Volume 15 Issue 12, December 2022

Greening of the planet has increased global surface water availability, but vegetation changes can have diverse local and remote impacts across different regions.

The biological processes that control the release of carbon stored in land are dependent on water availability. A global analysis of temperature sensitivity reveals how hydrometeorological processes modulate the response of land carbon turnover to temperature.

Mediation by iron minerals in the non-biological production of nitrous and nitric oxides may have driven the nitrogen cycle in the Archean ocean. This system may also have shaped the function and composition of the early marine ecosystem.

Earth’s most abundant mineral — bridgmanite — lies hidden in the lower mantle, but Li Zhang is hopeful that advances in analytical techniques may reveal the inner workings of our world.

Anthropogenic nitrogen deposition is known to affect forest soil respiration, but it remains unclear how soil respiration responds to nitrogen deposition over time. Monitoring of CO₂ emissions over 9–13 years of nitrogen-addition treatments in three tropical forests in southern China reveals a three-phase pattern of soil respiration.

Microplastics and nanoplastics may affect cloud formation processes by acting as ice-nucleating particles and cloud condensation nuclei.

The spatial and temporal geochemical variability of alkaline hydrothermal systems in shallow waters could support prebiotic chemical reactions required for the emergence of life.

Vegetation change over the past two decades has limited the decline in global water availability by enhancing rainfall over evapotranspiration, according to analysis of observation-based atmospheric moisture transport data.

Analyses of the temperature sensitivity of terrestrial carbon turnover suggest that hydrometeorology and temperature control the spatial variability in carbon turnover times globally.

Two ice streams—indicated by buried folds—extending into the interior of the northeastern Greenland ice sheet deactivated in the Holocene as the drainage basin flow regime reorganized southwards, according to an analysis of radio-echo sounding data.

Field experiments suggest that long-term responses of soil respiration and carbon emissions to nitrogen deposition in tropical forests can be divided into different phases as soil environment and biological response change.

The amount and composition of carbon compounds released from plant roots into soil influences soil carbon formation and loss, according to an artificial root exudate experiment using intact soil cores from a temperate forest.

Disruption of sediment flows along the eastern Australia coast due to the Middle Pleistocene formation of Fraser Island set the stage for Great Barrier Reef initiation, according to optically stimulated luminescence and palaeomagnetic dating of sand dunes.

Annual variations of phytoplankton biomass can be explained by processes acting on small spatio-temporal scales, according to a global analysis of satellite observations of sea surface chlorophyll and temperature from 1999 to 2018.

Ecosystem modelling suggests that a range of growth conditions and ecological selection of phytoplankton explain global patterns of C:N:P ratios in marine organic matter.

In situ measurements reveal that high pressure in the deep ocean doesn’t lead to elevated community-level microbial metabolic rates, in contrast to previous shipboard analyses made at atmospheric pressure.

A large, slow-moving landslide underlying the city of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has accelerated in recent decades due to hydrological modifications related to urbanization, according to an analysis of aerial photographs and remote-sensing data.

Marine emissions of N₂O could have sustained an early Archaean atmosphere of 0.8–6.0 ppb N₂O without a protective ozone layer, according to mineral incubations combined with diffusion and photochemical modelling.

Neoarchaean arc magmas in Superior Province, Canada, were relatively oxidized and sulfur rich, reaching compositions comparable to modern subduction zones by approximately 2.7 Ga, according to analysis of sulfur speciation in zircon-hosted apatite grains.