Despite growing recognition of herbivores as important ecosystem engineers, many major gaps remain in our understanding of how silicon and herbivory interact to shape biogeochemical processes. We highlight the need for more research particularly in natural settings as well as on the potential effects of herbivory on terrestrial silicon cycling to understand potentially critical animal–plant–soil feedbacks.

Silicon is the second most abundant element of the Earth's crust. In this review, we show that silicon inputs and outputs, to and from the world ocean, are 57 % and 37 % higher, respectively, than previous estimates. These changes are significant, modifying factors such as the geochemical residence time of silicon, which is now about 8000 years and 2 times faster than previously assumed. We also update the total biogenic silica pelagic production and provide an estimate for sponge production.

Jellyfish have been included in a global ocean biogeochemical model for the first time. The global mean jellyfish biomass in the model is within the observational range. Jellyfish are found to play an important role in the plankton ecosystem, influencing community structure, spatiotemporal dynamics and biomass. The model raises questions about the sensitivity of the zooplankton community to jellyfish mortality and the interactions between macrozooplankton and jellyfish.

In the past 20 years the condition of the eastern Baltic cod has dropped, with large implications for the fishery. Our results show that simultaneously the cod population has moved deeper while low-oxygenated waters detrimental for cod growth have become shallower. Cod have thus dwelled more in detrimental waters, explaining the drop in its condition. This study, using long-term fish and hydrological monitoring data, evidences the impact of deoxygenation on fish biology and fishing.

Freshwater reservoirs emit greenhouse gases (GHGs, CO₂ and CH₄) to the atmosphere; however, the sources underlying these emissions are numerous, and their magnitude is not well known. This study quantifies surface CO₂ and CH₄ emissions and all their potential sources in a tropical reservoir. Results highlight the changes in GHG sources along the river–reservoir continuum, with internal metabolism being a key component but highly uncertain and challenging to estimate at an ecosystem scale.

The paper describes a novel, fully autonomous, multi-gas flow-through set-up for multiple gases that combines established, high-quality oceanographic sensors in a small and robust system designed for use across all salinities and all types of platforms. We describe the system and its performance in all relevant detail, including the corrections which improve the accuracy of these sensors, and illustrate how simultaneous multi-gas set-ups can provide an extremely high spatiotemporal resolution.

We used drones to measure greenhouse gas emission factors from fires in the Brazilian Cerrado. We compared early-dry-season management fires and late-dry-season fires to determine if fire management can be a tool for abating emissions. Although we found some evidence of increased CO and CH₄ emission factors, the seasonal effect was smaller than that found in previous studies. For N₂O, the third most important greenhouse gas, we found opposite trends in grass- and shrub-dominated areas.

Foraminifera are unicellular marine organisms that play an important role in the marine element cycle. Changes of environmental parameters such as salinity or temperature have a significant impact on the faunal assemblages. Our experiments show that changes in salinity immediately influence the foraminiferal activity. Also the light regime has a significant impact on carbon or nitrogen processing in foraminifera which contain no kleptoplasts.

A decline in upper-ocean pH with time is typically ascribed to ocean acidification. A more quantitative interpretation is often confused by failing to recognize the implications of pH being a logarithmic transform of hydrogen ion concentration rather than an absolute measure. This can lead to an unwitting misinterpretation of pH data. We provide three real-world examples illustrating this and recommend the reporting of both hydrogen ion concentration and pH in studies of ocean chemical change.

Based on a 2-year monitoring study, we found that the freshwater system of the Danube Delta, Romania, releases carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere. The amount of carbon released depends on the freshwater feature (river branches, channels and lakes), season and hydrologic condition, affecting the exchange with the wetland. Spatial upscaling should therefore consider these factors. Furthermore, the Danube Delta increases the amount of carbon reaching the Black Sea via the Danube River.

Few studies have investigated effects of ocean acidification and seasonal changes in temperature and day length on marine diatoms. We cultured a marine diatom under two CO₂ levels and three combinations of temperature and day length, simulating different seasons, to investigate combined effects of these factors. Acidification had contrasting effects under different combinations, indicating that the future ocean may show different effects on diatoms in different clusters of factors.

Some 540 Myr ago, animal life evolved in the ocean. Previous research suggested that when these early animals started inhabiting the seafloor, they retained phosphorus in the seafloor, thereby limiting photosynthesis in the ocean. We studied salt marsh sediments with and without animals and found that their impact on phosphorus retention is limited, which implies that their impact on the global environment might have been less drastic than previously assumed.

Soils from an everlasting fire (gas seep) in Sicily, Italy, reveal high relative abundances of novel uncultivated mycobacteria and unique ¹³C-depleted mycocerosic acids (multi-methyl branched fatty acids) close to the main gas seep. Our results imply that mycocerosic acids in combination with their depleted δ¹³C values offer a new biomarker tool to study the role of soil mycobacteria as hydrocarbon consumers in the modern and past global carbon cycle.

Our study investigated the exchange of the three major greenhouse gases (GHGs) over a temperate grassland prior to and after restoration through tillage in central Switzerland. Our results show that irregular management events, such as tillage, have considerable effects on GHG emissions in the year of tillage while leading to enhanced carbon uptake and similar nitrogen losses via nitrous oxide in the years following tillage to those observed prior to tillage.

The physical processes behind varying evapotranspiration rates in forests and grasslands in Europe are investigated in a regional model study with idealized afforestation scenarios. The results show that the evapotranspiration response to afforestation depends on the interplay of two counteracting factors: the transpiration facilitating characteristics of a forest and the reduced saturation deficits of forests caused by an increased surface roughness and associated lower surface temperatures.

We investigate the relative importance of two individual factors (hydrodynamical disturbance and aquatic microbial community) that possibly control SOC decomposition rates in river systems. We found aquatic microbial organisms led to rapid SOC decomposition, while effect of mechanical disturbance is relative minor. We propose a simple conceptual model: hydrodynamic disturbance is only important when soil aggregates are strong enough to withstand the disruptive forces imposed by water immersions.

We studied aboveground productivity in humid tropical montane old-growth forests in two highly diverse Andean regions with large geological and topographic heterogeneity and related productivity to tree diversity and climatic, edaphic and stand structural factors. From our results we conclude that the productivity of highly diverse Neotropical montane forests is primarily controlled by thermal and edaphic factors and stand structural properties, while tree diversity is of minor importance.