Vascular plants may have contributed to shaping Earth’s atmosphere long before trees evolved.
biogeosciences
Posted inResearch Spotlights
To Estimate Plant Water Use, Consider the Xylem
New research shows that chemical isotopes from plant xylem can improve representations of the forest water cycle.
Posted inNews
Deep-Sea Pressure Crushes Carbon Cycling
The extreme pressure in the deep sea stifles microbes’ appetite for organic carbon. This finding could have important implications for carbon budgets and geoengineering.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
The World’s Roots Are Getting Shallower
Root-filled soils are hot spots of nutrient cycling and carbon storage. New research finds that the world has lost millions of cubic meters of rooted soil volume—and we’re on track to lose much more.
Posted inNews
Warmer Winters Keep Crops Sleepy into Spring, Hurting Yield
Annual crops go dormant during winter. Frosty temperatures cue them to wake up—but the warmer winters brought on by climate change scramble the cold signal, hurting yield.
Posted inNews
A Mysterious Dome Reveals Clues to Australia’s Miocene History
The Nullarbor Plain has been relatively untouched by geological forces, leaving traces of the continent’s deep past.
Posted inFeatures
Harmful Algal Blooms: No Good, Just the Bad and the Ugly
Natural and human factors are leading to larger, more frequent, and longer-lasting algae blooms. Recent research is increasingly revealing the scope of the problem and informing potential responses.
Posted inNews
A Spike in Wildfires Contributed to the End-Permian Extinction
An upward trend in fossilized charcoal indicates that wildfires may have contributed to extinctions during the Great Dying.
Posted inNews
Seashells and Penguin Bones Reveal Thwaites Glacier’s Quiet Past
Antarctica’s Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers are melting faster than they have in the past 5,500 years, new evidence shows. Against expectations, their pasts have been remarkably stable.