Solid Earth sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Article |

    Stress from tectonics and topography may be the primary control on the size of bedrock landslides, according to a comparison of a stress model with landslide inventories for a mountainous area in eastern Tibet.

    • Gen K. Li
    •  & Seulgi Moon

  • Comment |

    Geoscientists will play key roles in the grand challenges of the twenty-first century, but this requires our field to address its past when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Considering the bleak picture of racial diversity in the UK, we put forward steps institutions can take to break down barriers and make the geosciences equitable.

    • Natasha Dowey
    • , Jenni Barclay
    •  & Rebecca Williams

  • Article |

    Mantle heterogeneity beneath subducting plates may influence giant megathrust earthquakes, according to seismic tomography of the subslab structure beneath six megathrusts that have ruptured in M ≥ 9.0 earthquakes.

    • Jianke Fan
    •  & Dapeng Zhao

  • Editorial |

    Interacting geological processes can cause complex hazard cascades that threaten life and property. Past events are instructive, but physical understanding must be paired with effective communication to minimize the risks posed by these events.

  • News & Views |

    Low viscosities may not preclude brittle magma fragmentation under certain conditions, according to field observations and experimental evidence that suggest the conditions for brittle fragmentation may be met in many explosive mafic eruptions.

    • Emma J. Liu

  • Article |

    In explosive basaltic eruptions, brittle fragmentation and subsequent healing by viscous melt are documented by textural analysis of products from ten disparate eruptions, suggesting that grain size may not reflect the initial fracture density of magma.

    • J. Taddeucci
    • , C. Cimarelli
    •  & F. Di Stefano

  • Article |

    In a Hawaiian fountain eruption, rapid gas expansion cools the melt below the glass transition temperature and causes brittle magma fragmentation, producing small, vesicular pyroclasts, according to observations of the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea.

    • Atsuko Namiki
    • , Matthew R. Patrick
    •  & Bruce F. Houghton

  • Article |

    Large-scale radiant heat flux increased in the years prior to eruptions at five volcanoes, probably due to enhanced underground hydrothermal activity, according to an analysis of satellite infrared data.

    • Társilo Girona
    • , Vincent Realmuto
    •  & Paul Lundgren

  • News & Views |

    Hydrogen ions move freely within the crystal structure of a hydrous mineral under lower mantle conditions, resulting in high electrical conductivity that may make it possible to map water in the deep mantle.

    • Tetsuya Komabayashi

  • Article |

    Under conditions of Earth’s deep lower mantle, hydrogen ions diffuse freely through the FeOOH lattice framework and electrical conductivity increases rapidly, according to electrical conductivity experiments and first-principles simulations.

    • Mingqiang Hou
    • , Yu He
    •  & Ho-Kwang Mao

  • Article |

    The lower oceanic crust beneath Iceland is flowing and internally deforming, according to constraints on seismic anisotropy in the Icelandic crust from an analysis of seismic surface waves.

    • Omry Volk
    • , Robert S. White
    •  & Nicholas Rawlinson

  • News & Views |

    Turbidites record ground motion in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Recent events are now revealing how turbidites record earthquakes, but turbidites are triggered in many ways, and testing if ancient turbidites are earthquake-triggered remains challenging.

    • Peter J. Talling

  • Article |

    Reduced planetary albedo due to fewer low clouds on early Earth could explain some 40% of the required forcing to offset the faint young Sun, according to global climate model experiments.

    • Colin Goldblatt
    • , Victoria L. McDonald
    •  & Kelly E. McCusker

  • Article |

    The presence of large rivers in North Africa critical for Quaternary human migrations were controlled by a combination of orbital forcing and Mediterranean storminess, according to terrestrial proxy records from a marine core off Libya integrated with paleoclimate modelling.

