Featured
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News & Views |
Sinking diatoms trap silicon in deep seawater of acidified oceans
The seas are acidifying as a result of carbon dioxide emissions. It now emerges that this will alter the solubility of the shells of marine organisms called diatoms — and thereby change the distribution of nutrients and plankton in the ocean.
- David A. Hutchins
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Article |
Fossil biomolecules reveal an avian metabolism in the ancestral dinosaur
Molecular analyses of modern and fossil skeletal samples reveal that elevated metabolic rates consistent with endothermy evolved independently in mammals and plesiosaurs, and ornithodirans: Exceptional metabolic rates are ancestral to dinosaurs and pterosaurs and were acquired before energetically costly adaptations, such as flight.
- Jasmina Wiemann
- , Iris Menéndez
- & Derek E. G. Briggs
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Article
| Open Access
Enhanced silica export in a future ocean triggers global diatom decline
Mesocosm experiments in different biomes show that future ocean acidification will slow down the dissolution of biogenic silica, decreasing silicic acid availability in the surface ocean and triggering a global decline of diatoms as revealed by Earth system model simulations.
- Jan Taucher
- , Lennart T. Bach
- & Ulf Riebesell
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Perspective |
The land-to-ocean loops of the global carbon cycle
An assessment of the land-to-ocean cycling of carbon through inland waters, estuaries, tidal wetlands and continental shelf waters provides a perspective on the global carbon cycle and identifies key knowledge gaps.
- Pierre Regnier
- , Laure Resplandy
- & Philippe Ciais
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Matters Arising |
On the role of atmospheric model transport uncertainty in estimating the Chinese land carbon sink
- Andrew E. Schuh
- , Brendan Byrne
- & Brad Weir
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: The size of the land carbon sink in China
- Jing Wang
- , Liang Feng
- & ChaoZong Xia
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: On the role of atmospheric model transport uncertainty in estimating the Chinese land carbon sink
- Jing Wang
- , Liang Feng
- & ChaoZong Xia
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Matters Arising |
The size of the land carbon sink in China
- Yilong Wang
- , Xuhui Wang
- & Josep G. Canadell
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Article |
Limited increases in savanna carbon stocks over decades of fire suppression
A direct estimate is provided of the whole-ecosystem carbon response to fire suppression in a mesic African savanna, showing limited increase in carbon storage despite a large increase in tree cover.
- Yong Zhou
- , Jenia Singh
- & A. Carla Staver
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News & Views |
Methane might be made by all living organisms
It is textbook knowledge that some bacteria can generate methane enzymatically. A study now provides evidence that an alternative, non-enzymatic mode of methane production could occur in all metabolically active cells.
- Chang Liu
- & Jingyao Zhang
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Article |
Methane formation driven by reactive oxygen species across all living organisms
Methane formation by a ROS-mediated process is linked to metabolic activity and is identified as a conserved feature across living systems.
- Leonard Ernst
- , Benedikt Steinfeld
- & Frank Keppler
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Article |
A wet heterogeneous mantle creates a habitable world in the Hadean
A hydrated, heterogeneous mantle resulting from magma ocean solidification is shown to be key to the rapid formation of Earth’s habitable surface environment during the Hadean era.
- Yoshinori Miyazaki
- & Jun Korenaga
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Nature Podcast |
Dinosaur-destroying asteroid struck in spring
Researchers pinpoint the season that a cataclysmic asteroid struck Earth, and how climate change is affecting the intensity of fires at night.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Article
| Open Access
The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring
Examination of fish that died on the day the Mesozoic ended reveal that the impact that caused the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction occurred during boreal spring.
- Melanie A. D. During
- , Jan Smit
- & Jeroen H. J. L. van der Lubbe
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News & Views |
A microbe that uses crude oil to make methane
A microorganism that dwells in an underground oil reservoir has been found to degrade various petroleum compounds and use them to produce methane through a previously unreported biochemical pathway.
- Guillaume Borrel
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Article |
Single-year radiocarbon dating anchors Viking Age trade cycles in time
Disturbances in the radiocarbon record anchor a precisely dated archaeological stratigraphy of a medieval trading emporium in Denmark in time, revealing that the Viking expansion was associated with competition for trade routes rather than with raids.
- Bente Philippsen
- , Claus Feveile
- & Søren M. Sindbæk
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Article |
Non-syntrophic methanogenic hydrocarbon degradation by an archaeal species
‘Candidatus Methanoliparum’ overexpresses genes encoding alkyl-coenzyme M and methyl-coenzyme M reductases—markers of archaeal multicarbon alkane and methane metabolism—and thrives on a variety of long-chain alkanes and n-alkylcyclohexanes, and n-alkylbenzenes with long n-alkyl (C≥13) moieties.
