Preprints
There are 6326 Preprints listed.
Global Alpine Treeline Elevational Transects
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Alpine Treeline Ecotone (ATE) is an important ecological transition zone at the juncture of montane forests and alpine tundra. It serves as a crucial habitat for diverse species and a sensitive indicator of climate change. Consistent characterization of the elevational gradients of ATE is challenging due to complex topography and data limitations. This study introduces a comprehensive [...]
Dead Sea Warming and the Origin of Salt Giants
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Episodically, vast seas on Earth partly dried out, leaving deposits called “salt giants”. Recently, in addition to well-documented accelerated level decline and salt precipitation, the Dead Sea has suffered severe warming. The mechanisms underlying this warming and the formation of salt giants remain unresolved. Here we propose a physical model of hypersaline waterbodies that reproduces Dead Sea [...]
Scalable and robust Gaussian processes for reanalysis of urban air temperature with crowdsourced meteorological data
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistical Models
Crowdsourced air temperature data from networks like Weather Underground offer dense spatial coverage and are increasingly used to study the canopy urban heat island (CUHI) effect. However, these observations are noisy: siting conditions, environmental interference, and sensor failures introduce spatially and temporally varying bias. This complicates interpolation, limiting our ability to [...]
Rethinking livestock futures: Integrating climate impacts and genomic technologies into global food security models
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
With the projected increase in the global population and food demand on a planet in climate crisis, the debate about the role of livestock continues to intensify. Animals farmed for food are both a victim and a contributor of climate change (CC), with animals suffering from heat stress due to CC but also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Livestock studies have demonstrated [...]
Improving Landsat land surface temperature estimation in Google Earth Engine using NDVI-based emissivity
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Other Computer Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Other Planetary Sciences
Land surface temperature (LST) data derived from satellite images are important for various applications, including mapping urban heat islands, analysing temporal and spatial temperature patterns, assessing the cooling effect of urban greenery, and developing population vulnerability indices for heat waves. Thermal sensors aboard Landsat satellites provide the most spatially detailed data with [...]
Observations and interpretations of high-frequency volcanic tremor produced under varying seismic-acoustic amplitude ratios on Mt. Etna
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a comprehensive, high-resolution seismic-acoustic dataset from Mt. Etna acquired through a large, unprecedented deployment of seismometers and microphones in the summit region, highlighting rarely reported high-frequency (12–15Hz), short-duration volcanic tremor episodes. These events exhibit variable seismic-acoustic amplitude ratios, implying multiple triggering mechanisms. Our [...]
Hazomes: Earth’s natural multi-hazard terrestrial disturbance regimes
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Climate, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Ecosystems and societies have evolved together and are shaped by local natural hazard regimes. We introduce hazomes, an Earth classification based on multi‑hazard disturbance patterns. By combining open‑source intensity and return period data for eight hazard types, we identify thousands of distinct terrestrial disturbance regimes. Hazomes aims to deepen insight into ecosystem and societal [...]
Assessing Volcanic Hazards and Financial Exposure: A Closer Look at Insurance Industry Preparedness
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Volcanology
Within the insurance and reinsurance sectors, volcanoes and their secondary impacts are often an overlooked risk due to the long return periods associated with large explosive eruptions, and relatively low economic and insured losses from eruption events compared to other natural hazards such as large magnitude earthquakes. However, with continued population growth, globalisation and climate [...]
A Computer Vision Framework for Estimating Surface Habitability from Mars Using Convolutional Analysis
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biology, Earth Sciences, Other Planetary Sciences, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology, Statistical Methodology, Theory and Algorithms
Identifying signs of life in extraterrestrial environments is one of the growing challenges in planetary science. Conventional approaches of detecting habitability rely heavily on direct contact with biosignatures or geological analyses, but limited data and mission costs hold back such methods. This work introduces a computer vision-based pipeline that analyzes planetary surface images to [...]
Defining Reasonable Use in Transboundary Water Governance
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Hydrology
Ambiguity in the principle of “equitable and reasonable use,” central to Article 5 of the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, has long hindered transboundary water negotiations. Without a clear definition, states invoke this principle to justify conflicting claims, prolonging transboundary water disputes across the world. We propose a sequenced interpretation: first define reasonable use [...]
From Interface Dynamics to Darcy Scale Description of Multiphase Flow in Porous Media
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
An outstanding characteristic of porous media, desired in many applications, is the large surface area, which facilitates solid-fluid interactions, making porous media an extreme case in colloid and interface science. In two-fluid systems, wetting and the balance of capillary and viscous forces control fluid displacement processes, leading to a wide range of complex flow regimes with rich [...]
Cropland expansion in a nuclear winter with loss of industry
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
A nuclear war has the potential to cause an abrupt-sunlight-reduction scenario and the collapse of electricity/industry, disrupting food production and distribution worldwide and creating widespread food insecurity. In this work, we explore the potential of using animal draught as a power source to cultivate current cropland and expand cropland area during a nuclear winter with loss of industry. [...]
Optimal Control of Cholera Outbreaks: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Vaccination, Sanitation, and Treatment Strategies
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Applied Mathematics
Cholera outbreaks follow complex patterns of persistence and sudden decline that make traditional modeling approaches challenging and complicate public health responses. To address this, we developed a new stochastic epidemiological model that combines three key mechanisms: ecological competition between pathogenic and non-pathogenic \textit{Vibrio cholerae} strains, the effects of waning [...]
HydroVerse VR Equipment Hub: An Integrated Virtual Reality Framework for Training and Workforce Development in Environmental Monitoring
Published: 2025-10-22
Subjects: Adult and Continuing Education, Computer Engineering, Educational Methods, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Environmental monitoring is critical for managing ecosystems and addressing global challenges such as climate change and pollution. However, training professionals in this field is often hampered by remote locations, hazardous field conditions, and limited access to specialized equipment. In response, this paper presents the HydroVerse VR Equipment Hub, an immersive virtual reality framework for [...]
Multi-Task Learning as a Step Toward Building General-Purpose Hydrological Forecasting Systems
Published: 2025-10-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis
Streamflow and soil moisture are two critical variables in the hydrological cycle, linked through infiltration, runoff generation, and groundwater recharge. Traditional forecasting approaches often treat them independently, overlooking interdependencies and limiting predictive skill. This study investigates Multi-Task Learning (MTL) for daily prediction of both variables using the CAMELS dataset [...]