Volume 16 Issue 5, May 2023

Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Shlomit Sharoni, an ocean biogeochemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr Kelly Andersen, a tropical ecologist at Nanyang Technological University about the interplay between phosphorous cycling and the ecosystems they study.

NASA’s DART mission showed how a kinetic impact can be deployed to enhance the momentum change of a near-Earth asteroid while giving us the first up-close view of a binary asteroid system.

High pressures may have enabled ferric iron-rich silicate melts to coexist with iron metal near the base of magma oceans early in the history of large rocky planets like Earth. This suggests a relatively oxygen-rich atmosphere during the late stages of core formation on these planets.

From Dutch painters to ocean sediments, Caroline Slomp discusses the role vivianite plays in the distribution of phosphorus, an essential nutrient for life.

Field studies reveal that carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition and soil-borne plant pathogen control are greater in soils beneath mosses than in unvegetated soils. Based on these studies, modelling shows the likely extent of soil moss cover and underlines its value to the planet.

Analogue experiments show that powerful eruption columns deliver material to the sea surface and seabed in periodic annular sedimentation waves. Depending on the water depth, the impact and spread of these waves at the sea surface and seabed can excite tsunamis, drive radial pyroclastic density currents, and build concentric terraces.

A review of aqueous phosphorus availability on the Earth’s early surface suggests a range of phosphorus sources supplied the prebiotic Earth, but that phosphorus availability declined as life evolved and altered geochemical cycling.

Precipitation frequency and intensity across different geographic regions are positively correlated in reanalysis data and observations, suggesting universal precipitation-generating processes.

Earth’s spectral long-wave feedback parameter can be directly observed using satellite measurements, revealing the influence of relative humidity on climate feedbacks.

Projections of forest aboveground carbon storage potential in the United States show divergent results across different modelling approaches due to uncertainties in the estimated impact of climate risks, according to a comparison of modelling results.

Mosses support carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition and plant pathogen control in soils across the globe, according to a global survey of soil attributes in ecosystems with and without mosses.

Mercury deposition onto the Greenland Ice Sheet increased from the Last Glacial Termination to early Holocene as the North Atlantic warmed and sea ice retreated, according to an ice-core mercury record and atmospheric chemistry modelling.

Submarine terraced deposits of some caldera-forming explosive eruptions result from periodic collapses of the eruption column and can be used to estimate their source eruption rate, according to an analysis of such terraces and analogue experiments.

Differences in shallow- and deep-earthquake characteristics can be explained by Earth’s depth-dependent rigidity instead of different rupture processes, according to machine learning classification of moderate to large earthquakes.

The early Earth’s mantle rapidly oxidized during the Hadean because of iron disproportionation and core segregation, according to experiments melting peridotite under deep-mantle conditions.