We explore the sensitivity of cold-water corals (CWCs) to environmental changes utilizing a multiproxy approach on a coral-bearing sediment core from off southeastern Brazil. Our results reveal that over the past 160 kyr, CWCs flourished during glacial high-northern-latitude cold events (Heinrich stadials). These periods were associated with anomalous wet phases on the continent enhancing terrigenous nutrient and organic-matter supply to the continental margin, boosting food supply to the CWCs.

In recent decades, extensive mortality of reef-building corals throughout the Caribbean region has led to the erosion of reef frameworks and declines in biodiversity. Using field observations, models, and high-precision U–Th dating, we quantified changes in the structural complexity of coral reef frameworks over the past 2 decades. Structural complexity was stable at reef scales, yet bioerosion led to declines in small-scale microhabitat complexity with cascading effects on cryptic fauna.

This paper demonstrates that the recently discovered cable bacteria are capable of using a mineral, known as siderite, as a source for the formation of iron oxides. This work also demonstrates that the activity of cable bacteria can lead to a distinct subsurface layer in the sediment that can be used as a marker for their activity.

Data generated by airborne laser scans enable the characterization of surface vegetation for any application that might need it, such as forest management, modeling for numerical weather prediction, or wind energy estimation. In this work we present a new algorithm for calculating the vegetation density using data from airborne laser scans. The new routine is more robust than earlier methods, and an implementation in popular programming languages accompanies the article to support new users.

Diversity and community composition of nitrogen-fixing microbes in the three main oxygen minimum zones of the world ocean were investigated using nifH clone libraries. Representatives of three main clusters of nifH genes were detected. Sequences were most diverse in the surface waters. The most abundant OTUs were affiliated with Alpha- and Gammaproteobacteria. The sequences were biogeographically distinct and the dominance of a few OTUs was commonly observed in OMZs in this (and other) studies.

Events that influence the functioning of the Earth’s ecosystems are of interest in relation to a changing climate. We propose a method to identify and characterise waves of extreme events affecting marine ecosystems for multi-week periods over wide areas. Our method can be applied to suitable ecosystem variables and has been used to describe different kinds of extreme event waves of phytoplankton chlorophyll in the Mediterranean Sea, by analysing the output from a high-resolution model.

The abundance and isotope composition of the trace metal barium (Ba) allows us to track and quantify nutrient cycling throughout the Amazon Basin. In particular, we show that the Ba biological fingerprint evolves from that of a strong net nutrient uptake in the mountainous area of the Andes towards efficient nutrient recycling on the plains of the Lower Amazon. Our study highlights the fact that the geochemical signature of rock-derived nutrients transported by the Amazon is scarred by life.

Through a comprehensive investigation, we observed differential niche partitioning among diverse ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) sublineages in a typical subtropical estuary. Distinct AOA communities observed at DNA and RNA levels suggested that a strong divergence in ammonia-oxidizing activity among different AOA groups occurs. Our result highlights the importance of identifying major ammonia oxidizers at RNA level in future studies.

The novelty of our work is that it presents a series of potential interactions between drivers of soil organic carbon at broad scales in temperate mountain grasslands. The most relevant contribution of our work is that it illustrates the importance of grazing management for soil carbon stocks, indicating that interactions between grazing species and soil nitrogen and herbage quality may be promising paths in order to design further management policies for palliating climate change.

The northern Indian Ocean hosts an extensive oxygen minimum zone (OMZ), which intensified due to human-induced global changes. This includes the occurrence of anoxic events on the Indian shelf and affects benthic ecosystems and the pelagic ecosystem structure in the Arabian Sea. Consequences for biogeochemical cycles are unknown, which, in addition to the poor representation of mesoscale features, reduces the reliability of predictions of the future OMZ development in the northern Indian Ocean.

The adverse atmospheric environmental conditions do not appear suited for microbial life. We conducted the first global comparative metagenomic analysis to find out if airborne microbial communities might be selected by their ability to resist these adverse conditions. The relatively higher concentration of fungi led to the observation of higher proportions of stress-related functions in air. Fungi might likely resist and survive atmospheric physical stress better than bacteria.

Rivers draining the acid sulphate soils of western Finland deliver large amounts of metals (e.g. Cd, Co, Cu, La, Mn, Ni, and Zn) to the coastal sea. To better understand metal enrichment in the sea floor, we analysed metal contents and grain size distribution in nine sediment cores, which increased in the 1960s and 1970s and stayed at high levels afterwards. The enrichment is visible more than 25 km out from the river mouths. Organic aggregates are suggested as the key seaward metal carriers.

Models from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phases 5 and 6 are compared to a satellite data product of column-averaged CO₂ mole fractions (XCO₂). The previously believed discrepancy of the negative trend in seasonal cycle amplitude in the satellite product, which is not seen in in situ data nor in the models, is attributed to a sampling characteristic. Furthermore, CMIP6 models are shown to have made progress in reproducing the observed XCO₂ time series compared to CMIP5.

Many natural environments differ in their range of salt concentration (salinity). We developed a metric for the number of water molecules in formation reactions of different proteins and found that it decreases between freshwater and marine systems and also in laboratory experiments with increasing salinity. These results demonstrate a new type of link between geochemical conditions and the chemical composition of microbial communities that can be useful for models of microbial adaptation.

The Clarion–Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) located in the Pacific is commercially the most important area of proposed manganese nodule mining. Extraction of this will influence the life and distribution of small deep-sea invertebrates like peracarid crustaceans, of which >90 % are undescribed species new to science. We are doing a species delimitation approach as baseline for an ecological interpretation of species distribution and discuss the results in light of future deep-sea conservation.

The temporal variability in the Landsat satellite near-infrared (NIR) band captured the dynamics of forest regrowth after disturbances in Central Amazon. This variability was represented by the dynamics of forest regrowth after disturbances were properly represented by the ELM-FATES model (Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES) in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (ELM)).

Soil respiration is an important carbon flux and key process determining the net ecosystem production of terrestrial ecosystems. The Congo Basin lacks studies quantifying carbon fluxes. We measured soil CO₂ fluxes from different forest types in the Congo Basin and were able to show that, even though soil CO₂ fluxes are similarly high in lowland and montane forests, the drivers were different: soil moisture in montane forests and C availability in the lowland forests.

We report biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) ambient levels and emission rates from key vegetation species in the Alaskan arctic tundra, providing a new data set to further constrain isoprene chemistry under low NO_x conditions in models. We add to the growing body of evidence that climate-induced changes in the vegetation composition will significantly affect the BVOC emission potential of the tundra, with implications for atmospheric oxidation processes and climate feedbacks.

Mean annual net ecosystem productivity (NEP) is related to the magnitude of the carbon sink of a specific ecosystem, while its inter-annual variation (IAV_NEP) characterizes the stability of such a carbon sink. Thus, a better understanding of the co-varying NEP and IAV_NEP is critical for locating the major and stable carbon sinks on land. Based on daily NEP observations from eddy-covariance sites, we found local indicators for the spatially varying NEP and IAV_NEP, respectively.

We studied the impact of a stream on peatland microhabitats and CH₄ emissions in a northern boreal fen. We found that there were higher water levels, lower peat temperatures, and greater oxygen concentrations close to the stream; these supported the highest biomass production but resulted in the lowest CH4 emissions. Further from the stream, the conditions were drier and CH₄ emissions were also low. CH₄ emissions were highest at an intermediate distance from the stream.