Biodiversity articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Research Briefing |

    Field studies reveal that carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition and soil-borne plant pathogen control are greater in soils beneath mosses than in unvegetated soils. Based on these studies, modelling shows the likely extent of soil moss cover and underlines its value to the planet.

  • Article |

    Prescribed burning has far less impacts on peat growth and carbon sequestration than previously thought, according to a long-term experiment in fire-managed peat moorlands in England. Managed burning may be a viable strategy to make peatlands more resilient to devastating wildfire.

    • R. H. Marrs
    • , E.-L. Marsland
    •  & R. C. Chiverrell

  • Review Article |

    Species richness in mountain environments is linked to mountain-building and climatic processes, an integration of geological, climatic, and biological datasets reveals.

    • Alexandre Antonelli
    • , W. Daniel Kissling
    •  & Carina Hoorn

  • Article |

    An increase in biodiversity 450 million years ago coincided with a rise in atmospheric oxygen concentrations, suggests a geochemical analysis. Oxygen availability may have thus helped spur the radiation alongside climatic cooling.

    • Cole T. Edwards
    • , Matthew R. Saltzman
    •  & David A. Fike

  • Editorial |

    Forests are important for the global carbon cycle, and for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. However, the role forests play in carbon sequestration should not eclipse everything else we value them for.

  • Letter |

    Plate tectonic motions can influence biological systems. Numerical modelling of the topographic evolution of New Zealand, combined with fish phylogenetic analyses suggest mountain growth directly influenced biological diversification.

    • Dave Craw
    • , Phaedra Upton
    •  & Jonathan M. Waters

  • Review Article |

    Over 90% of species were lost during the end-Permian mass extinction. A review of the fossil record shows that the rate of recovery was highly variable between different groups of organisms as a result of complex biotic interactions and repeated environmental perturbations.

    • Zhong-Qiang Chen
    •  & Michael J. Benton

  • Commentary |

    The Census of Marine Life has succeeded in raising awareness about marine biodiversity, and contributed much to our understanding of what lives where. But the project has fallen short of its goal to estimate species abundance.

    • Daniel Pauly
    •  & Rainer Froese

  • Commentary |

    A multitude of organisms makes soils the fertile factories of food and fibre production, decomposition and nutrient cycling that they are. But tying changes in soil biodiversity to shifts in ecosystem function is a daunting task.

    • Diana H. Wall
    • , Richard D. Bardgett
    •  & Eugene Kelly

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