Solid Earth sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Letter |

    The cause of the Laramide phase of mountain building remains uncertain. Modelling and plate reconstructions show that Laramide events coincide with subduction of the Shatsky oceanic plateau, implicating surface rebound after removal of the subducting plateau in Laramide uplift.

    • Lijun Liu
    • , Michael Gurnis
    •  & Jennifer M. Jackson

  • Article |

    Mid-ocean ridges grow through tectonic and volcanic processes. Uranium-series dating of volcanic rocks at the ultraslow-spreading Southwest Indian Ridge reveals widely dispersed, young, off-axis volcanism that is spatially coincident with fault surfaces. Faults may therefore provide a mechanism for the wide dispersal of magma at ultraslow-spreading ridges.

    • Jared J. Standish
    •  & Kenneth W. W. Sims

  • News & Views |

    The earliest evolution of our planet is difficult to reconstruct. Ancient rocks in Western Australia show an isotopic signature that links their formation with 4.3-billion-year-old crust.

    • Stephen J. Mojzsis

  • News & Views |

    About 94.5 million years ago, oxygen levels in the deep ocean dropped while carbon burial rapidly increased. Geochemical analyses suggest that the release of sulphate from extensive volcanism set off a sequence of biogeochemical reactions that led to ocean anoxia.

    • Haydon P. Mort

  • Letter |

    Landslide erosion is a primary control of landscape relief. A wide-ranging analysis of landslide geometry shows that soil-based landslides are generally less voluminous than landslides that involve the failure of bedrock, and provides refined metrics for estimating the volume of a landslide from the area of the failure

    • Isaac J. Larsen
    • , David R. Montgomery
    •  & Oliver Korup

  • Article |

    Over 90% of calcareous nannoplankton species disappeared during the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction, which occurred after an impact event. Palaeontological analyses show that the extinction was most pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere oceans, possibly as a result of an increased concentration of particulates created by the impact in the north.

    • Shijun Jiang
    • , Timothy J. Bralower
    •  & Jonathan D. Schueth

  • Letter |

    There is evidence for the existence of differentiated crust early in Earth’s history, but little is known about the timing and nature of the crust and its formation. New samarium–neodymium data from the Dresser Formation in Western Australia point to differentiation of the early crust from the mantle more than 4.3 billion years ago.

    • Svetlana G. Tessalina
    • , Bernard Bourdon
    •  & Pascal Philippot

  • Letter |

    The onset of fluvial erosion in an area of tectonic uplift is thought to reflect the timing of the uplift. Geomorphological data from the Yellow River in Tibet, indicate that the rapid incision of this river channel occurred as a result of climate change, at least six million years after the onset of plateau uplift.

    • William H. Craddock
    • , Eric Kirby
    •  & Jianhui Liu

  • Letter |

    Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in sea water are driving a progressive acidification of the ocean, with as yet unclear impacts on marine calcifying organisms. Simulations with an Earth system model suggest that future changes in the marine environment could be more severe than those experienced during the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum, both in the deep ocean and near the surface.

    • Andy Ridgwell
    •  & Daniela N. Schmidt

  • Letter |

    Ninety-four million years ago, during Ocean Anoxic Event 2, there was a marked increase in the burial of organic carbon in marine sediments. Measurements of stomata in fossil leaves show that the two main pulses of carbon burial were associated with a decline in atmospheric CO2 levels of up to 26%.

    • Richard S. Barclay
    • , Jennifer C. McElwain
    •  & Bradley B. Sageman

  • Article |

    The southwest corner of Western Australia has been subject to a serious drought in recent decades, whose ultimate cause remains unclear. A comparison of precipitation records in the area of drought and an ice core from East Antarctica reveal a significant inverse correlation between precipitation in the two locations, and suggest that the current drought may be highly unusual compared with the past 750 years of variability.

    • Tas D. van Ommen
    •  & Vin Morgan

  • News & Views |

    In the North Atlantic region, six massive iceberg discharge events marked the last glacial period. A numerical model now links these events to ocean temperatures and ice-shelf conditions.

    • Christina Hulbe

  • News & Views |

    The south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is anomalously warm, geologically youthful and cryovolcanically active. Episodic convective overturn explains how the moon's modest sources of internal heat can be channelled into intense geological activity.

    • Paul Helfenstein

  • Editorial |

    Indonesia's tsunami-warning system is scheduled to enter full operational mode by March 2010. The sooner it runs, the better: the threat of a tsunamigenic earthquake in the region is still imminent.

