
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: International and Area Studies
Drought risk management depends not only on understanding the physical characteristics of drought but also on how drought is experienced, interpreted, and anticipated by affected institutions and communities. This study examines perceptions of drought and their implications for risk management in Zambia using the severe 2023/2024 drought as a case study. Guided by Taylor’s perception framework [...]
A response surface framework for persistence-aware lime requirement
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Conventional lime-requirement (LR) methods estimate the dose needed to attain a target soil pH, but do not indicate how long the correction remains acceptable during re-acidification. We tested whether repeated dose–response measurements could provide a persistence-aware LR. Single applications of calcium carbonate (CaCO{\! }_{3}) and calcium oxide (CaO) were evaluated in clay, sandy loam, and [...]