Ecology articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Article |

    Pervasive drying over the last few centuries has reduced carbon storage in European peatlands, the result of climate change and human impacts, according to a continent-wide compilation of hydrological records derived from testate amoeba.

    • Graeme T. Swindles
    • , Paul J. Morris
    •  & Barry Warner

  • Article |

    Macroalgae can be transported across the open ocean, and substantial amounts can reach the seafloor at 4,000 m depth, according to analyses of metagenome data from global expeditions. Macroalgae are a potentially important oceanic carbon sink globally.

    • Alejandra Ortega
    • , Nathan R. Geraldi
    •  & Carlos M. Duarte

  • Article |

    Pyrogenic carbon produced from vegetation fires could be a globally important carbon sink, which amounts to 12% of the carbon emitted from wildfires annually, according to a global fire emission database that incorporates the estimate of pyrogenic carbon.

    • Matthew W. Jones
    • , Cristina Santín
    •  & Stefan H. Doerr

  • News & Views |

    African savannah grasslands initially proliferated in the late Miocene due to declining atmospheric CO2, rather than previously proposed regional climate drying. Supplanting previous woodland vegetation due to photosynthetic adaptations, these grasslands set the stage for subsequent mammalian evolutionary trends on the continent.

    • Hayley Cawthra

  • Article |

    Elephant disturbance favours the emergence of larger trees with higher wood density, and thereby increases the aboveground biomass in central African forests by up to 60 t ha–1, according to simulations with the Ecosystem Demography model.

    • Fabio Berzaghi
    • , Marcos Longo
    •  & Christopher E. Doughty

  • News & Views |

    Deep soil carbon in tropical catchments can be rapidly mobilized to rivers upon land-use change to agriculture, suggest analyses of dissolved organic carbon. Such carbon stocks had been thought stable for millennia.

    • Alf Ekblad
    •  & David Bastviken

  • Article |

    Only about 15% of water cycle diagrams include human interaction with water, although human freshwater appropriation amounts to about half of global river discharge, according to an analysis of 464 water cycle diagrams and a synthesis of the global water cycle.

    • Benjamin W. Abbott
    • , Kevin Bishop
    •  & Gilles Pinay

  • News & Views |

    The Toarcian oceanic anoxic event disrupted terrestrial ecosystems as well as the marine realm, according to analyses of microfossils derived from land plants. Changes in diversity and composition were initially more rapid in terrestrial ecosystems.

    • Luke Mander
    •  & Jennifer C. McElwain

  • News & Views |

    Nitrogen deposition in China has stabilized over the past decade, thanks to efficient regulation of fertilizer use, suggests an analysis of wet and dry deposition.

    • Maria Kanakidou

  • Article |

    Bubble-mediated gas exchange in high-energy streams accelerates faster as energy dissipation intensifies than does turbulent-diffusion-driven gas exchange in low-energy streams, according to an analysis of new measurements and published data.

    • Amber J. Ulseth
    • , Robert O. Hall Jr
    •  & Tom J. Battin

  • Editorial |

    Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, but they can become destructive and less predictable, especially when the system is perturbed. Human activities and climate change lead to interactions with fire dynamics that need our attention.

  • News & Views |

    Cumulative wildfires or prescribed burning produce different outcomes for the vegetation, suggest two long-term analyses of fire-affected ecosystems. Climate change and land management practices are altering how ecosystems function.

    • Mark A. Cochrane

  • Article |

    Fires and logging alter soil composition and result in a significant reduction of soil nutrients that lasts for decades after the disturbance, suggests an analysis of soil samples across a multi-century sequence in mountain ash forests.

    • Elle J. Bowd
    • , Sam C. Banks
    •  & David B. Lindenmayer

  • News & Views |

    Mangrove canopy heights vary around the world in response to rain, storms and human activities, suggests a global analysis of mangrove canopy height. How tall the trees are matters for estimating global mangrove carbon storage.

    • Daniel A. Friess

  • Review Article |

    Stressors such as large-scale damming, hydrological change, pollution, the introduction of non-native species and sediment mining are challenging the integrity and future of large rivers, according to a synthesis of the literature on the 32 biggest rivers.

    • Jim Best

  • 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

  • Review Article |

    The abundance of microorganisms in the continental subsurface may have been overestimated, according to a review compilation of data from subsurface localities around the globe.

    • C. Magnabosco
    • , L.-H. Lin
    •  & T. C. Onstott

  • News & Views |

    Droughts lead to enhanced water-use efficiency and reduced carbon uptake by plants. Global analyses of atmospheric CO2 monitoring data suggest that the scale of the trade-off between water and carbon extends to a biome level.

    • Christopher J. Still

  • News & Views |

    Rainfall interception by vegetation is an underappreciated part of the terrestrial hydrological cycle. Numerical modelling shows that non-vascular plants, such as lichens, substantially increase the interception capacity of the land surface.

    • Hubert H. G. Savenije

  • Article |

    Microbial life colonized the land surface by 3.2 billion years ago, forming complex communities distinct from those in nearby marine environments, according to analyses of fossilized microbial mats in the Moodies Group, South Africa.

    • Martin Homann
    • , Pierre Sansjofre
    •  & Stefan V. Lalonde

  • News & Views |

    Plants influence geomorphology. Research on salt marshes suggests that feedbacks between geomorphic processes and life-history traits of plants produce species-specific signatures in the organization of biogeomorphic landscapes.

    • Dov Corenblit

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