Stable isotope analysis articles within Nature Geoscience

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• Article
  11 March 2024 | Open Access

  Late Pleistocene emergence of an anthropogenic fire regime in Australia’s tropical savannahs

  A shift towards more-frequent, less-intense fires in Australia began about 11,000 years ago due to management by Indigenous societies, according to charcoal and stable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon records extending back 150,000 years.

  • Michael I. Bird
  • , Michael Brand
  •  & Corey J. A. Bradshaw

• Article
  08 February 2024 | Open Access

  Substantial contribution of tree canopy nitrifiers to nitrogen fluxes in European forests

  Canopy nitrification contributes up to 80% of the nitrate reaching the soils via throughfall in European forests, according to analyses of nitrogen deposition and oxygen isotopes in nitrate at ten forested sites.

  • Rossella Guerrieri
  • , Joan Cáliz
  •  & Maurizio Mencuccini

• Article | 27 December 2023

  Recent human-induced atmospheric drying across Europe unprecedented in the last 400 years

  The atmosphere has dried across most regions of Europe in recent decades, a trend that can be attributed primarily to human impacts, according to tree ring records spanning 400 years and Earth system model simulations.

  • Kerstin Treydte
  • , Laibao Liu
  •  & Neil J. Loader

• Article | 28 November 2022

  Soil organic matter formation and loss are mediated by root exudates in a temperate forest

  The amount and composition of carbon compounds released from plant roots into soil influences soil carbon formation and loss, according to an artificial root exudate experiment using intact soil cores from a temperate forest.

  • Nikhil R. Chari
  •  & Benton N. Taylor

• Article | 30 December 2021

  Jurassic greenhouse ice-sheet fluctuations sensitive to atmospheric CO₂ dynamics

  Thin ice sheets during the warm Early Jurassic were tightly coupled to atmospheric CO₂ fluctuations, according to a CO₂ reconstruction based on the carbon isotopes of fossil wood.

  • Lee Nordt
  • , Daniel Breecker
  •  & Joseph White

• Article | 22 July 2019

  Synchronous rise of African C₄ ecosystems 10 million years ago in the absence of aridification

  Aridification did not cause the expansion of ecosystems using the C₄ photosynthetic pathway in parts of Africa 10 million years ago, according to leaf-wax analyses in deep-sea drill cores, leaving declining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as the most plausible cause.

  • Pratigya J. Polissar
  • , Cassaundra Rose
  •  & Peter deMenocal

• News & Views | 20 February 2017

  Deep ocean iron balance

  Dissolved iron is mysteriously pervasive in deep ocean hydrothermal plumes. An analysis of gas, metals and particles from a 4,000 km plume transect suggests that dissolved iron is maintained by rapid and reversible exchanges with sinking particles.

  • William B. Homoky

• Letter | 07 September 2015

  Formation of soil organic matter via biochemical and physical pathways of litter mass loss

  Soil organic matter is a large global carbon pool. Isotopic labelling of litter in the lab and the field reveals that soil organic matter forms from labile organic compounds and litter fragments early and late in decomposition, respectively.

  • M. Francesca Cotrufo
  • , Jennifer L. Soong
  •  & William J. Parton

• Letter | 22 December 2014

  Increased mobilization of aged carbon to rivers by human disturbance

  Most dissolved organic carbon in rivers originates from young carbon in soils and vegetation. A global radiocarbon data set suggests that human disturbance is also introducing aged carbon to rivers and to active carbon cycling.

  • David E. Butman
  • , Henry F. Wilson
  •  & Peter A. Raymond

• News & Views | 15 December 2014

  Tropical languor

  Carbon dioxide can stimulate photosynthesis in trees and increase their growth rates. A study of tree rings from three seasonal tropical forests shows no evidence of faster growth during 150 years of increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations.

  • Lucas A. Cernusak

• Article | 25 August 2013

  Methylmercury production below the mixed layer in the North Pacific Ocean

  Mercury enters marine food webs in the form of microbially generated monomethylmercury. An analysis of the mercury isotopic composition of nine species of North Pacific fish suggests that microbial production of monomethylmercury below the surface mixed layer contributes significantly to the mercury contamination of marine food webs.

  • Joel D. Blum
  • , Brian N. Popp
  •  & Marcus W. Johnson