Scientific community and society articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Comment |

    The remaining carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C allows 20 more years of current emissions according to one study, but is already exhausted according to another. Both are defensible. We need to move on from a unique carbon budget, and face the nuances.

    • Glen P. Peters

  • Comment |

    Upward estimates for carbon budgets are unlikely to lead to action-focused climate policy. Climate researchers need to understand processes and incentives in policymaking and politics to communicate effectively.

    • Oliver Geden

  • Editorial |

    Human manipulation of hydrocarbons — as fuel and raw materials for modern society — has changed our world and the indelible imprint we will leave in the rock record. Plastics alone have permeated our lives and every corner of our planet.

  • Comment |

    Ethnic and racial diversity are extremely low among United States citizens and permanent residents who earned doctorates in earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences. Worse, there has been little to no improvement over the past four decades.

    • Rachel E. Bernard
    •  & Emily H. G. Cooperdock

  • News & Views |

    Geoscientists are training computers to learn from a wide range of geologic data and, in the process, the machines are teaching geoscientists about the workings of Earth.

    • Chris Marone

  • News & Views |

    The annual quantity of metal being used by humans has been on the rise. A new analysis of 43 major economies reveals the extent to which year-to-year fluctuations in metal footprints have been in lockstep with countries’ economic growth and changes in investment spending.

    • Paul J. Burke

  • News & Views |

    Multi-disciplinary analyses of Earth’s most destructive volcanic systems show that continuous monitoring and an understanding of each volcano’s quirks, rather than a single unified model, are key to generating accurate hazard assessments.

    • Christy B. Till
    • , Matthew Pritchard
    •  & Juliet Ryan-Davis

  • Editorial |

    Preprint servers afford a platform for sharing research before peer review. We are pleased that two dedicated preprint servers have opened for the Earth sciences and welcome submissions that have been posted there first.

  • Article |

    Depending on their connectivity to the river network, wetlands can be much more efficient at removing nitrate in a watershed than common nitrogen mitigation strategies according to an analysis of the Minnesota River basin.

    • Amy T. Hansen
    • , Christine L. Dolph
    •  & Jacques C. Finlay

  • Editorial |

    Great Earth science has been published over the ten years since the launch of Nature Geoscience. The field has also become more interdisciplinary and accountable, as well as more central to society and sustainability.

  • Comment |

    The exploration of ocean worlds in the outer Solar System offers the opportunity to search for an independent origin of life, and also to advance our capabilities for exploring and understanding life in Earth’s oceans.

    • Kevin Peter Hand
    •  & Christopher R. German

  • Comment |

    Temperature overshoot scenarios that make the 1.5 °C climate target feasible could turn into sources of political flexibility. Climate scientists must provide clear constraints on overshoot magnitude, duration and timing, to ensure accountability.

    • Oliver Geden
    •  & Andreas Löschel

  • Article |

    The current distribution of crops around the world neither attains maximum production nor minimum water use, according to a crop water model and yield data. An optimized crop distribution could feed an additional 825 million people and substantially reduce water use.

    • Kyle Frankel Davis
    • , Maria Cristina Rulli
    •  & Paolo D’Odorico

  • Editorial |

    The world's inland waters are under siege. A system-level view of watersheds is needed to inform both our scientific understanding and management decisions for these precious resources.

  • Perspective |

    Many of the world's saline lakes have been shrinking due to consumptive water use. The Great Salt Lake, USA, provides an example for how the health of and ecosystem services provided by saline lakes can be sustained.

    • Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh
    • , Craig Miller
    •  & Johnnie Moore

  • Editorial |

    Over the past decade or so, China has turned into a land of opportunity for science. We are keen to witness first hand how the geoscience landscape continues to unfold.

  • News & Views |

    Debate rages over which water bodies in the US are protected under federal law by the Clean Water Act. Science shows that isolated wetlands and headwater systems provide essential downstream services, but convincing politicians is another matter.

    • Mark A. Ryan

  • Perspective |

    Enhanced protection is needed for freshwater bodies in the United States — in particular impermanent streams and wetlands outside floodplains — according to an assessment of their value and vulnerability.

    • Irena F. Creed
    • , Charles R. Lane
    •  & Lora Smith

  • Editorial |

    Scientists based in North America and men are overrepresented in our authors' reviewer suggestions.

  • Commentary |

    Developments in attribution science are improving our ability to detect human influence on extreme weather events. By implication, the legal duties of government, business and others to manage foreseeable harms are broadening, and may lead to more climate change litigation.

    • Sophie Marjanac
    • , Lindene Patton
    •  & James Thornton

  • Editorial |

    Natural disasters can devastate local communities. However, these rare events also often trigger new ways of thinking, and provide a treasure trove of data that must be used to reduce vulnerability.

  • Review Article |

    River deltas are shaped by interactions between fluvial and tidal processes. Tides act to stabilize delta morphology, but sediment depletion due to human activities disrupts the balance and leads to erosion and scour.

    • A. J. F. Hoitink
    • , Z. B. Wang
    •  & K. Kästner

  • Editorial |

    The emerging field of geohealth links human well-being and ecosystem health. A deeper understanding of these linkages can help society mitigate the health costs of economic growth before they become crises.

  • Editorial |

    Asking people to trust scientists is not enough in times of doubt. Scientists must trust the people too: to make decisions for themselves, once they know the best available evidence.

  • Editorial |

    Authors of research manuscripts should be aware of their authorship, have read the paper and agree with it. What else is required for co-authorship — and what merits only a mention in the acknowledgements — is less clear.

  • News & Views |

    Groundwater resources are directly affected by climate variability via precipitation, evapotranspiration and recharge. Analyses of US and India trends reveal that climate-induced pumping indirectly influences groundwater depletion as well.

    • Jason J. Gurdak

  • News & Views |

    The climatic response to the eruption of the Samalas Volcano in 1257 has been elusive. Medieval archives tell of a spatially variable reaction, with Europe and Japan experiencing severe cold compared to relative warmth in North America.

    • Francis Ludlow

  • Article |

    Soils have the capacity to store water at the land–atmosphere interface. Analysis of global satellite data suggests that significant precipitation can be retained by soils, leading to even less groundwater storage in water-starved regions.

    • Kaighin A. McColl
    • , Seyed Hamed Alemohammad
    •  & Dara Entekhabi

  • Editorial |

    Born from astronomy, the study of planets is becoming increasingly geoscience. As divisions between disciplines continue to blur in Solar System studies, at Nature Geoscience we are looking forward to exciting joint projects with Nature Astronomy.

  • Commentary |

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a report on keeping global warming below 1.5 °C. How the panel chooses to deal with the option of solar geoengineering will test the integrity of scientific climate policy advice.

    • Andy Parker
    •  & Oliver Geden

  • Editorial |

    Despite much emphasis on diversity in the US, geoscience remains one of the least diverse scientific disciplines. If we want to achieve and maintain diversity, we need to make our work environments welcoming to a broad spectrum of voices.

  • Commentary |

    To keep global warming below 2 °C, countries need long-term strategies for low-emission development. Without these, immediate emissions reductions may lock-in high-emitting infrastructure, hamper collaboration and make climate goals unachievable.

    • Jeffrey D. Sachs
    • , Guido Schmidt-Traub
    •  & Jim Williams

  • Editorial |

    Economic development in a sustainable fashion is metals-intensive. If we cannot afford to ban mining, regulation must be more effective.

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