Aims and scope

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) is a not-for-profit 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 diverse community of research scientists, practitioners, and decision makers concerned with detection of natural hazards, 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 following:

• 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 as well as 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;
• the analysis of the impact of climatic and environmental changes on natural hazards and their consequences.

The following are generally considered out-of-scope or we do not encourage:

• Engineering topics (e.g., the strength of dams, materials of construction) that do not have an explicit context for natural hazard processes.
• Solid Earth topics that might be better suited to other Copernicus journals (e.g., mantle plume dynamics) without putting it in the context of natural hazard processes.
• Localised case studies with no broader implications (in other words, ask yourself, what would someone else in another region learn from the case study that you have done; what is the broader context?).

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 categorize the paper for review:

• atmospheric, meteorological, and climatological hazards;
• sea, ocean, and coastal hazards;
• hydrological hazards;
• landslides and debris flow hazards;
• earthquake hazards;
• volcanic hazards;
• other hazards (e.g. glacial and snow hazards, karst, wildfires hazards, and medical geohazards);
• databases, GIS, remote sensing, early warning systems, and monitoring technologies;
• risk assessment, mitigation, and adaptation strategies, socio-economic 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 multidisciplinary aspects of natural hazards and their consequences are welcome.

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences utilizes an innovative two-stage publication process designed to (a) provide a lasting record of scientific discussion on the journal topics, (b) maximize 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, manuscripts that pass a preliminary editorial screening are immediately posted 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), as well as the authors' replies to the editor, the referees, and peers are also posted in NHESSD. In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed; 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 available, and they are linked electronically (for more information, see special issues).