Preprints
There are 6976 Preprints listed.
Extraction and re-implementation of SWAT-Model calculations under the MAELIA platform in order to simulate the socio-environmental impacts of norms
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
MAELIA (Multi-Agent for EnvironmentaL norms Impact Assesment) is an agent-based simulation platform designed to assess the impact of alternative water management policies at the watershed level. It simulates interactions between human activities (agricultural, domestic and industrial withdrawals, regulations of water uses) and ecological processes (crop growth, plant evapotranspiration and water [...]
No place to hide? Regional resilience and vulnerability to global catastrophic risk
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Sciences, Geography, Public Health
What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk (GCR)? We provide the first systematic study of what locations are more resilient to a range of catastrophic threats. We reviewed the literature on resilience factors against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, [...]
Bridging Natural Language and Desktop GIS Automation with LLM-Powered GIS Plugins
Published: 2026-03-08
Subjects: Other Earth Sciences, Software Engineering
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are indispensable for spatial analysis and remote sensing, but still, scripting interfaces that enable automation (ArcPy, PyQGIS, and SNAP GPT) impose a steep technical barrier on domain scientists who are not software developers. We present GIS~Chat, an open-source suite of three plugins that embed a Large Language Model (LLM) chat panel directly inside [...]
End-to-End Differentiable Auto-Calibration of a Distributed Glacio-Hydrological Model Using Physically Consistent Routing
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Engineering
Distributed glacio-hydrological models are essential for simulating runoff processes in glacier-fed Himalayan basins, yet their application is often constrained by extensive data requirements, high computational costs, and reliance on manual, trial-and-error calibration. Recent auto-calibration approaches using stochastic optimization or machine learning have shown promise, but they frequently [...]
Agricultural expansion and intensification in Brazil: A literature synthesis of dynamics, drivers, and implications
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Brazil’s long-term agricultural development reflects a complex interplay between human-driven land-use change and natural ecosystems. Since the 1960s, agricultural production in Brazil has expanded rapidly, driven by global food demand and national economic growth, through two primary pathways: (1) agricultural expansion via conversion of natural vegetation, particularly forests, and (2) [...]
Introducing Microalgae Carbon Fixation and Sinking (MCFS): a new approach for controlled and scalable CDR
Published: 2026-04-08
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Oceanography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Achieving global climate targets requires scalable and durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies to tackle both historical and hard-to- abate emissions. We introduce Microalgae Carbon Fixation and Sinking (MCFS), a marine CDR methodology designed to enhance carbon fixation and export to the deep ocean through a controlled process. At the core of the MCFS approach is a tailored substrate: [...]
Spectral signatures in satellite soil moisture reveal irrigation patterns across the contiguous United States
Published: 2026-03-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Irrigation profoundly alters the terrestrial water cycle, yet its spatial distribution and temporal variability remain poorly constrained. Here, we introduce a new approach to detect irrigation in space based on spectral differences between modelled and satellite-observed soil moisture time series. Using wavelet decomposition, we isolate irrigation-induced variability at sub-annual scales by [...]
Multidisciplinary perspectives on Shishaldin Volcano: an open-system, deforming volcano
Published: 2026-04-02
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Volcanology
The integration of multidisciplinary data across multiple eruptions is essential to improve our understanding of a volcanic system. Shishaldin Volcano is one of the most active volcanoes in Alaska, with several reported eruptions over the last 300 years. We synthesize multidisciplinary datasets going back to 1997 and focus our analyses on the 2014–2015, 2019–2020, and 2023 eruptive periods. We [...]
HyGage: Solving the Hysteresis Puzzle with a New Streamflow Monitoring Method
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The questionable reliability of discharges obtained using the traditional stage–discharge method under gradually varied flow conditions continues to motivate the search for improved monitoring approaches that support water resources management, streamflow forecasting, and multipurpose scientific investigations related to the water cycle. This paper introduces HyGage, a new physically based [...]
A hybrid approach to enhance streamflow simulation in data-constrained Himalayan basins: Combining the Glacio-Hydrological Degree-Day Model and Recurrent Neural Networks
Published: 2024-04-12
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Glacio-hydrological Degree-day Model (GDM) is a distributed model but prone to uncertainties due to its conceptual nature, parameter estimation, and limited data in the Himalayan basins. To enhance accuracy without sacrificing interpretability, we propose a hybrid model, GDM-RNNs, combining GDM with Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). Three RNN types (Simple RNN, GRU, LSTM) are integrated with [...]
Effects of Groundwater Withdrawals for Water Bottling and Municipal Use, Wards Brook Valley, Maine and New Hampshire
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Hydrologic models for the Wards Brook valley near Fryeburg, Maine were developed for historical (2016 – 2021) and hypothetical future conditions (2046 – 2065 and 2080 – 2099) to understand the effects of groundwater withdrawals for bottled water and municipal use on hydrologic conditions (stream base flows and groundwater levels). Analyses showed that the simulated base flows in Wards Brook were [...]
Aerosol from the Asian monsoon ubiquitous throughout the extratropical stratosphere
Published: 2026-02-12
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Asian summer monsoon (ASM) convection efficiently transports surface emissions into the upper troposphere, leading to the formation of the Asian tropopause aerosol layer (ATAL). The ATAL can affect Earth’s climate directly by scattering solar radiation and indirectly by cloud formation. Little is known about the global distribution of aerosol originating in the ASM, particularly in the [...]
Evaluating economic opportunities and challenges for energy recovery from methane leaks during wastewater treatment
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Methane leaks from wastewater treatment represent the loss of biogas that can be used to generate onsite energy, offsetting costs and improving efficiency. Here, we characterize emissions from water resource recovery facilities by compiling measurement data and calculating biogas-production normalized leak rates for facilities with anaerobic digestion. For plants where biogas data were [...]
Effect of organic coatings on optical properties of black carbon aerosol: Insights from Mie theory based model simulations
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Black carbon (BC), play a crucial role in climate change due to their significant impact on radiative forcing. This study investigates the influence of organic carbon (OC) coatings on the optical properties of BC aerosols using Mie theory-based calculations. We have examined a range of core diameters and coating thicknesses to assess changes in both absorption and scattering cross-sections. The [...]
Revised History of Pleistocene Vertical Motions in NE Sicily and Southern Calabria, Italy, from 40Ar/39Ar Dating and Fault Zone Morphology
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Long-term rates of crustal uplift in southern Calabria and NE Sicily are incompletely understood due to limited information about the age of marine terraces at 1.0–1.3 km above sea level (asl). This study provides a new constraint on high-elevation terrace ages through integrated analysis of geochronology, stratigraphy, shoreline modeling, and fault-zone morphology. 40Ar/39Ar step-heating [...]