Environmental sciences articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    Many ecological systems have chaotic or near-chaotic dynamics. In such cases, it has proved difficult to test whether data fit particular models that might explain the dynamics, because the noise in the data make statistical comparison with the model impossible. This author has devised a statistical method for making such inferences, based on extracting phase-insensitive summary statistics from the raw data and comparing with data simulated using the model.

    • Simon N. Wood

  • News |

    Study shows that stripping mountains for coal has a much greater impact than urban growth.

    • Natasha Gilbert

  • Letter |

    The annual burial of organic carbon in lakes and reservoirs exceeds that of ocean sediments, but inland waters are components of the global carbon cycle that receive only limited attention. Here the authors find that the mineralization of organic carbon in lake sediments exhibits a strong positive relationship with temperature, suggesting that warmer water temperatures lead to more mineralization and less organic carbon burial.

    • Cristian Gudasz
    • , David Bastviken
    •  & Lars J. Tranvik

  • Opinion |

    The US government must make the Department of Defense a key customer for energy technologies and make greenhouse-gas reductions a public good, say John Alic, Daniel Sarewitz, Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian.

    • John Alic
    • , Daniel Sarewitz
    •  & William Bonvillian

  • Letter |

    Emissions of African dust increased sharply in the early 1970s, but the human contribution to land degradation and dust mobilization remains poorly understood. Now, a 3,200-year record of dust deposition off northwest Africa has been constructed. On the basis of this dust record and a proxy record for West African precipitation, it is suggested that human-induced dust emissions from the Sahel region have contributed to the atmospheric dust load for more than 200 years.

    • Stefan Mulitza
    • , David Heslop
    •  & Michael Schulz

  • Opinion |

    Researchers and regulators need to keep up with the changing risks, and share information, says Arne Jernelöv, as tanker spills decline and pipeline leaks and blowouts become more of a concern.

    • Arne Jernelöv

  • Letter |

    Evidence for multicellular life before 1.6–1.0 billion years ago is scarce and controversial. Here the authors report organized, macroscopic structures from Gabon that date to 2.1 billion years ago, have a consistent structure and seem to show evidence of multicellular colonial organization. Coming not long after the rise in atmospheric oxygen concentration, these fossils might be considered harbingers of the multicellular life that drastically expanded about a billion years later.

    • Abderrazak El Albani
    • , Stefan Bengtson
    •  & Alain Meunier

  • Review Article |

    Global climate and the atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide are correlated over recent glacial cycles, with lower partial pressure of carbon dioxide during ice ages, but the causes of the changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide are unknown. Here the authors review the evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Southern Ocean is an important driver of glacial/interglacial changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide.

    • Daniel M. Sigman
    • , Mathis P. Hain
    •  & Gerald H. Haug

  • Letter |

    Removing the protected status from poorly performing conservation areas, selling the land and using the money better elsewhere is controversial, but has a simplistic appeal. Here, it is shown that such degazetting can reap significant conservation benefits, even for the well-designed Australian network of protected areas, and even when there is a significant economic cost to transferring protected status to a new area.

    • Richard A. Fuller
    • , Eve McDonald-Madden
    •  & Hugh P. Possingham

  • News |

    The Deepwater Horizon oil spill puts ocean-current modelling to the test.

    • Janet Fang

  • Letter |

    One potential mechanism for maintaining biodiversity is negative feedback between a species and its specific enemies, meaning that other species can grow in its vicinity better than further individuals of the species in question. These authors show that in a tropical forest it is the soil biota that is the main cause of this feedback, and that this effect can explain the diversity.

    • Scott A. Mangan
    • , Stefan A. Schnitzer
    •  & James D. Bever

  • Editorial |

    The BP spill should help make the case for bringing ecosystem services into the economy.

  • Letter |

    Volcanic eruptions release a large amount of sulphur dioxide. This is oxidized to sulphate and can then form sulphate aerosol, which can affect the Earth's radiation balance. Here, past volcanic eruptions and atmospheric conditions are investigated by using sulphur and triple oxygen isotope measurements of atmospheric sulphate preserved in the rock record. The results show that seven eruption-related sulphate aerosol deposition events occurred in the mid-Cenozoic era in the northern High Plains of North America.

    • Huiming Bao
    • , Shaocai Yu
    •  & Daniel Q. Tong

  • Books & Arts |

    The most extensive evaluation to date finds that the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is robust and successfully cut the region's emissions in its first three years, explains Michael Grubb.

    • Michael Grubb

  • Letter |

    Large amounts of methane are oxidized to carbon dioxide in marine sediments by communities of specific archaea and bacteria. Indirect evidence indicates that the anaerobic oxidation of methane might proceed as the reverse of archaeal methane production from carbon dioxide, with methyl-coenzyme M reductase (MCR) as the methane-activating enzyme. Here it is found that purified MCR from Methanothermobacter marburgensis can convert methane into methyl-coenzyme M, supporting the 'reverse methanogenesis' theory.

    • Silvan Scheller
    • , Meike Goenrich
    •  & Bernhard Jaun

  • News Feature |

    The Icelandic eruption has given researchers the opportunity of a lifetime. Katharine Sanderson talks to scientists working around the clock to study the volcano and its effects.

    • Katharine Sanderson

  • Opinion |

    Plumes of dissolved gas could be used to determine how much oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, says David Valentine — if the studies are done soon.

    • David Valentine

  • Editorial |

    US agencies have moved too slowly in gathering key data on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

  • Column |

    An oil slick will not re-engage the public with environmental issues, warns Colin Macilwain, but it might lead to a saner US energy policy.

    • Colin Macilwain

  • Editorial |

    Ways to obtain more accurate data can and should be put in place to police greenhouse-gas emissions.

  • News |

    To control emissions, countries must first account accurately for their carbon. That will take considerable effort, reports Jeff Tollefson.

    • Jeff Tollefson

  • News Feature |

    A conduit from the Red Sea could restore the disappearing Dead Sea and slake the region's thirst. But such a massive engineering project could have untold effects, reports Josie Glausiusz.

    • Josie Glausiusz

  • News & Views |

    Most emissions of nitrous oxide from semi-arid, temperate grasslands usually occur during the spring thaw. The effects that grazing has on plant litter and snow cover dramatically reduce these seasonal emissions.

    • Stephen J. Del Grosso

  • News & Views |

    The asteroid belt is classically considered the domain of rocky bodies, being too close to the Sun for ice to survive. Or so we thought — not only is ice present, but at least one asteroid is covered in it.

    • Henry H. Hsieh

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