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  • 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
    • , Arve R. N. Sleveland
    • , Valentin Zuchuat
    • , Henrik H. Svensen
    • , Sverre Planke
    • , David P. G. Bond
    • , Fons Marcelis
    • , Robert J. Newton
    • , Paul B. Wignall
    •  & Simon W. Poulton

  • Article |

    Mounds within Ceres’s Occator crater may have formed by freezing of water-rich impact-induced melt, by a process analogous to that of pingo formation on Earth, according to an analysis of data from NASA’s Dawn mission.

    • B. E. Schmidt
    • , H. G. Sizemore
    • , K. H. G. Hughson
    • , K. D. Duarte
    • , V. N. Romero
    • , J. E. C. Scully
    • , P. M. Schenk
    • , D. L. Buczkowski
    • , D. A. Williams
    • , A. Nathues
    • , K. Udell
    • , J. C. Castillo-Rogez
    • , C. A. Raymond
    •  & C. T. Russell

  • Article |

    In one earthquake, an oceanic transform fault ruptured in one direction and then backwards at a speed exceeding that of shear-wave propagation, according to an analysis of data recorded by nearby seafloor and global seismometers.

    • Stephen P. Hicks
    • , Ryo Okuwaki
    • , Andreas Steinberg
    • , Catherine A. Rychert
    • , Nicholas Harmon
    • , Rachel E. Abercrombie
    • , Petros Bogiatzis
    • , David Schlaphorst
    • , Jiri Zahradnik
    • , J-Michael Kendall
    • , Yuji Yagi
    • , Kousuke Shimizu
    •  & Henriette Sudhaus

  • Article |

    Some valleys in the southern highlands of Mars may have formed by subglacial erosion, consistent with a cold and icy early Mars, according to a statistical analysis of valley morphometry.

    • Anna Grau Galofre
    • , A. Mark Jellinek
    •  & Gordon R. Osinski

  • Editorial |

    Soils store vast quantities of carbon and have the potential to help mitigate or exacerbate climate change. We need to better understand the interplay of chemical, physical and biological processes that govern soil carbon cycling and stability.

  • Perspective |

    Dynamic interactions between chemical and biological controls govern the stability of soil organic carbon and drive complex, emergent patterns in soil carbon persistence.

    • Johannes Lehmann
    • , Colleen M. Hansel
    • , Christina Kaiser
    • , Markus Kleber
    • , Kate Maher
    • , Stefano Manzoni
    • , Naoise Nunan
    • , Markus Reichstein
    • , Joshua P. Schimel
    • , Margaret S. Torn
    • , William R. Wieder
    •  & Ingrid Kögel-Knabner

  • 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
    • , Samuel L. Jaccard
    •  & Timothy I. Eglinton

  • Article |

    Carbon-rich Pacific deep water extended into the South Atlantic some 38,000 to 28,000 years ago, potentially contributing to a reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum, according to deep-water carbonate chemistry reconstructions.

    • J. Yu
    • , L. Menviel
    • , Z. D. Jin
    • , R. F. Anderson
    • , Z. Jian
    • , A. M. Piotrowski
    • , X. Ma
    • , E. J. Rohling
    • , F. Zhang
    • , G. Marino
    •  & J. F. McManus

  • 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 |

    Increased river incision and landscape erosion can be attributed to late Cenozoic cooling/changes in hydroclimate, according to cosmogenic isotope and luminescence ages of a sequence of bedrock terraces in the Yukon River basin.

    • Adrian M. Bender
    • , Richard O. Lease
    • , Lee B. Corbett
    • , Paul R. Bierman
    • , Marc W. Caffee
    •  & Tammy M. Rittenour

  • 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

  • Article |

    The mantle lithosphere has thinned more than the crust beneath the Malawi Rift despite being melt-poor, according to seismic wave imaging; this suggests early melting of fusible mantle material.