    • Cécile L. Blanchet
    • , Anne H. Osborne
    •  & Martin Frank

  • Article |

    Constraints on the denudation of the Southern Alps over the last glacial cycle indicate a nonlinear influence of climate on landscape evolution in glaciated areas, according to a beryllium isotope record measured from quartz in a sequence of Mediterranean turbidites.

    • Apolline Mariotti
    • , Pierre-Henri Blard
    •  & Karim Keddadouche

  • Article |

    Two seismic discontinuities in the mantle transition zone beneath the western Pacific represent subducted slab interfaces that could be the slab Moho and partially molten sub-slab asthenosphere, according to an analysis of seismic data.

    • Xin Wang
    • , Qi-Fu Chen
    •  & Lijun Liu

  • Article |

    Long fault ruptures that have both strike-slip and dip-slip components can propagate at a wide range of speeds, including those theoretically predicted to be unstable, according to numerical simulations.

    • Huihui Weng
    •  & Jean-Paul Ampuero

  • Article |

    A link between post-thickening lithospheric extension and the differentiation of continental crust is implied by granulite conditions beneath the Rio Grande Rift, inferred from analysis of lower-crustal xenoliths and thermobarometric modelling.

    • Jacob H. Cipar
    • , Joshua M. Garber
    •  & Andrew J. Smye

  • News & Views |

    Time capsules of fluid, trapped within the oxide minerals from two iron ore deposits reveal an important role for sediment-derived carbonate–sulfate-rich melts in the concentration of iron, a crucial element for humanity’s development.

    • James M. Brenan

  • News & Views |

    Permanent surface deformation caused by the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes has been directly measured, constraining the mechanics of surface damage in earthquakes.

    • Wanpeng Feng
    •  & Rafael V. Almeida

  • Article |

    Phosphorus remobilized from seafloor sediments due to a reduced influx of iron-oxide from land led to widespread anoxia during the end-Permian mass extinction, according to palaeoredox and phosphorus speciation proxy records from Svalbard.

    • Martin Schobben
    • , William J. Foster
    •  & Simon W. Poulton

  • Review Article |

    A review of the organic carbon cycle explores the interactions between the Earth’s surface and deeper reservoirs, the expanding inorganic controls on the organic carbon cycle, and how these links have strengthened through geological time.

    • Matthieu E. Galvez
    • , Woodward W. Fischer
    •  & Timothy I. Eglinton

  • News & Views |

    The Archaean atmosphere may have been well oxygenated, according to a reconsideration of sulfur cycling at that time. This challenges the view that sedimentary sulfur records oxygen-poor conditions during Earth’s first two billion years.

    • Desiree Roerdink

  • Article |

    Formation of mass-independent isotope fractionation of sulfur signatures recorded in Archaean sedimentary rocks could have occurred in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, according to thermodynamic and kinetic calculations and analysis of Earth’s early sulfur cycle.

    • Hiroshi Ohmoto

  • News & Views |

    Compositional signatures of subducted crust in the deep-mantle sources of ocean island volcanoes in the Atlantic Ocean but not the Pacific reveal that plate motions on Earth’s surface influence the characteristics of Earth’s deepest interior.

    • Richard W. Carlson

  • Article |

    Interactions between magma and water can drive explosive fragmentation eruptions of the type seen in the Havre volcanic eruption, New Zealand, in 2012, even under submarine conditions, according to laboratory fragmentation experiments.

    • T. Dürig
    • , J. D. L. White
    •  & N. Spitznagel

  • Article |

    Long-term Himalayan erosion rates remained stable through the global climatic changes of the past six million years, according to the cosmogenic nuclide composition of terrestrial sediments recovered from the Bay of Bengal.

    • Sebastien J. P. Lenard
    • , Jérôme Lavé
    •  & Karim Keddadouche

  • Article |

    The Earth’s core may host most of the planet’s water inventory, according to calculations of the partitioning behaviour of water at conditions of core formation.

    • Yunguo Li
    • , Lidunka Vočadlo
    •  & John P. Brodholt

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