  • News & Views |

    Hydrologists have thought of soil as a kind of giant sponge that soaks up precipitation and slowly releases it to streams. But according to new evidence the soil water used by vegetation may be largely decoupled from the water that flows through soils to streams.

    • Fred M. Phillips

  • Letter |

    Several periods of global ocean anoxia punctuated the Cretaceous period. Marine-sediment chemistry indicates that extensive volcanism at the beginning of Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 released sulphur to the oceans, triggering a biogeochemical cascade that led to enhanced surface productivity and depletion of oxygen in the underlying waters.

    • Derek D. Adams
    • , Matthew T. Hurtgen
    •  & Bradley B. Sageman

  • Letter |

    The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum has been attributed to the release of carbon dioxide from the deep Southern Ocean. However, reconstructions of the radiocarbon signature of Chilean margin intermediate waters during the glacial termination do not reflect the influence of such a release.

    • Ricardo De Pol-Holz
    • , Lloyd Keigwin
    •  & Mahyar Mohtadi

  • Letter |

    Jupiter’s large moons Ganymede and Callisto are similar in size and composition, but different in surface and interior characteristics. Simulations with geophysical models of core formation indicate that the difference in impact energy received by the two satellites during the period of late heavy bombardment can explain the dichotomy.

    • Amy C. Barr
    •  & Robin M. Canup

  • Letter |

    The last glacial period was punctuated by several periods of massive iceberg discharge from the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. Numerical simulations indicate that these discharge events are linked to an interplay between ice-sheet accumulation, marine ice-shelf stability and periodically oscillating surface ocean temperature.

    • Jorge Alvarez-Solas
    • , Sylvie Charbit
    •  & Christophe Dumas

  • Letter |

    The last glacial period was characterized by large, rapid climate fluctuations. An analysis of a speleothem from New Mexico shows that the coldest conditions over Greenland coincide with increased winter precipitation in the southwestern United States, which can be attributed to a southward displacement of the polar jet stream and the North American storm track.

    • Yemane Asmerom
    • , Victor J. Polyak
    •  & Stephen J. Burns

  • Letter |

    The slip rate along a fault controls the accumulation of strain that is eventually released during an earthquake. Estimates from a three-dimensional geomechanical model of the slip rate on the main Marmara fault near Istanbul, Turkey reconcile geodetic and geological observations and indicate smaller values and higher variability than previously thought.

    • Tobias Hergert
    •  & Oliver Heidbach

  • Progress Article |

    Arsenic levels in shallow groundwater in the Bengal Basin exceed thresholds for safe drinking water. Groundwater modelling indicates that deep wells that reach safe water below 150 m could remain safe for centuries if used for domestic water only, whereas the intensive use of deep groundwater for irrigation could contaminate this resource within decades.

    • W. G. Burgess
    • , M. A. Hoque
    •  & K. M. Ahmed

  • Letter |

    Periodic iceberg discharges during the last glacial period led to a slowdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Sediment records from the Portuguese margin show that similar events punctuated the penultimate glacial period as well, although their duration and broader climatic impacts were modified by different background climate conditions.

    • V. Margari
    • , L. C. Skinner
    •  & N. J. Shackleton

  • News & Views |

    The sequence of events during the collision between India and Eurasia has long been contested. Numerical simulations imply that the key to the puzzle could lie in the subduction of continental lithosphere.

    • R. Dietmar Müller

  • Letter |

    The most spectacular example of plate convergence on Earth was the motion of the Indian plate towards Eurasia, and the subsequent collision. Density estimates of the Greater Indian continent, after its upper crust is scraped off at the Himalayan front, suggest that this continental plate is readily subductable, potentially explaining why the convergence did not halt on collision.

    • F. A. Capitanio
    • , G. Morra
    •  & L. Moresi

  • Letter |

    Throughout the most recent glacial period sea level fluctuated by 20–30 m. Climate model simulations indicate that the barrier to water exchange between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans posed by the Bering Strait during low sea levels could have been instrumental in generating these fluctuations.

    • Aixue Hu
    • , Gerald A. Meehl
    •  & Nan Rosenbloom

  • News & Views |

    Where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates collide under the South Island of New Zealand large quantities of aqueous fluid are produced. But how does this happen? Geophysical and petrological data indicate that it may not be as we thought.

    • Philip E. Wannamaker

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