- Zhuo Zhou
- , Cui-jing Zhang
- & Lei Cheng
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Article |
RETRACTED ARTICLE: A constraint on historic growth in global photosynthesis due to increasing CO2
An emergent constraint combining biosphere models and carbon budget estimates suggests that the increase in the global terrestrial carbon sink is caused largely by a CO2-induced increase in photosynthesis.
- T. F. Keenan
- , X. Luo
- & S. Zhou
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Article |
Baleen whale prey consumption based on high-resolution foraging measurements
A combination of 3D whale locations and acoustic measurements of prey density is used here to show that whales’ consumption of krill is several times larger than often thought.
- Matthew S. Savoca
- , Max F. Czapanskiy
- & Jeremy A. Goldbogen
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Article
| Open Access
Terrestrial-type nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between seagrass and a marine bacterium
The N2-fixing symbiont ‘Candidatus Celerinatantimonas neptuna’ lives inside the root tissue of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, providing ammonia and amino acids to its host in exchange for sugars and enabling highly productive seagrass meadows to thrive in the nitrogen-limited Mediterranean Sea.
- Wiebke Mohr
- , Nadine Lehnen
- & Marcel M. M. Kuypers
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Research Highlight |
Our enormous fish catches have skewed ocean chemistry
Industrial fishing seems to have altered the processing of biomass in the ocean.
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Article |
Widespread phytoplankton blooms triggered by 2019–2020 Australian wildfires
Oceanic deposition of wildfire aerosols can enhance marine productivity, as supported here by satellite and in situ profiling floats data showing that emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires fuelled phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean.
- Weiyi Tang
- , Joan Llort
- & Nicolas Cassar
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Article |
Structure of Geobacter pili reveals secretory rather than nanowire behaviour
Structural, functional and localization studies reveal that Geobacter sulfurreducens pili cannot behave as microbial nanowires, instead functioning in a similar way to secretion pseudopili to export cytochrome nanowires that are essential for extracellular electron transfer.
- Yangqi Gu
- , Vishok Srikanth
- & Nikhil S. Malvankar
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News & Views |
African tropical montane forests store more carbon than was thought
The inaccessibility of African montane forests has hindered efforts to quantify the carbon stored by these ecosystems. A remarkable survey fills this knowledge gap, and highlights the need to preserve such forests.
- Nicolas Barbier
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Article |
High aboveground carbon stock of African tropical montane forests
The aboveground carbon stock of a montane African forest network is comparable to that of a lowland African forest network and two-thirds higher than default values for these montane forests.
- Aida Cuni-Sanchez
- , Martin J. P. Sullivan
- & Etienne Zibera
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Article |
The Montreal Protocol protects the terrestrial carbon sink
Modelling suggests that the Montreal Protocol may be mitigating climate change by protecting the land carbon sink, as well as by protecting the ozone layer and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Paul J. Young
- , Anna B. Harper
- & Rolando R. Garcia
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News & Views |
Southeast Amazonia is no longer a carbon sink
Atmospheric measurements show that deforestation and rapid local warming have reduced or eliminated the capacity of the eastern Amazonian forest to absorb carbon dioxide — with worrying implications for future global warming.
- Scott Denning
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Article |
Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change
Aircraft observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and monoxide concentrations in Brazil show higher carbon emissions in eastern Amazonia than in the western part, which are linked to increased ecosystem stress and fire occurrence.
- Luciana V. Gatti
- , Luana S. Basso
- & Raiane A. L. Neves
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Article |
A lithium-isotope perspective on the evolution of carbon and silicon cycles
Analysis of shallow-water marine carbonate samples from 101 stratigraphic units allows construction of a record of lithium isotopes from the past 3 billion years, tracking the evolution of the global carbon and silicon cycles.
- Boriana Kalderon-Asael
- , Joachim A. R. Katchinoff
- & Philip A. E. Pogge von Strandmann
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Research Highlight |
The world’s biggest seaweed patch sows doubt about a climate fix
Data from the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt suggest that floating seaweed farms are no climate panacea.
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Research Highlight |
Rivers give off stealth carbon at night
Emissions made under cover of darkness account for much of the carbon flux from flowing waters.
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Article |
High CO2 levels drive the TCA cycle backwards towards autotrophy
In the deltaproteobacterium Hippea maritima, the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle can be reversed by high partial pressures of CO2 for the autotrophic fixation of carbon.
- Lydia Steffens
- , Eugenio Pettinato
- & Ivan A. Berg
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Article |
Overriding water table control on managed peatland greenhouse gas emissions
Halving average drainage depths in agricultural peatlands could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 1 per cent of all anthropogenic emissions.
