Earth and environmental sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Humans have greatly altered the distribution of forests across the world. Here, the authors use estimates of tree cover from remote-sensing data to reveal that human impact has produced a strong tendency for forest remnants to persist primarily on sloped terrain.

    • Brody Sandel
    •  & Jens-Christian Svenning

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Before the mass extinction that characterized the Late Triassic period, there were a series of biotic turnover events, the cause of which are the subject of debate. Sato et al. present geochemical evidence in support of the theory that extraterrestrial impacts had an important role in these events.

    • Honami Sato
    • , Tetsuji Onoue
    •  & Katsuhiko Suzuki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The astronomical time scale is an essential geochronological tool, but is presently limited to the Cenozoic and Mesozoic eras. Here, Wuet al.time-calibrate Milankovitch cycles identified in strata from South China and extend this essential tool into the late Permian.

    • Huaichun Wu
    • , Shihong Zhang
    •  & Tianshui Yang

  • Article |

    Sedimentation along convergent plate margins, the destructive sites of tectonic plate collision, is poorly understood. Malatestaet al.use a cutting-edge three-dimensional subduction model to demonstrate that the trench-parallel motion of sediments has a much more important role than previously thought.

    • Cristina Malatesta
    • , Taras Gerya
    •  & Giovanni Capponi

  • Article |

    Methane is a major constituent of planetary interiors, yet phase relations in the C–H system are poorly understood. This work documents the chemical reactivity of the C–H system over a wide range of temperatures and pressures, and sheds light on the chemical composition of Earth and icy giants.

    • Sergey S. Lobanov
    • , Pei-Nan Chen
    •  & Alexander F. Goncharov

  • Article |

    Hitherto, Siberian vegetation was not considered to cause the south-to-north ion content gradient of thaw lakes. Herzschuh et al.propose that higher evapotranspiration in larch forests compared with that in the tundra leads to local salt accumulation in permafrost soils, which are transported as solutes to nearby lakes.

    • Ulrike Herzschuh
    • , Luidmila A. Pestryakova
    •  & H. John B. Birks

  • Article |

    Global environmental change is affecting the strength of interspecific interactions. The authors here estimate how much change species can tolerate before becoming extinct, and they find that species tolerance is very sensitive to the net direction of change.

    • Serguei Saavedra
    • , Rudolf P. Rohr
    •  & Jordi Bascompte

  • Article |

    Accurate estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks are needed for policies to reduce emissions from loss of forests. By looking at a central area in the Congo Basin, Kearsleyet al.find that inconsistencies in height–diameter relationships across Central Africa cause overestimations between regions.

    • Elizabeth Kearsley
    • , Thales de Haulleville
    •  & Hans Verbeeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dissolution of iron from sediments along ocean margins may stimulate photosynthesis and moderate global climate. This study shows how margin sediments supply iron in varying amounts between regions, and by distinct mechanisms, which may be due to geological characteristics and hydrological controls on land.

    • William B. Homoky
    • , Seth G. John
    •  & Rachel A. Mills

  • Article |

    Alaskan mountain glaciers are losing ice and contribute to sea level rise, but contributions from specific ice-loss mechanisms are not known. Here, calving losses in Central Alaska are found to equal 36% of the net regional mass change each year and regional flux is dictated largely by snow accumulation rates.

    • Evan W. Burgess
    • , Richard R. Forster
    •  & Christopher F. Larsen

  • Article |

    Patchiness in the distribution of phytoplankton promotes many of the ecological interactions that underpin the marine food web. This study shows that turbulence, ubiquitous in the ocean, counter-intuitively ‘unmixes’ a population of motile phytoplankton, generating intense, small-scale patchiness in its distribution.

    • William M. Durham
    • , Eric Climent
    •  & Roman Stocker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomass burning is a major source of carbonaceous particles, including tar balls and soot, that affect earth’s climate. Studying a wildfire plume, this work identifies two types of tar balls and classifies soot according to its mixing state with implications for the calculation of aerosol radiative forcing.

    • Swarup China
    • , Claudio Mazzoleni
    •  & Manvendra K. Dubey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low-resistivity crustal fluids occur near fault zones, but their relation to earthquake generation is unclear. Here, electromagnetic data from the Izmit earthquake reflects the pressure-induced transition between isolated and interconnected fluids that is linked to foreshocks before large earthquakes.

    • Yoshimori Honkura
    • , Naoto Oshiman
    •  & Elif Tolak Çiftçi

  • Article |

    Debates on the formation of banded iron formations (BIFs) in ancient iron-rich oceans are dominated by contradictions between biological and non-biological iron cycling. This study provides environmental evidence that directly implicates photosynthetic iron-oxidizing microorganisms in vast-scale BIF deposition.

    • Ernest Chi Fru
    • , Magnus Ivarsson
    •  & Marco Stampanoni

  • Article |

    The evolution of continental rifting curvature can be studied using thermal convection models. Studying how this curvature controls the subsidence of offshore basins, Sacek and Ussami find that the mantle viscosity structure affects the subsidence rate and evolution of sedimentary basins along curved margins.

