Stable isotope analysis articles within Nature

Featured

  • Letter |

    This study of whole-soil carbon dynamics finds that, of the atmospheric carbon that is incorporated into the topmost metre of soil over 50 years, just 19 per cent reaches the subsoil, in a manner that depends on land use and aridity.

    • Jérôme Balesdent
    • , Isabelle Basile-Doelsch
    •  & Christine Hatté
  • Letter |

    Climate models require an understanding of ecosystem-scale respiration and photosynthesis, yet there is no way of measuring these two fluxes directly; here, new instrumentation is used to determine these fluxes in a temperate forest, showing, for instance, that respiration is less during the day than at night.

    • R. Wehr
    • , J. W. Munger
    •  & S. R. Saleska
  • Letter |

    Soil water is usually assumed to be equally available for all purposes, supplying plant transpiration as well as groundwater and streamflow; however, a study of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes from 47 globally distributed sites shows that in fact the water used by plants tends to be isotopically distinct from the water that feeds streamflow.

    • Jaivime Evaristo
    • , Scott Jasechko
    •  & Jeffrey J. McDonnell
  • Letter |

    The abundance of key microbial lineages can be used to predict atmospherically relevant patterns in methane isotopes and the proportion of carbon metabolized to methane during permafrost thaw, suggesting that microbial ecology may be important in ecosystem-scale responses to global change.

    • Carmody K. McCalley
    • , Ben J. Woodcroft
    •  & Scott R. Saleska
  • Letter |

    An analysis of the relative effects of transpiration and evaporation, which can be distinguished by how they affect isotope ratios in water, shows that transpiration is by far the largest water flux from Earth’s continents, representing 80 to 90 per cent of terrestrial evapotranspiration and using half of all solar energy absorbed by land surfaces.

    • Scott Jasechko
    • , Zachary D. Sharp
    •  & Peter J. Fawcett
  • News |

    Radioactive isotopes nail the timeline of Egyptian dynasties.

    • Richard Lovett