With unique monsoon, mesoscale and submesoscale processes, the Indian Ocean offers critical insights and new challenges to achieving a full understanding of marine environments and the Earth system.
ecosystems
Warm Waters Disrupt Seagrasses’ Microbial Environment
Microbial communities in ocean sediments become imbalanced as water temperatures rise, harming seagrass growth, a new study suggests.
Tracing Water’s Hidden Journey Through the Earth’s Living Skin
Water’s natural fingerprints reveal how it’s stored, mixed, and released through the Earth’s Critical Zone, potentially improving Earth System models in a rapidly warming world.
Managed Agriculture Hinders Predictability of Critical Zone Features
Intensively managed agricultural sites show behavioral shifts of the critical zone system and subsystems thus impacting predictability.
With the Ocean Included, the Social Cost of Carbon Doubles
A new calculation includes ocean ecosystems when assessing the monetary impact of climate change.
How to Accelerate Advances in Ecological Forecasting
Developing shared cyberinfrastructure can enhance predictions of ecological change and enable improved decisionmaking for resource management and public well-being.
Alligators May Boost Carbon Storage in Coastal Wetlands
Research suggests that American alligators help coastal wetlands retain more carbon, linking predator recovery in the southeastern United States to ecosystem function and climate processes.
Blending Science and Indigenous Knowledge to Tell an Estuary’s Story
A new study of nutrient levels in soil cores supports oral Indigenous history, informing future estuary restoration efforts.
An Ecosystem Never Forgets
A new study in southwestern China shows how ecosystems may exhibit “hydrological memory,” which affects how they react to extreme climate events such as heat and drought.
Wintertime Spike in Oceanic Iron Levels Detected near Hawaii
Seasonal rainfall and runoff of sediments from the Hawaiian Islands could be responsible for the previously undetected peak.
