Aims and Scope

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) is an interdisciplinary and international journal dedicated to the public discussion and open access publication of high quality studies and original research on natural hazards and their consequences. Embracing a holistic Earth System Science approach, NHESS serves a wide and diversified community of research scientists, practitioners and decision makers concerned with natural hazards detection, monitoring and modelling, vulnerability and risk assessment, and the design and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies, including economical, societal and educational aspects.

The scope of NHESS includes:

• the study of the evolution of natural systems towards extreme conditions, and the detection and monitoring of precursors of the evolution;
• the detection, monitoring and modelling of natural phenomena, and the integration of measurements and models for the understanding and forecasting of the behaviour and the spatial and temporal evolution of hazardous natural events, and their consequences;
• the design, development, experimentation and validation of new techniques, methods and tools for the detection, mapping, monitoring and modelling of natural hazards and their human, environmental and societal consequences;
• the design, implementation and critical evaluation of mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce the impact of hazardous natural events on human-made structures and infrastructure, to reduce vulnerability, and to increase resilience of individuals and societies; and
• the analysis of the impact of climatic and environmental changes on natural hazards and their consequences.

For peer-reviewed publication NHESS considers research articles, review articles, brief communications, comments & replies, and corrigenda. NHESS also publishes solicited book reviews. Papers submitted to NHESS can address different techniques and approaches including theory, modelling, experiments, case studies and instrumentations. The journal covers the following broad subject areas, which are used to categorise the paper for review:

• Atmospheric, Meteorological and Climatological Hazards;
• Sea, Ocean and Coastal Hazards;
• Hydrological Hazards;
• Landslides and Debris Flows Hazards;
• Earthquake Hazards;
• Volcanic Hazards;
• Other Hazards (e.g., Glacial and Snow Hazards, Karst, Wildfires Hazards, and Medical Geo-Hazards);
• Databases, GIS, Remote Sensing, Early Warning Systems and Monitoring Technologies;
• Risk Assessment, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies, Socioeconomic and Management Aspects;
• Dissemination, Education, Outreach and Teaching.

This list is not exhaustive or ordered by rank, and the journal will consider submissions on other subject areas. Contributions dealing with multi-disciplinary aspects of natural hazards and their consequences are welcome.

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences exploits an innovative two-stage publication process designed to (a) provide a lasting record of scientific discussion on the journal topics, (b) maximise the effectiveness and transparency of the review process, (c) enable rapid publication of new scientific results and achievements, and (d) make scientific publications freely accessible.

In the first stage, papers that pass a preliminary editorial screening are immediately published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions (NHESSD). The submissions are then subject to an Interactive Public Discussion. In this discussion phase, the referees' comments (anonymous or identified), additional short comments by members of the scientific community (identified), and the authors' replies to the editor, the referees and peers are also published in NHESSD. In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed and, following acceptance, the final revised papers are published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS).

To ensure publication precedence for authors, and to provide a lasting record of scientific discussion, NHESSD and NHESS are both registered with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), permanently archived, and fully citable.

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences also provides an effective way of publishing special issues focused on specific topics. For each special issue the individual papers are published as soon as they are accepted, and they are linked electronically (for more information, see Special Issues).

Abstracted/Indexed/Archived

 Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science),  Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences,  Scopus,  ADS,  CLOCKSS,  CNKI,  DOAJ,  EBSCO,  GeoBase,  GeoRef,  Google Scholar,  J-Gate,  Portico,  World Public Library