Ecology articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Editorial |

    Understanding the ecosystem response to global environmental change requires consideration of geological processes, highlighting the interconnected nature of our Earth system.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Glacier shrinkage intensifies phosphorus limitation but alleviates carbon limitation in glacier-fed streams, according to analyses of resource stoichiometry and microbial metabolism in glacier-fed streams from mountain regions.

    • Tyler J. Kohler
    • , Massimo Bourquin
    •  & Tom J. Battin

  • Research Briefing |

    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.

  • News & Views |

    Identifying the metal micronutrients required by early life could help to illuminate how primitive organisms arose, but which metals were biologically available in ancient seawater has not been determined. A new experimental framework suggests how the precipitation of iron minerals from seawater reduced the availability of key metals, particularly zinc, copper and vanadium.

    • Jena E. Johnson

  • Article |

    Increasing soil organic carbon can, under optimum management only, enhance global production of maize, wheat and rice by up to 0.7% with important regional differences, according to 13,662 field trials across a broad range of soils, climates and management practices.

    • Yuqing Ma
    • , Dominic Woolf
    •  & Johannes Lehmann

  • Perspective |

    Exoenzymes produced by heterotrophic microorganisms early in Earth history helped unlock previously unavailable organic matter and transformed ocean geochemistry.

    • Nagissa Mahmoudi
    • , Andrew D. Steen
    •  & Kurt O. Konhauser

  • News & Views |

    A 3-year field experiment suggests plant responses to elevated CO2 in phosphorus-limited grasslands depends on the biogeochemical interplay between soil microbes and plants.

    • Benjamin L. Turner

  • Article |

    Grasses contribute more than half of the soil organic carbon across tropical savannas, according to a case study in South Africa combined with a synthesis of data from tropical savannas globally.

    • Yong Zhou
    • , Barbara Bomfim
    •  & A. Carla Staver

  • Editorial |

    Ecosystems have long been shaped by phosphorus limitation. We need to better understand how natural and human-caused shifts in the phosphorus cycle disrupt the Earth system.

  • Q&A |

    Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Shlomit Sharoni, an ocean biogeochemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr Kelly Andersen, a tropical ecologist at Nanyang Technological University about the interplay between phosphorous cycling and the ecosystems they study.

    • James Super

  • 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 |

    Mosses support carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition and plant pathogen control in soils across the globe, according to a global survey of soil attributes in ecosystems with and without mosses.

    • David J. Eldridge
    • , Emilio Guirado
    •  & Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo

  • Article |

    Projections of forest aboveground carbon storage potential in the United States show divergent results across different modelling approaches due to uncertainties in the estimated impact of climate risks, according to a comparison of modelling results.

    • Chao Wu
    • , Shane R. Coffield
    •  & William R. L. Anderegg

  • Research Briefing |

    Satellite observations show that 24.1% of tropical moist forests are degraded. In addition to the warming effects of the release of carbon from biomass, satellite data suggest that degradation could also increase the land surface temperatures of the affected regions. This biophysical feedback could hinder forest restoration initiatives.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global estimations of the water-storage capacity in the rooting zone from satellite data reveal plant access to deep water across a third of Earth’s vegetated surface.

    • Benjamin D. Stocker
    • , Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila
    •  & Robert B. Jackson

  • News & Views |

    Some coastal marshes may have a hard time building soil elevation under future climate conditions, although this may reduce methane emissions, according to four years of field manipulation of warming and elevated CO2 in a coastal wetland.

    • Thomas L. O’Halloran
    •  & Georgia S. Seyfried

  • Article |

    Carbon sequestration by Siberian forests has been low over the past decade due to disturbances that have decreased live biomass and increased dead wood, according to passive microwave observations.

    • Lei Fan
    • , Jean-Pierre Wigneron
    •  & Rasmus Fensholt

  • Editorial |

    Marine phytoplankton both follow and actively influence the environment they inhabit. Unpacking the complex ecological and biogeochemical roles of these tiny organisms can help reveal the workings of the Earth system.

  • News & Views |

    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.

    • Yuanyuan Huang
    •  & Yingping Wang

  • Research Briefing |

    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.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Over the past 620,000 years, three distinct phases of climate variability in eastern Africa coincided with shifts in hominin evolution and dispersal, according to an analysis of environmental proxy records from a core collected in the Chew Bahir basin of Ethiopia.

    • Verena Foerster
    • , Asfawossen Asrat
    •  & Martin H. Trauth

  • News & Views |

    Bedrock composition can play a critical role in determining the structure and water demand of forests, influencing their vulnerability to drought. The properties of bedrock can help explain within-region patterns of tree mortality in the 2011–2017 California drought.

    • Christina Tague

  • Article |

    Spatial variability in forest dieback during the severe drought in California between 2011 and 2017 can be explained by variations in bedrock composition and thus weatherability, according to analyses of the drought responses a series of geologically distinct sites.

    • Russell P. Callahan
    • , Clifford S. Riebe
    •  & W. Steven Holbrook

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