Preprints
There are 6976 Preprints listed.
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: 2026-05-03
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, [...]
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 [...]
TUD-L3-EWH_UNC-GRACE: A Global Level‑3 GRACE(-FO) EWH Uncertainty Product
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences
We present TUD-L3-EWH\_UNC-GRACE, a globally gridded Level-3 GRACE(-FO) equivalent water height (EWH) data product providing an extensive characterisation of uncertainty for direct use in Earth system research. Unlike conventional approaches that either require propagation of full normal matrices or rely on empirical assumptions regarding temporal and spatial correlations, the dataset combines [...]
A Mechanism Criterion Replaces Coupling Magnitude for Rainfall Inhibitory Skill Across Three Indo-Pacific Forcing Modes
Published: 2026-05-03
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
CPAdry — the Conditional Precipitation Anomaly, dry phase — detects rainfall inhibitory mechanism failure across three forcing modes: the MJO (intraseasonal), ENSO, and IOD (interannual). Twenty assessments at eighteen Indo-Pacific sites using two-track methodology establish the governing principle: CPAdry returns meaningful skill only where the forcing mode imposes locally active inhibition — [...]
Navigating the Complexity of Environmental Migration In the Context of Climate Change: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Concepts and Methods
Published: 2026-05-05
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 [...]
From Rainfall to Rumors: Interpreting the 2024 Bangladesh Floods Through Numbers, Narratives, and Information Gaps
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
When severe floods struck southeastern Bangladesh in August 2024, competing explanationsemerged. Meteorological analysis revealed that extreme precipitation was exacerbated by the Madden‐JulianOscillation and jet stream dynamics. However, alternative narratives proliferated on social media, particularlyclaims that India deliberately released water from upstream dams. This study synthesizes [...]
Learning unresolved coastal dynamics in hydrodynamic models
Published: 2026-05-02
Subjects: Fluid Dynamics, Oceanography
Coastal hydrodynamic models play a vital role in understanding and predicting flooding, but practical computational constraints and uncertainties in boundary conditions and bathymetry lead to systematic errors in local sea level. We show that much of this error is not random but reflects a stable, site-specific response that can be learned from model output and observations. We develop a [...]
From 2D labels to 3D structure: Scalable label transfer and benchmarking of 3D vegetation models in rangeland ecosystems
Published: 2026-05-03
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biogeochemistry, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing
Three-dimensional (3D) characterisation of vegetation structure at the level of individual growth forms is critical for understanding ecosystem function and resilience, yet remains challenging in rangelands because vegetation is sparse, low-stature, and structurally heterogeneous. Recent 3D deep-learning models perform strongly in forests, but their transfer beyond closed-canopy benchmarks is [...]
Coupled THM Processes Drive Spatiotemporal Slip Evolution in Fracture Networks during Geothermal Heat Production
Published: 2026-05-18
Subjects: Engineering
Understanding induced fracture slip in geothermal reservoirs requires clarifying the relative roles of rapid pore pressure propagation and slower cooling-related stress redistribution. We investigate this problem using coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical simulations with explicitly represented discrete fracture networks embedded in a poroelastic rock matrix. The study considers three fracture density [...]
Multidimensional Inconsistency in Forest Ecosystem Representation: An NLP-Assisted Thematic Review
Published: 2026-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography
Forest ecosystem monitoring increasingly relies on multisensor remote sensing approaches integrating optical imagery, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and LiDAR observations to assess biomass, degradation, and ecosystem condition. However, these systems frequently generate inconsistent representations of the same ecosystem due to differences in sensor sensitivity, ecological complexity, scale [...]
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 [...]
Surrogate-Assisted Bayesian Inference of Fracture Network Parameters from Elastic Waves: A Sensitivity-Guided Approach
Published: 2026-05-18
Subjects: Engineering
We develop a sensitivity-guided, surrogate-assisted Bayesian framework to infer fracture network parameters from elastic waves. Synthetic fracture networks characterized by power-law length exponent \(a\), fracture density \(d\), and percolation parameter \(p\) are constructed. Elastic wave propagation through these fracture networks is then simulated across a range of dimensionless specific [...]
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 [...]
Emerging climate–yield re-coupling in overexploited date palm oases: satellite evidence from a 22-year temporal decoupling index in southern Tunisia
Published: 2026-05-14
Subjects: Engineering
Southern Tunisia's date palm oases have quadrupled production over two decades while extracting fossil groundwater at more than twice the sustainable rate, a trajectory whose consequences remain undetected by conventional monitoring. We analysed the 2002–2024 satellite, climate, and ground record across four governorates to test whether this irrigation buffer — the aquifer's capacity to absorb [...]
A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Diagnosing Inconsistencies in Remote Sensing-Based Ecosystem Assessment
Published: 2026-05-04
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 [...]