- C. D. Evans
- , M. Peacock
- & R. Morrison
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Article
| Open Access
Soil moisture–atmosphere feedback dominates land carbon uptake variability
Factorial climate model simulations show that 90% of the inter-annual variability in global land carbon uptake is driven by soil moisture and its atmospheric feedback on temperature and air humidity.
- Vincent Humphrey
- , Alexis Berg
- & Christian Frankenberg
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Article |
A 200-million-year delay in permanent atmospheric oxygenation
Sulfur isotope and iron–sulfur–carbon systematics on marine sediments indicate that permanent atmospheric oxygenation occurred around 2.22 billion years ago, about 100 million years later than currently estimated.
- Simon W. Poulton
- , Andrey Bekker
- & David T. Johnston
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Matters Arising |
Old-growth forest carbon sinks overestimated
- Per Gundersen
- , Emil E. Thybring
- & Vivian K. Johannsen
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Old-growth forest carbon sinks overestimated
- Sebastiaan Luyssaert
- , E.-Detlef Schulze
- & John Grace
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News & Views |
Effects of rising CO2 levels on carbon sequestration are coordinated above and below ground
An analysis of experiments in which the air around terrestrial plants or plant communities was enriched with carbon dioxide reveals a coordination between the resulting changes in soil carbon stocks and above-ground plant biomass.
- Ana Bastos
- & Katrin Fleischer
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Article
| Open Access
Anaerobic endosymbiont generates energy for ciliate host by denitrification
‘Candidatus Azoamicus ciliaticola’ transfers energy to its ciliate host in the form of ATP and enables this host to breathe nitrate, demonstrating that eukaryotes with remnant mitochondria can secondarily acquire energy-providing endosymbionts.
- Jon S. Graf
- , Sina Schorn
- & Jana Milucka
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Article |
Warming impairs trophic transfer efficiency in a long-term field experiment
In artificial ponds exposed to seven years of experimental warming, energy transfer between two trophic levels of freshwater plankton decreased by 56% and the biomass of both levels was reduced.
- Diego R. Barneche
- , Chris J. Hulatt
- & Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
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Article |
Global and regional drivers of land-use emissions in 1961–2017
Trends in the rate of region- and sector-specific land-use greenhouse gas emissions in 1961–2017 show an acceleration of about 20% per decade after 2001.
- Chaopeng Hong
- , Jennifer A. Burney
- & Steven J. Davis
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News & Views |
Targeted wetland restoration could greatly reduce nitrogen pollution
Wetlands remove nitrate pollution from water effectively. An analysis shows that this effect is constrained in the United States by the distribution of wetlands, and could be increased by targeting wetland restoration to nitrate sources.
- Jacques C. Finlay
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Article |
Maximizing US nitrate removal through wetland protection and restoration
Analysis of US continental wetland inventory data combined with model simulations indicate that a spatially targeted 10% increase in wetland area could double wetland nitrogen removal.
- F. Y. Cheng
- , K. J. Van Meter
- & N. B. Basu
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News Feature |
How the first life on Earth survived its biggest threat — water
Living things depend on water, but it breaks down DNA and other key molecules. So how did the earliest cells deal with the water paradox?
- Michael Marshall
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Article |
Large Chinese land carbon sink estimated from atmospheric carbon dioxide data
Newly available atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements from six sites across China during 2009 to 2016 indicate a larger land carbon sink than previously thought, reflecting increased afforestation.
- Jing Wang
- , Liang Feng
- & ChaoZong Xia
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Article |
A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks
Bottom-up and top-down approaches are used to quantify global nitrous oxide sources and sinks resulting from both natural and anthropogenic sources, revealing a 30% increase in global human-induced emissions between 1980 and 2016.
- Hanqin Tian
- , Rongting Xu
- & Yuanzhi Yao
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News & Views |
Carbon dioxide loss from tropical soils increases on warming
Plots of tropical forest soils were warmed by 4 °C for two years to observe the effects on soil carbon emissions. The increase in efflux of carbon dioxide was larger than expected — a result with worrying implications for climate change.
- Eric A. Davidson
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Article |
Soil carbon loss by experimental warming in a tropical forest
When tropical forest soils are warmed in situ, they release more CO2 than predicted by theory, creating a potentially substantial positive feedback to climate change.
- Andrew T. Nottingham
- , Patrick Meir
- & Benjamin L. Turner
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News & Views |
New class of molecule targets proteins outside cells for degradation
Molecules have previously been made that induce protein destruction inside cells. A new class of molecule now induces the degradation of membrane and extracellular proteins — opening up avenues for drug discovery.
- Claire Whitworth
- & Alessio Ciulli
Direct evidence for phosphorus limitation on Amazon forest productivity