Mosses support carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition and plant pathogen control in soils across the globe, according to a global survey of soil attributes in ecosystems with and without mosses.

Submarine terraced deposits of some caldera-forming explosive eruptions result from periodic collapses of the eruption column and can be used to estimate their source eruption rate, according to an analysis of such terraces and analogue experiments.

The recent emergence of a new economic model that is focused on the pursuit of human and ecological wellbeing — the wellbeing economy — offers a fresh framework for geology to contribute to society. The challenge will be to extend the social purpose of geology beyond material and financial goals to the ultimate ends of sustainability through delivering long-term wellbeing for all.

This month marks the 15-year anniversary of Nature Geoscience, a milestone reached after weathering three years of pandemic-related global disruption. We reflect on the burden on peer review over this period and the resilience of the geoscience community.

The hyper-arid climate of modern East Antarctica only arose in the late Miocene, millions of years after the interval of rapid ice-sheet expansion, according to meteoric beryllium-10 concentrations within the permafrost.

Correlation between large igneous province activity and iron formation ages suggests that subducted iron formations may have facilitated mantle plume upwelling in the Archaean and Proterozoic Earth.

Fine-grained pyroclastic deposits can be fluidized by decompression following the passage of dilute pyroclastic density currents, generating hazardous, highly mobile flows, according to analogue experiments and numerical simulations.

Spark discharge experiments suggest lightning was not the main source of bioavailable nitrogen for the established Archaean biosphere, but could have been significant for Earth’s earliest ecosystems.

Volatile-rich kimberlite magmas may be transported to the surface by broad mantle upwellings located above mobile basal mantle structures, according to global models of mantle convection over the past 200 million years.

The Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort Gyre has transitioned to a state where the freshwater content has plateaued and the cold halocline layer has thinned, as a result of variation in the regional wind forcing.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Shlomit Sharoni, an ocean biogeochemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr Kelly Andersen, a tropical ecologist at Nanyang Technological University about the interplay between phosphorous cycling and the ecosystems they study.

From Dutch painters to ocean sediments, Caroline Slomp discusses the role vivianite plays in the distribution of phosphorus, an essential nutrient for life.

Ecosystems have long been shaped by phosphorus limitation. We need to better understand how natural and human-caused shifts in the phosphorus cycle disrupt the Earth system.

There is much science to extract from mission data if China’s growing planetary science community is supported.

Night-time chemistry has an important contribution to air pollution over China and India. Understanding the chemical evolution of pollution in the atmosphere at night is needed for effective solutions to improve air quality.

Following on from insights gleaned from iron meteorites, Claire Nichols explains why tetrataenite, with its unique magnetic properties, could be key for future renewable energy technologies.