Solid Earth sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Banded iron formations, precipitates of Precambrian seawater, record global 182W isotope signatures derived from continental weathering and hydrothermal mantle fluxes into ancient oceans, tracking Earth’s geodynamic evolution through deep time.

    • A. Mundl-Petermeier
    • , S. Viehmann
    •  & C. Münker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Subduction plate boundaries have enigmatic seismic tremor that is often associated with surges in creep across these boundaries. Here, the authors use multiple approaches to show how blocks of weak rocks in a stronger matrix can explain both the occurrence and characteristics of tremor events.

    • Paola Vannucchi
    • , Alexander Clarke
    •  & Jason P. Morgan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A comparison of salt marsh and mangrove channel networks around the world exhibited different network extents. This could be linked to differences in vegetation colonization strategies, with major implications on coastal development.

    • Christian Schwarz
    • , Floris van Rees
    •  & Barend van Maanen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Cambrian is the most poorly dated period of the past 541 million years. Here, the authors present a new astronomical time scale, allowing for a first assessment, in numerical time, of the evolution of major biotic and abiotic changes that characterized the late Cambrian Earth.

    • Zhengfu Zhao
    • , Nicolas R. Thibault
    •  & Arne T. Nielsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metallic microsamples deform in a sequence of abrupt strain bursts. Here, the authors demonstrate by analysing the elastic waves emitted by these bursts that this intermittent process resembles earthquakes in several aspects, although on completely different spatial and temporal scales.

    • Péter Dusán Ispánovity
    • , Dávid Ugi
    •  & István Groma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that Atlantic style passive margins have experienced episodes of uplift and volcanism in response to changes in mantle circulation. The authors here employ U-Pb dating of calcite in faults and fractures along the eastern North American margin and find a 40 Myr long period of fracturing and faulting from 115 to 75 Ma.

    • William H. Amidon
    • , Andrew R. C. Kylander-Clark
    •  & David P. West Jr.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows a direct evidence of pore pressure changes in seabed sediments associated with slow and transient slip along the North Anatolian Fault. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the role of slow-slip events in earthquake cycles.

    • Nabil Sultan
    • , Shane Murphy
    •  & Louis Géli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fibre Optic Distributed Acoustic Sensing on Mount Etna provides new opportunities for monitoring volcanic processes and demonstrates nonlinear interaction of infrasound wave with scoria layer, mapping its thickness and illuminating hidden structures.

    • Philippe Jousset
    • , Gilda Currenti
    •  & Charlotte M. Krawczyk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Chengjiang Biota is the earliest most diverse animal community from the Cambrian Explosion (~518 million years ago). This biota is shown to have colonized a delta, highlighting the importance of this shallow environment in recording early snapshots of life on Earth.

    • Farid Saleh
    • , Changshi Qi
    •  & Xiaoya Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZs) are localized small-scale patches with extreme physical properties at the core-mantle boundary. Here, the authors discover a mega-sized ULVZ (1,500 × 900 km) at the northern edge of the Pacific Large Low Velocity Province.

    • Jiewen Li
    • , Daoyuan Sun
    •  & Dan J. Bower

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The geochemical record of subduction initiation is still not well understood, despite >50 years of study. Here, the authors use boron isotopes in Izu-Bonin boninites to document rapid changes in slab inputs to melting at the start of subduction, related to the steepening and cooling of the downgoing Pacific plate.

    • Hong-Yan Li
    • , Xiang Li
    •  & Yi-Gang Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Earthquake breakdown energy is commonly interpreted as a proxy for fracture energy but is observed to scale with magnitude. Here the authors show that a scale-independent stress overshoot, as seen in the 3D dynamic earthquake rupture simulations, leads to comparable scaling despite constant fault fracture energy.

    • Chun-Yu Ke
    • , Gregory C. McLaskey
    •  & David S. Kammer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The pyroclast properties and features can provide insights into the dynamics of explosive eruptions of low viscosity magma. Here, the authors show how lava droplets, or pyroclasts are subject to melt removal and melt addition during transport in a gas jet and present a method to reconstruct eruption conditions from the pyroclast textures.

