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A shift towards more frequent, less intense fires in Australia began about 11,000 years ago due to management by indigenous societies, according to charcoal and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon records from cored lake sediments extending back 150,000 years. The image shows a raft-mounted hydraulic coring rig on Girraween Lagoon, northern Australia, looking over to Eucalypt savanna woodland. Middle right is the raft-mounted hydraulic coring rig used to take 18 metres of sediment from the bottom of the lake.
Understanding the ecosystem response to global environmental change requires consideration of geological processes, highlighting the interconnected nature of our Earth system.
Schreibersite is found in meteorites and thought to dwell in planetary cores. Tingting Gu explains how it may also have supported life on the early Earth.
Canal networks in Southeast Asian peatlands are zones of rapid, light-driven biogeochemical cycling. The canals increase carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and decrease organic carbon export to the ocean.
The carbon emissions of large igneous province magmatism are commonly associated with severe environmental crises. We developed a technique that used sedimentary mercury records to estimate these carbon fluxes through time and found that they are smaller and/or slower than assumed, which suggests that the influence of carbon-cycle feedback processes is underestimated in current models.
Earthquakes not only affect tree growth directly by causing physical injury to individual trees but also indirectly by inducing changes in forest habitats. We established linkage between tree-ring series and seismic disturbances and found that prominent and lasting seismic legacies in drier areas may be due to an increased infiltration of precipitation through earthquake-induced soil cracks.
Relatively strong warming over the Mongolian Plateau in recent decades can be explained, in part, by synchronous internal climate oscillations, according to climate model experiments.
Earthquakes can cause decadal-scale shifts in forest growth resilience by increasing the infiltration of precipitation through earthquake-induced soil cracks, according to global analyses of tree-ring width and historic earthquake data.
Carbon sink in young boreal forests is more vulnerable to drought than in mature forests due to the greater contribution and drought sensitivity of understorey relative to trees, according to carbon flux assessments of managed boreal forests in northern Sweden during the 2018 European summer drought.
Temperature sensitivity of bulk soil carbon stocks is controlled by the compositional distribution between mineral-associated and particulate carbon, according to analyses of global soil carbon pools.
Canal networks are a hotspot for the loss of carbon from tropical peatlands following disturbance, according to measurements of oxidation rates for dissolved organic carbon to carbon dioxide in drainage canals in Southeast Asia.
Measurements of Criegee intermediate oligomerization signatures in the Amazon rainforest indicate that the role of Criegee intermediate chemistry in the composition of Earth’s troposphere has been underestimated.
The Ronne Ice Shelf of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated rapidly in the early Holocene due to ice sheet dynamic thinning and subsequent ungrounding, according to an ice core record from Skytrain Ice Rise.
A shift towards more-frequent, less-intense fires in Australia began about 11,000 years ago due to management by Indigenous societies, according to charcoal and stable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon records extending back 150,000 years.
Sedimentary mercury measurements suggest carbon emissions from Early Jurassic large igneous province activity were lower than estimates from carbon-cycle models, implying feedbacks that are unaccounted for.
Climate warming has driven increased rockfall from an unstable mountain slope in the Swiss Alps, according to a record of rockfall activity spanning the past century based on tree damage.
The Cenozoic eastward growth of the Tibetan Plateau can be explained by slab tear and the resulting mantle flow beneath the eastern region, according to analysis of seismic tomography, tectonic and magmatic records of the Indian mantle lithosphere.
The initiation and rupture extent of earthquakes are controlled by stress heterogeneity, according to analysis of seismicity and deformation during caldera collapse of Kilauea Volcano.