    • Emily Hopper
    • , James B. Gaherty
    • , Donna J. Shillington
    • , Natalie J. Accardo
    • , Andrew A. Nyblade
    • , Benjamin K. Holtzman
    • , Christopher Havlin
    • , Christopher A. Scholz
    • , Patrick R. N. Chindandali
    • , Richard W. Ferdinand
    • , Gabriel D. Mulibo
    •  & Gabriel Mbogoni

  • Article |

    Plant roots in thawing permafrost soils act to enhance microbial decomposition and the loss of soil organic carbon, according to an analysis of observational data and a rhizosphere priming model.

    • Frida Keuper
    • , Birgit Wild
    • , Matti Kummu
    • , Christian Beer
    • , Gesche Blume-Werry
    • , Sébastien Fontaine
    • , Konstantin Gavazov
    • , Norman Gentsch
    • , Georg Guggenberger
    • , Gustaf Hugelius
    • , Mika Jalava
    • , Charles Koven
    • , Eveline J. Krab
    • , Peter Kuhry
    • , Sylvain Monteux
    • , Andreas Richter
    • , Tanvir Shahzad
    • , James T. Weedon
    •  & Ellen Dorrepaal

  • News & Views |

    Organic carbon in the top metre of Earth’s soils is far older than previously thought, averaging 4,800 years old. These radiocarbon-derived age estimates require us to recalibrate our expectations of ecosystem gains and losses of carbon.

    • Sharon A. Billings
    •  & Lígia F. T. de Souza

  • Article |

    Fast settling rates of suspended silt and clay particles suggest that mud in rivers is largely flocculated and part of suspended bed-material load.

    • Michael P. Lamb
    • , Jan de Leeuw
    • , Woodward W. Fischer
    • , Andrew J. Moodie
    • , Jeremy G. Venditti
    • , Jeffrey A. Nittrouer
    • , Daniel Haught
    •  & Gary Parker

  • Editorial |

    Nature Geoscience aims to publish important science, but the journal also strives to offer a platform to voices driving change within the geoscience community. We welcome submissions on community issues that encourage reader engagement and inspire action.

  • 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
    • , A. P. Murch
    • , B. Zimanowski
    • , R. Büttner
    • , D. Mele
    • , P. Dellino
    • , R. J. Carey
    • , L. S. Schmidt
    •  & N. Spitznagel

  • Article |

    Major sediment-hosted base metal deposits are located within 200 km of the border between thick and thin lithosphere, according to statistical comparisons between global lithospheric thickness and known deposit locations.

    • Mark J. Hoggard
    • , Karol Czarnota
    • , Fred D. Richards
    • , David L. Huston
    • , A. Lynton Jaques
    •  & Sia Ghelichkhan

  • Article |

    Earth’s deep-mantle domains are geochemically distinct. The African domain is enriched in subducted material, which suggests a different history from the Pacific domain and a dynamic relationship between plate tectonics and deep-mantle structures.

    • Luc S. Doucet
    • , Zheng-Xiang Li
    • , Hamed Gamal El Dien
    • , Amaury Pourteau
    • , J. Brendan Murphy
    • , William J. Collins
    • , Nadine Mattielli
    • , Hugo K. H. Olierook
    • , Christopher J. Spencer
    •  & Ross N. Mitchell

  • Article |

    Soils may accumulate less carbon and with a slower turnover than Earth system models predict, according to analysis of the age distribution of global soil carbon, which finds that the mean age of soil carbon is older than that in simulated in models.

    • Zheng Shi
    • , Steven D. Allison
    • , Yujie He
    • , Paul A. Levine
    • , Alison M. Hoyt
    • , Jeffrey Beem-Miller
    • , Qing Zhu
    • , William R. Wieder
    • , Susan Trumbore
    •  & James T. Randerson

  • Article |

    Pluto’s subsurface ocean may have formed early due to accretionary heating, a comparison of thermal evolution modelling with observed tectonic structures suggests.

    • Carver J. Bierson
    • , Francis Nimmo
    •  & S. Alan Stern

  • News & Views |

    Large-scale land acquisitions accelerate tropical deforestation, suggests an analysis of two decades of land-deal and forest-cover data. Such exploitation will threaten the future of these globally crucial carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.

    • Andreas Neef

  • Article |

    Increased Southern Ocean productivity driven by sea-ice feedbacks contributed to a slowdown in rising CO2 levels during the last deglaciation, according to analyses of marine-derived aerosols from an Antarctic ice core.

