A study in Iceland found that microbes are hoarding more nitrogen for themselves, altering nutrient cycling and leaving less for plants.
nutrients
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Rethinking How to Measure Roots
Researchers present a new method for determining depth-dependent patterns of the root-soil interactions that drive ecosystem functions in the critical zone.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
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.
Posted inNews
Glacier Runoff Becomes Less Nutritious as Glaciers Retreat
Sediment from retreating, land-terminating glaciers contains proportionally fewer micronutrients such as iron and manganese, reducing the glaciers’ value to microorganisms at the base of the food web.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How Algae Helped Some Life Outlast Extinction
Cooler waters near Norway’s north provided a refuge for phytoplankton during the Great Dying, a new study suggests.
Posted inNews
Free-Roaming Bison Graze Life into Grasslands
A new study suggests that Yellowstone’s herd of bison accelerates nutrient cycling, offering a glimpse into the North American plains of yesteryear.
Posted inScience Updates
Tracing Iron’s Invisible Transformations Just Beneath Our Feet
A new method that adds synthetic iron minerals to soils sheds light on hard-to-observe soil and sediment processes and may have a host of other applications in the Earth sciences and beyond.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Waterworks on Tree Stems: The Wonders of Stemflow
Stemflow hydrodynamics offers rich physics that seeks to describe water and matter cycling within the atmosphere-biosphere-geosphere with implications for water resources planning.
Posted inNews
Warming Winters Sabotage Trees’ Carbon Uptake
In temperate forests, the biomass-building benefits of warmer growing seasons are offset by damaging variability in winter weather—a disparity that climate models may miss.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Water Tracks: The Veins of Thawing Landscapes
Tracing and tracking change in permafrost flowpaths could reveal the dynamics of warming poles.