    • Victor Sacek
    •  & Naomi Ussami

  • Article |

    The North Anatolian Fault Zone in Turkey has produced many large earthquakes, however the Marmara region has been inactive and is facing a high probability for a large earthquake. Here, Bohnhoff et al. report on a large seismicity gap in this area with implications for a seismic hazard for Istanbul.

    • Marco Bohnhoff
    • , Fatih Bulut
    •  & Mustafa Aktar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deep subsurface formations are potential sites for carbon capture and storage but how subsurface microbial communities may respond to this is not clear. Here, Mayumi et al. construct microcosms and show that increasing CO2partial pressure via carbon capture and storage more than doubles the rate of methanogenesis.

    • Daisuke Mayumi
    • , Jan Dolfing
    •  & Yoichi Kamagata

  • Article |

    Iron plays a key role in controlling biological production in the Southern Ocean, yet mechanisms regulating iron availability are not completely understood. Here, Ingall et al.show that structural incorporation of reduced, organic iron into biogenic silica represents a new and substantial removal pathway.

    • Ellery D. Ingall
    • , Julia M. Diaz
    •  & Jay A. Brandes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest cover up-river influences the sediments reaching coral reefs, but how this relationship is affected by future climate change is not clear. In a study of the Malagasy coral reefs, Maina et al.find that regional land-use management is more important than mediating climate change for reducing reef sedimentation.

    • Joseph Maina
    • , Hans de Moel
    •  & Jan E. Vermaat

  • Article |

    Cation ordering in cubic-structured oxides can strongly affect magnetic properties. Here, the authors show that in some natural titanomagnetites, large and reversible changes in Curie temperature result from annealing at moderate temperatures (350–400 °C), most likely arising from changes in cation ordering.

    • Julie A. Bowles
    • , Mike J. Jackson
    •  & Jeffrey S. Gee

  • Article |

    In the Late Triassic, southern Gondwanan flora is thought to have been dominated by endemic species mainly restricted to eastern areas with some mixing with northern species. In this study, pollen and spore assemblages from Argentina reveal the presence of these mixed flora in the westernmost Gondwana as well.

    • Silvia N Césari
    •  & Carina E Colombi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The South African archaeological record contains evidence of the early flourishing of the human mind. Ziegler et al. provide new paleoclimate reconstructions, which suggest that rapid fluctuations in global climate have played a key role in the evolution of these early human cultures.

    • Martin Ziegler
    • , Margit H. Simon
    •  & Rainer Zahn

  • Article |

    Subglacial volcanoes host passage zones that can be used to define high stands of englacial lakes and paleo-ice thickness. This study identifies a pyroclastic passage zone in a subglacial volcano, which may help calculate transient paleolake levels and improve estimates of paleo-ice thickness.

    • James K. Russell
    • , Benjamin R. Edwards
    •  & Lucy A. Porritt

  • Article |

    Few high-pressure polymorphs have been found from lunar meteorites even though the moon has experienced heavy meteorite bombardment. This study presents evidence of a high-pressure polymorph of silica—seifertite—from a lunar meteorite; a record of an intense planetary collision on the moon ~2.7 Ga ago.

    • Masaaki Miyahara
    • , Shohei Kaneko
    •  & Naohisa Hirao

  • Article |

    The role of bacteria in the origin of iron formations (IF) remains unclear because no direct evidence for their involvement exists. This study shows that spherical siderite in deep-water IF represents a biosignature for photoferrotrophy, whereas massive siderite reflects high cyanobacterial biomass in shallow-water.

    • Inga Köhler
    • , Kurt O Konhauser
    •  & Andreas Kappler

  • Article |

    A strong increase in atmospheric 14C was measured in tree rings at AD 774 to 775, providing potential evidence of large cosmic ray fluxes to Earth, but the cause of this event is unclear. Here, Miyake et al. report a second 14C event in AD 993, which suggests that the most likely cause was a large solar proton event.

    • Fusa Miyake
    • , Kimiaki Masuda
    •  & Toshio Nakamura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Near-term climate prediction is an information tool used in climate adaptation services. This study analyses the quality of the predictions, showing that near-term climate forecasts have good skill in predicting temperature at regional scales, where most of the skill is attributed to atmospheric composition changes.

    • F. J. Doblas-Reyes
    • , I. Andreu-Burillo
    •  & G. J. van Oldenborgh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The abrupt ending of the Younger Dryas cooling episode marked the onset of the present interglacial and was the most prominent climate change in the Earth’s recent history. This study shows evidence for a sequence of events with a leading role of the ocean at the transition into the present day warm Holocene epoch.

    • Christof Pearce
    • , Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz
    •  & Søren M. Kristiansen

  • Article |

    Calcareous nannofossils were important marine primary producers in Jurassic and Cretaceous oceans at low latitudes. Here, North Sea sediment records reveal that favourable conditions for nannoconids existed also at high latitudes, and nannoconids faced global decline at the onset of greenhouse conditions.