    • C. J. Fogwill
    • , C. S. M. Turney
    • , L. Menviel
    • , A. Baker
    • , M. E. Weber
    • , B. Ellis
    • , Z. A. Thomas
    • , N. R. Golledge
    • , D. Etheridge
    • , M. Rubino
    • , D. P. Thornton
    • , T. D. van Ommen
    • , A. D. Moy
    • , M. A. J. Curran
    • , S. Davies
    • , M. I. Bird
    • , N. C. Munksgaard
    • , C. M. Rootes
    • , H. Millman
    • , J. Vohra
    • , A. Rivera
    • , A. Mackintosh
    • , J. Pike
    • , I. R. Hall
    • , E. A. Bagshaw
    • , E. Rainsley
    • , C. Bronk-Ramsey
    • , M. Montenari
    • , A. G. Cage
    • , M. R. P. Harris
    • , R. Jones
    • , A. Power
    • , J. Love
    • , J. Young
    • , L. S. Weyrich
    •  & A. Cooper

  • Article |

    Tropical deforestation rates are linked to large-scale land investments, according to georeferenced land deal records and remote sensing of forest loss over the past two decades.

    • Kyle Frankel Davis
    • , Heejin Irene Koo
    • , Jampel Dell’Angelo
    • , Paolo D’Odorico
    • , Lyndon Estes
    • , Laura J. Kehoe
    • , Milad Kharratzadeh
    • , Tobias Kuemmerle
    • , Domingos Machava
    • , Aurélio de Jesus Rodrigues Pais
    • , Natasha Ribeiro
    • , Maria Cristina Rulli
    •  & Mokganedi Tatlhego

  • Editorial |

    As the COVID-19 pandemic halts many research cruise activities, exploration of the oceans by autonomous vehicles continues, highlighting the strengths of robotic research, but also the limitations.

  • Article |

    Aerosol particles produced by biomass burning are ubiquitous in the remote troposphere, according to global airborne measurements over remote ocean regions.

    • G. P. Schill
    • , K. D. Froyd
    • , H. Bian
    • , A. Kupc
    • , C. Williamson
    • , C. A. Brock
    • , E. Ray
    • , R. S. Hornbrook
    • , A. J. Hills
    • , E. C. Apel
    • , M. Chin
    • , P. R. Colarco
    •  & D. M. Murphy

  • Article |

    Calcium carbonate formed in seagrass beds that is transported and dissolved in deeper waters offshore helps buffer coastal acidification in the Chesapeake Bay, according to geochemical modelling of a transect of carbonate chemistry measurements.

    • Jianzhong Su
    • , Wei-Jun Cai
    • , Jean Brodeur
    • , Baoshan Chen
    • , Najid Hussain
    • , Yichen Yao
    • , Chaoying Ni
    • , Jeremy M. Testa
    • , Ming Li
    • , Xiaohui Xie
    • , Wenfei Ni
    • , K. Michael Scaboo
    • , Yuan-yuan Xu
    • , Jeffrey Cornwell
    • , Cassie Gurbisz
    • , Michael S. Owens
    • , George G. Waldbusser
    • , Minhan Dai
    •  & W. Michael Kemp

  • Article |

    An artificial intelligence-based method may infill gaps in historical temperature data more effectively than conventional techniques. Application of this method reveals a stronger global warming trend between 1850 and 2018 than estimated previously.

    • Christopher Kadow
    • , David Matthew Hall
    •  & Uwe Ulbrich

  • 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
    • , Christian France-Lanord
    • , Georges Aumaître
    • , Didier L. Bourlès
    •  & Karim Keddadouche

  • Article |

    Experimental mudflows under Martian surface conditions propagate similarly to terrestrial pahoehoe lava flows, suggesting mud (rather than igneous) volcanism can explain some flow morphologies on Mars.

    • Petr Brož
    • , Ondřej Krýza
    • , Lionel Wilson
    • , Susan J. Conway
    • , Ernst Hauber
    • , Adriano Mazzini
    • , Jan Raack
    • , Matthew R. Balme
    • , Matthew E. Sylvest
    •  & Manish R. Patel