Preprints
There are 6976 Preprints listed.
Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Forests are in decline worldwide due to human activities such as agricultural expansion, urbanization, and mineral extraction. Forest loss due to generally temporary causes, such as wildfire and forest management, is important to distinguish from permanent land use conversion due to the differing ecological and climate impacts of these disturbances and for the purposes of developing effective [...]
Effect of Recent Prescribed Burning and Land Management on Wildfire Burn Severity and Smoke Emissions in the Western United States
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Wildfires in the western US increasingly threaten infrastructure, air quality, and public health. Prescribed (“Rx”) fire is often proposed to mitigate future wildfires, but treatments remain limited, and few studies quantify their effectiveness on recent major wildfires. We investigate the effects of Rx fire treatments on subsequent burn severity across western US ecoregions and particulate [...]
Quantifying the benefits of nature-based solutions in urban drainage on headwater stream water quality
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In urban areas lacking adequate sanitation infrastructure, greywater flows into nearby urban streams through the stormwater drainage network. This study evaluates the impact of this drainage on water quality in a headwater stream in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA), Argentina. We analysed and model pollutant loads — organic matter, nutrients, and allochthonous faecal bacteria — [...]
Aerial LiDAR Based, Source Resolved Methane Emissions Inventory: Permian Basin Case Study for Benchmarking U.S. Emissions
Published: 2025-10-25
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Reducing methane emissions is one of the quickest ways to slow near-term warming, yet building accurate inventories to track progress towards reduction targets remains challenging. We present a 2024 source-resolved methane inventory for the Permian Basin built from quarterly aerial LiDAR scans that supports benchmarking and provides a scalable framework for operator-level OGMP 2.0 reporting. We [...]
Unlocking Geological Hydrogen Storage with Ammonia: An Effort for Net-Zero Future
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Education, Engineering
Hydrogen gas (H2) generation systems, comprising carbon capture and storage technology (CCST) play a crucial role to achieve the U.N. Net Zero goal before 2050. However, a critical challenge in grid-scale H2 storage is the low volumetric energy density. One prospective approach is to use ammonia (NH3) as a chemical carrier for H2 and store it. This paper presents a state-of-the-art report on NH3 [...]
Preliminary Development of Machine Learning Emulators for Long-Term Atmospheric CO2 Evolution
Published: 2024-12-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Environmental Chemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study evaluates machine learning emulators for modeling long-term atmospheric CO2 evolution by comparing Random Forests (RF) and Multilayer Perceptrons (MLP) in replicating cGENIE Earth System Model outputs over a one-million-year timescale. Using one-year pulse emission experiments spanning 1,000-20,000 PgC with outputs tracked for 106 years, we assessed emulator performance across multiple [...]
An environmental modeling algorithm to predict naturalized hydrology and water allocation status at human-influenced gauged sites: case study, Otago New Zealand
Published: 2024-12-23
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Recent New Zealand legislation requires that regional councils set limits for water resource usage to manage the effects of abstractions in over-allocated catchments. Toward that end, an environmental modeling algorithm is proposed and demonstrated for applicability to sustainable stream management across the Otago Region of New Zealand. This four-layer algorithm includes a Data model, Base [...]
Improved Streamflow Simulations in Hydrologically Diverse Basins using Physically Informed Deep Learning Models
Published: 2024-12-24
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Engineering, Hydrology
Physically informed deep learning models, especially Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, have shown promise in large-scale streamflow simulations. However, an in-depth understanding of the relative contribution of physical information in deep learning models has been missing. Using a large-sample testbed of 220 catchments in hydrologically diverse regions of the Indian subcontinent, we [...]
Beyond fractures: the role of bedding planes in fluid flow pathways within a well-bedded carbonate sequence
Published: 2024-12-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Conventionally, subsurface fluid flow modelling studies have concentrated on the characterization of fracture networks and their capacity to facilitate vertical and lateral fluid movements. This study utilizes unique field observations of oxidation halos in a well-bedded carbonate sequence in the Paris Basin, France, offering new perspectives on fluid flow pathways. It demonstrates that, in [...]
Variation of climate and its temporal shifts across an altitudinal gradient of tropical rainforests of Sri Lanka
Published: 2024-12-26
Subjects: Forest Sciences
Climate and its variability strongly influence the structure and dynamics of tropical rainforests, a biome which is critical for regulation of the global climate. We characterized the climate of a series of rainforest plots in Sri Lanka across a wide altitudinal range (117 to 2132 m above sea level) during 1990-2018 and determined its temporal shifts from the climate of 1961-1989. Long-term [...]
Good Fire Weather
Published: 2025-07-25
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Extreme fire weather receives substantial attention, yet conditions allowing readily manageable fire, or “good fire weather” remain less studied with no formal definition. We propose a qualitative definition of good fire weather as ”the set of atmospheric conditions before, during, and following ignition allowing wildland fire to achieve beneficial outcomes while minimizing hazards from fire and [...]
AI-Driven Decision-Making for Water Resources Planning and Hazard Mitigation Using Automated Multi Agents
Published: 2024-12-27
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Computer and Systems Architecture, Computer Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Education, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Higher Education, Hydraulic Engineering, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Risk Analysis, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Systems Engineering, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Transportation Engineering
This project simulates the Multi-Hazard Tournament (MHT) framework, a decision support system designed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, using AI agents to enhance decisionmaking processes for flood mitigation and water resource management. The objective of the framework is to develop optimal strategies for protecting water resources, habitats, and communities within a defined budget. The [...]
Approach to setting the attribution of CO2 reductions for CCU fuels — Toward a system counting fuel selection as an emission reduction effort
Published: 2024-12-26
Subjects: Environmental Studies
As the global economy transitions towards carbon neutrality, innovative secondary energy sources are becoming increasingly pivotal. Hydrogen derived from zero-carbon power and synthetic fuels produced by bonding carbon dioxide (CO2) with hydrogen—hereafter referred to as Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) fuels in this article—are expected to complement electricity as critical components in [...]
Beyond Boundary Lines: Emerging Innovative Trends in Geospatial Data for Decision-Making
Published: 2024-12-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
As technology and the use of data innovates and iterates by the second, so does the use and implementation of geospatial data into decision-making processes across the globe. The use of geospatial data is intertwined in every part of life with technology, from accessing bank transactions to adaptive navigational systems. This literature review identifies new and evolving trends in the use of [...]
Site Planning for a Network of Government-operated Weather Stations in the Dominican Republic Using Zonal Statistics from Geospatial Sources, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making, and Neighborhood Analysis
Published: 2024-12-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Many weather station networks lack sufficient representativeness, and their station density is often inadequate to capture spatial and climatic variability effectively. Optimal site selection is therefore essential to enhance spatial coverage and improve data quality. This study proposes a methodology for identifying optimal sites for a meteorological station network in the Dominican Republic, [...]