Environmental sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Black carbon (BC) contributes positively to the radiation budget, yet models are unable to correctly capture its seasonal variability in the Arctic. Here, the authors demonstrate improved model skill in simulating BC concentration and sources when including estimates of BC emissions from fires.

    • P Winiger
    • , A Andersson
    •  & Ö. Gustafsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human settlements are often associated with degraded landscapes. Trant and colleagues now show that near-shore settlements in British Columbia have locally enhanced forest productivity over millennia by enriching soils with calcium and phosphorous derived from shellfish remnants.

    • Andrew J. Trant
    • , Wiebe Nijland
    •  & Brian M. Starzomski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Black carbon accelerates melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and Tibet, yet the source of these aerosols remains enigmatic. Here, the authors use isotope fingerprinting techniques to determine the origin of black carbon preserved in glacier ice cores recovered from the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau.

    • Chaoliu Li
    • , Carme Bosch
    •  & Örjan Gustafsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat loss and urbanization are primary components of human impact on the environment. Here, Venter et al.use global data on infrastructure, agriculture, and urbanization to show that the human footprint is growing slower than the human population, but footprints are increasing in biodiverse regions.

    • Oscar Venter
    • , Eric W. Sanderson
    •  & James E. M. Watson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cyanobacterial nitrogen fixation supplies bioavailable nitrogen to marine ecosystems, but the mechanisms governing iron and phosphorus co-limitation in elevated CO2remain unknown. Here, the authors show a complex cellular response to co-limitation characterized by changes in growth, cell size, and the proteome.

    • Nathan G. Walworth
    • , Fei-Xue Fu
    •  & David A. Hutchins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Distinguishing between authigenic carbonate and primary marine carbonate is fundamental to our understanding of Earth’s carbon, oxygen and calcium cycles. Here, the authors show that a combination of uranium concentration and carbon isotope composition is able to distinguish between the two carbonate sinks.

    • Ming-Yu Zhao
    • , Yong-Fei Zheng
    •  & Yan-Yan Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The long-range atmospheric transport and deposition of reactive nitrogen may be affected by human activities. Here, the authors use isotope data to constrain sources of reactive nitrogen to high elevation lakes in the Uinta Mountains, finding that the majority originates from distant agricultural activities.

    • E. J. Hundey
    • , S. D. Russell
    •  & K. A. Moser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Extremophiles on Earth are known to respire methane, and the potential existence of methane on Mars indicates similar organisms could survive there. Here, the authors present data from Martian meteorites confirming the presence of methane, indicating that a habitat capable of supporting organisms exists on Mars.

    • Nigel J. F. Blamey
    • , John Parnell
    •  & Roberta L. Flemming

  • Article |

    Selenium deficiency is a major health problem, particularly in the selenium-poor belt in China, yet its distribution in the terrestrial environment is poorly understood. Here, the authors combine geochemical and palaeoclimate data and show that selenium distribution in China may be related to East Asian monsoon rainfall.

    • Tim Blazina
    • , Youbin Sun
    •  & Lenny H.E. Winkel

  • Article |

    Plutonium and caesium radioisotopes have been injected into the atmosphere during nuclear weapon tests and via other anthropogenic sources. Alvarado et al. show that volcanic eruptions can redistribute those isotopes in the lower atmosphere, using the Eyjafjallajökull eruption as an example.

    • J. A. Corcho Alvarado
    • , P. Steinmann
    •  & P. Froidevaux

  • Article |

    The radioactive element uranium tends to accumulate in wetland soils in the insoluble and immobile tetravalent form. Wang et al. show that uranium(IV) can associate with highly mobile organic- and iron(II)-bearing colloids and that its mobility in organic-rich environments may be severely underestimated.

    • Yuheng Wang
    • , Manon Frutschi
    •  & Rizlan Bernier-Latmani

  • Article |

    Isoprene and monoterpenes, emitted by terrestrial plants, have an important role in both plant biology and environment, but they are poorly quantified at the ecosystem level. Peñuelas et al.show that the photochemical reflectance index can be used to indirectly estimate foliar isoprenoid emissions remotely.

    • Josep Peñuelas
    • , Giovanni Marino
    •  & Iolanda Filella

  • Article |

    Deep oceanic crust could host a wealth of microbial life, but biogeochemical reactions therein are poorly understood. Orcutt et al.combine measurements of sedimentary oxygen and pore water chemistry from basement crust with a reactive transport box model to shed light on oxygen consumption in basaltic crust.

    • Beth N. Orcutt
    • , C. Geoffrey Wheat
    •  & Wolfgang Bach

  • Article |

    Global environmental change is affecting the strength of interspecific interactions. The authors here estimate how much change species can tolerate before becoming extinct, and they find that species tolerance is very sensitive to the net direction of change.

    • Serguei Saavedra
    • , Rudolf P. Rohr
    •  & Jordi Bascompte

  • Article |

    The damaging effects of loud noise on auditory function are well established, but the effects of low-level noise are not so well understood. Zhou and Merzenich chronically expose adult rats to structured low-level noise and find that it causes auditory cortex damage and sound discrimination impairment.

    • Xiaoming Zhou
    •  & Michael M. Merzenich

  • Article |

    The night sky viewed from Earth is very bright at infrared wavelengths due to atmospheric emission, making land-based astronomy difficult in this spectral region. Here, a photonic filter is demonstrated to suppress this unwanted light, opening new paths to infrared astronomy with current and future telescopes.

    • J. Bland-Hawthorn
    • , S.C. Ellis
    •  & C. Trinh

  • Article |

    A crucial transition in the origin of life was the emergence of self-replicating RNA and its compartmentalization within protocellular structures. Here it is shown that the physicochemical properties of ice, a simple medium widespread on a temperate early earth, could have mediated this transition.

    • James Attwater
    • , Aniela Wochner
    •  & Philipp Holliger

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