Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Farmland management promotes tree cover around villages in the semi-arid Sahel of West Africa, according to analyses of satellite imagery. This implies that a higher population density does not always lead to reduced tree cover. The image shows tree cover around settlements in the African Sahel.
Human manipulation of hydrocarbons — as fuel and raw materials for modern society — has changed our world and the indelible imprint we will leave in the rock record. Plastics alone have permeated our lives and every corner of our planet.
Ethnic and racial diversity are extremely low among United States citizens and permanent residents who earned doctorates in earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences. Worse, there has been little to no improvement over the past four decades.
A regional oxygenation event 1.6 billion years ago coincided with the appearance of large fossils, but whether the availability of oxygen was the primary driver of the diversification of multicellular organisms remains to be seen.
Enhanced upwelling and CO2 degassing from the subpolar North Pacific during a warm event 14,000 years ago may have helped keep atmospheric CO2 levels high enough to propel the Earth out of the last ice age.
Geoscientists are training computers to learn from a wide range of geologic data and, in the process, the machines are teaching geoscientists about the workings of Earth.
The Cassini mission revealed the complex workings of Titan’s methane-based hydrologic cycle over a range of timescales, providing a potential window into the future of Earth and its water cycle.
Indicators of environmental and social footprints of international trade must inform assessments of progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, suggests a synthesis of studies on the geospatial separation of consumption and production.
Rocky planets dominated by intrusive magmatism can cool more efficiently than those dominated by extrusive volcanism, according to numerical simulations of mantle convection.
Farmland management promotes tree cover around villages in the semi-arid Sahel of West Africa, according to analyses of satellite imagery. This implies that a higher population density does not always lead to reduced tree cover.
Microbe-mediated oxidation may account for at least 5% of the global dissolved organic carbon loss from the deep ocean, according to carbon isotope analyses on cool crustal fluids circulating through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
The upwelling of carbon- and nutrient-rich waters in the subpolar North Pacific during the Bølling–Allerød supported high productivity and CO2 outgassing, as well as contributing to regional hypoxia, marine sediment analyses suggest.
The oxygenation of deeper continental shelf waters during the Mesoproterozoic coincided with the appearance of multicellular eukaryotes, according to geochemical and sedimentological analyses of the Yanliao Basin, China.
Slow slip events may cause fluids to drain from the plate boundary into the overlying plate at subduction zones, according to seismic analyses of events recorded in Kanto, Japan.
The oldest stable crust on Earth may have formed during pulsed growth cycles, according to geochemical analyses of rocks preserved in the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia.
Deformation of the Indian Ocean floor over the past 8 million years was caused by a change in plate motions linked to flow of the Reunion mantle plume, according to analyses of forces upon plates.
Deformation migrated from depth towards the surface in the months leading up to the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, according to analyses of satellite gravity data.