    • Jörg Mutterlose
    •  & Cinzia Bottini

  • Article |

    The onset of the ongoing summit eruption at Kilauea Volcano was associated with changes in seismic anisotropy and increased gas flux. This study shows that seismic anisotropy variations are also a function of alterations in stress conditions, and provides a new method for tracking gas flux using seismic observations.

    • Jessica H. Johnson
    •  & Michael P. Poland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that only climate change drives temporal tree mortality increases in old forests. Here, Luo and Chen show that both forest dynamics and climate change drive temporal tree mortality increases in young and old forests, and that climate change-associated mortality increases are higher in the young forests.

    • Yong Luo
    •  & Han Y. H. Chen

  • Article |

    Clear evidence between sulphidic conditions and denitrification in the Proterozoic ocean should be observable in the rock record. Here, minimalistic biogeochemical modelling shows how periods of extensive sulphate reduction must have gone hand-in-hand with low denitrification and available nitrate.

    • R.A. Boyle
    • , J.R. Clark
    •  & T.M. Lenton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that during the mid-Pliocene warm period the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) must have been stronger than today. Here, using proxy data compilation and simulation, Zhang et al.show that the two observations used to support stronger AMOC may not necessitate its increased strength.

    • Zhongshi Zhang
    • , Kerim H. Nisancioglu
    •  & Ulysses S. Ninnemann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The branched inflow of warm Atlantic Water to the Arctic has been known for more than a hundred years, yet what controls the relative strengths of the two pathways remains poorly understood. Here, the authors identify the role of atmospheric circulation over the northern Barents Sea in controlling inflow.

    • Vidar S. Lien
    • , Frode B. Vikebø
    •  & Øystein Skagseth

  • Article |

    The long-term hydroclimate variability in Amazonia and its influence on biodiversity remain poorly understood. Here, new speleothem oxygen isotope records characterize spatial–temporal changes in precipitation and provide new insights to understanding the west–east contrasting pattern of biodiversity in Amazonia.

    • Hai Cheng
    • , Ashish Sinha
    •  & Augusto S. Auler

  • Article |

    In mature continental rifts, magma intrusion appears to accommodate significant crustal extension. Here, radiometric ages for lavas suggest that this style of focused magmatic accretion and rifting remained stable in the Ethiopian crust for at least ~200 kyr, prior to the onset of true oceanic spreading.

    • David J. Ferguson
    • , Andrew T. Calvert
    •  & Tim J. Wright

  • Article |

    High-pressure minerals in meteorites reflect the conditions prevailing when they were excavated and launched from their parent bodies. Tissint—a recent Martian meteorite—contains an unusual number of large high-pressure minerals, suggesting excavation from an impact of larger magnitude than for previous Martian samples.

    • Ioannis P. Baziotis
    • , Yang Liu
    •  & Lawrence A. Taylor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coral reef health is declining globally and is projected to lead to net loss of reef structure. This study shows that ecological change across the Caribbean has reduced reef growth rates to levels lower than those measured over the last ~8,000 years, threatening the ability of reefs to keep pace with future sea-level rise.

    • Chris T. Perry
    • , Gary N. Murphy
    •  & Peter J. Mumby

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active seafloor spreading has been documented in some of the tectonically active basins of the Gulf of California. This work presents new geophysical and geochemical data as evidence that active seafloor spreading is also occurring in the northernmost Wagner and Consag basins of the Gulf.

    • Rosa Ma Prol-Ledesma
    • , Marco-Antonio Torres-Vera
    •  & Carlos Robinson

  • Article |

    Rivers receive more terrestrial carbon than they transport to the ocean, leaving carbon stored along the way. Here, with an estimate of carbon storage in the headwater rivers of the Rocky Mountains, the authors show that broad valley bottoms with old-growth forest store most of the above- and below-ground carbon.

    • Ellen Wohl
    • , Kathleen Dwire
    •  & Roberto Bazan

  • Article |

    Microbes appear to play an important role in carbon sequestration. Here, the composition of microbial residues in a California grassland with elevated carbon dioxide, warming and nitrogen deposition reveals that warming and nitrogen deposition can both alter the fraction of carbon derived from microbes in soils.

    • Chao Liang
    •  & Teri C. Balser

  • Article |

    Mineral cave deposits—speleothems—provide a record of past rainfall changes. This study presents a speleothem data-set from southwestern Oregon, revealing winter climate change over the past 13,000 years with abrupt transitions between warm-dry and cold-wet regimes influenced by solar forcing.

    • Vasile Ersek
    • , Peter U. Clark
    •  & R. Lawrence Edwards

  • Article |

    Changes in bubble foam structure influence magma strength. Here, Bakeret al. measure bubble size and wall thickness of basaltic foams and find that basaltic magmas are most likely to fail immediately upon vesiculation, but a permeability increase within a few seconds may reduce the risk of explosive eruptions.

    • Don R. Baker
    • , Francesco Brun
    •  & Mark Rivers

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