Ecology articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Letter |

    Aquatic CO2 emissions are expected to increase if warming reduces photosynthesis relative to respiration. An analysis of streams across a 41 °C temperature gradient reveals that the thermal responses of respiration and photosynthesis are similar.

    • Benoît O. L. Demars
    • , Gísli M. Gíslason
    •  & Thomas E. Freitag

  • News & Views |

    Climate change is causing widespread permafrost thaw in the Arctic. Measurements at 33 Arctic lakes show that old carbon from thawing permafrost is being emitted as methane, though emission rates have not changed during the past 60 years.

    • Torben R. Christensen

  • Letter |

    Biomass turnover time is a key parameter in the global carbon cycle. An analysis of global land-use data reveals that biomass turnover is almost twice as fast when the land is used to enhance terrestrial ecosystem services.

    • Karl-Heinz Erb
    • , Tamara Fetzel
    •  & Helmut Haberl

  • 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.

  • News & Views |

    Soil carbon stocks depend on inputs from decomposing vegetation and return to the atmosphere as CO2. Monitoring of carbon stocks in German alpine soils has shown large losses linked to climate change and a possible positive feedback loop.

    • Guy Kirk

  • News & Views |

    Phosphorus is essential for food production, but it is also a key cause of eutrophication. Estimates of phosphorus flux for the past 40–70 years reveal that large river basins can experience phases of phosphorus accumulation and depletion.

    • Julien Némery
    •  & Josette Garnier

  • Letter |

    Microbes can mineralize metals such as gold. Observations of platinum-group mineral grains and incubation experiments reveal that bacteria can also transform these metals, which could affect their mobility in surface environments.

    • Frank Reith
    • , Carla M. Zammit
    •  & Joël Brugger

  • News & Views |

    Natural seafloor hydrocarbon seeps are responsible for roughly half of the oil released into the ocean. As these oils and gases rise to the surface, they transport nutrients upwards, benefiting phytoplankton in the upper sunlit layer.

    • Michael Behrenfeld

  • News & Views |

    Humanity's nitrogen pollution footprint has increased by a factor of six since the 1930s. A global analysis reveals that a quarter of this nitrogen pollution is associated with the production of internationally traded products.

    • James N. Galloway
    •  & Allison M. Leach

  • News & Views |

    Mercury is a toxic element with no known biological function. Laboratory studies demonstrate that mercury can be beneficial to microbial growth by acting as an electron acceptor during photosynthesis.

    • Jeffra K. Schaefer

  • Letter |

    Aquatic ecosystems are important sources of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Measurements of nitrous oxide concentrations from 321 rivers, lakes and ponds in Canada reveal that some boreal aquatic systems can act as net nitrous oxide sinks.

    • C. Soued
    • , P. A. del Giorgio
    •  & R. Maranger

  • 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

  • Letter |

    The sediment load of China’s Yellow River has been declining. Analysis of 60 years of runoff and sediment load data attributes this decline to river engineering, with an increasing role of post-1990s land use changes on the Loess Plateau.

    • Shuai Wang
    • , Bojie Fu
    •  & Yafeng Wang

  • Editorial |

    The International Year of Soils draws attention to our vital dependence on the fertile crumb beneath our feet. Soil is renewable, but it takes careful stewardship to keep it healthy and plentiful.

  • Letter |

    Microbes live under glaciers that have persisted for millions of years, without a clear energy supply. Analyses of crushed rocks suggest that interactions of glaciers with the rocks beneath can produce enough H2 to support methanogenic bacteria.

    • J. Telling
    • , E. S. Boyd
    •  & D. A. Hodgson

  • News & Views |

    The Cambrian evolution of burrowing species is thought to have facilitated sediment mixing. However, sediment fabrics suggest that bioturbation remained insignificant until the appearance of more efficient sediment mixers in the Silurian.

    • Murray Gingras
    •  & Kurt Konhauser

  • News & Views |

    Little is known about the mechanisms that destroy the oldest organic molecules found in seawater. Field and laboratory observations suggest that these molecules are destroyed by the heat and pressure of deep-sea hydrothermal systems.

    • Steven R. Beaupré

  • Letter |

    Mobile organisms first appeared in the fossil record prior to the Precambrian–Cambrian transition. Sediment textures indicate that the degree of sediment mixing by animal activity remained low for 120 million years following the transition.

    • Lidya G. Tarhan
    • , Mary L. Droser
    •  & David T. Johnston

  • News & Views |

    Leases of land concessions in Cambodia have accelerated in the last ten years. An analysis using high-resolution maps and official documents shows that deforestation rates in the land concessions are higher than in other areas.

    • Tom Rudel

  • News & Views |

    Decomposition of soil organic matter could be an important positive feedback to climate change. Geochemical properties of soils can help determine what fraction of soil carbon may be protected from climate-induced decomposition.

    • Eric A. Davidson

  • Feature |

    The Earth underwent two snowball glaciation events between 720 and 635 million years ago. The preceding expansion of eukaryotic algae and a consequent rise in emissions of organic cloud condensation nuclei may have contributed to the dramatic cooling.

    • Georg Feulner
    • , Christian Hallmann
    •  & Hendrik Kienert

  • Article |

    Inland waters are important sources of greenhouse gases. Measurements over eight years suggest that African inland waters are a substantial source of greenhouse gases, equivalent to a quarter of the global land and ocean carbon sink.

    • Alberto V. Borges
    • , François Darchambeau
    •  & Steven Bouillon

  • Letter |

    Chloride is abundant in oceans, but is relatively unreactive. Spectroscopic imaging reveals the presence of a chloride sink in organochlorine compounds that can be produced abiotically or by phytoplankton.

    • Alessandra C. Leri
    • , Lawrence M. Mayer
    •  & Austin B. Gellis

  • News & Views |

    The ocean is an important source of the potent greenhouse gas N2O. Measurements in the tropical South Pacific have revealed a massive efflux of N2O from the coastal upwelling zone.

    • Imke Grefe

  • Letter |

    Oceans emit a third of the natural emissions of nitrous oxide. High-resolution measurements suggest that the Peruvian coast is a hotspot of nitrous oxide fluxes, representing 5–22% of global ocean emissions from previous estimates.

    • D. L. Arévalo-Martínez
    • , A. Kock
    •  & H. W. Bange

  • Editorial |

    Complex ecological and evolutionary controls of forest dynamics make projecting the future difficult.

  • News & Views |

    Fjords account for less than 0.1% of the surface of Earth's oceans. A global assessment finds that organic carbon is buried in fjords five times faster than other marine systems, accounting for 11% of global marine organic carbon burial.

    • Richard Keil

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