    • Thomas J. Jones
    • , James K. Russell
    •  & Lea Hollendonner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The co-evolution of oxygenation of the Earth’s atmosphere and lithosphere is still poorly constrained. However, the oxidation state of manganese minerals reveals that the redox state of Earth’s crust responds to changes in atmospheric oxygen following a ~66 million-year time lag.

    • Daniel R. Hummer
    • , Joshua J. Golden
    •  & Robert M. Hazen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The viability of earthquake early warning (EEW) in Europe is highly dependent on the magnitude of the ongoing earthquake and the ground-shaking threshold for alert issuance. The potential effectiveness of EEW is highest for Turkey, Italy, and Greece.

    • Gemma Cremen
    • , Carmine Galasso
    •  & Elisa Zuccolo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Yokoo et al. find the liquid immiscibility between H-rich and S-rich liquids Fe above 20 GPa. The separation of immiscible liquids could explain the disappearance of Mars’ magnetic field and the formation of low-velocity layer atop the Earth’s core.

    • Shunpei Yokoo
    • , Kei Hirose
    •  & Yasuo Ohishi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin of the observed low shear wave velocity in the solid inner core is unclear. Here, the authors report shear wave velocities of iron and iron-silicon alloy under Earth’s core conditions by shock compression and find that neither the effect of temperature nor incorporation of Si can explain observed low shear wave velocity in the inner core.

    • Haijun Huang
    • , Lili Fan
    •  & Yingwei Fei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Main Magnetite Layer of the Bushveld Complex of South Africa is an economically important deposit of Fe, Ti and V but its mode of formation is enigmatic. Models of fractional crystallization and reactive transport show that it probably accumulated as a loose mush and subsequently was compacted rather than forming in situ.

    • Zhuosen Yao
    •  & James E. Mungall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper shows that faults comprised of heterogeneously distributed materials, as is typical for tectonic faults in nature, are weaker and more unstable than equivalent faults where the materials are homogeneously mixed together.

    • John D. Bedford
    • , Daniel R. Faulkner
    •  & Nadia Lapusta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrated mantle rocks store a significant amount of organic and inorganic carbon, impacting the geological cycle. During subduction the carbonate return to the upper plate while organic carbon remains trapped to be recycled in the deep earth.

    • P. Bouilhol
    • , B. Debret
    •  & K. W. Burton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Precision measurement plays an important role in frequency metrology and optical communications. Here the authors compare two geographically separate ultrastable lasers at 7 × 10−17 fractional frequency instability over a 2220 km optical fibre link and these measurements can be useful for dissemination of ultrastable light to distant optical clocks.

    • M. Schioppo
    • , J. Kronjäger
    •  & G. Grosche

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Variable dominance of distinct microbial communities during the late Ediacaran, recorded in C and N cycles perturbations and in Raman structural heterogeneities of organic matter, modulated the recovery from the most negative δ13Ccarb excursion in Earth’s history.

    • Fuencisla Cañadas
    • , Dominic Papineau
    •  & Chao Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Megaripples are sand landforms found in wind-blown environments. A newly identified characteristic signature of the underlying bimodal sand transport process is found in the grain-size distribution on megaripples and could lend insight into transport conditions on Earth and other planetary bodies.

    • Katharina Tholen
    • , Thomas Pähtz
    •  & Klaus Kroy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors report nickel-porphyrins derivatives of chlorophyll in ~1 Gyr-old multicellular eukaryotes, preserved in low-grade metamorphic rocks. This brand new approach permits to identify early phototrophic organisms through the geological record.

    • Marie Catherine Sforna
    • , Corentin C. Loron
    •  & Emmanuelle J. Javaux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By teaching machine learning models with earthquake fault numerical simulations laboratory fault slip is predictable. Training the model further with a snippet of laboratory data improves predictions suggesting an approach to probing faults in Earth.

    • Kun Wang
    • , Christopher W. Johnson
    •  & Paul A. Johnson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anomalously slow seismic velocities in the upper Greenlandic crust reveal soft sedimentary substrates beneath major outlet glaciers. This, together with elevated geothermal heat flux observed at the onset of fast ice flow, has major implications for ice-sheet dynamics.

    • G. A. Jones
    • , A. M. G. Ferreira
    •  & A. Morelli

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