Permafrost thaw in Arctic regions is increasing methane emissions, but quantification is difficult given the large and remote areas impacted. We show that UAV data together with satellite data can be used to extrapolate emissions across the wider landscape as well as detect areas at risk of higher emissions. A transition of currently degrading areas to fen type vegetation can increase emission by several orders of magnitude, highlighting the importance of quantifying areas at risk.

Permafrost thaw initiates thermokarst landscape formation, resulting in distinct new habitats, including degraded permafrost soil, thermokarst lake sediments, and lake water. These distinct habitats harbored differentiated bacterial communities that originated from the same source, differing in diversity, assembly mechanisms, and environmental influences. The results imply ecological consequences of permafrost degradation in the face of further climate change.

The year 2022 was unique in that the summer heat wave and drought led to a widespread reduction in vegetation growth at high elevation in the European Alps. This impact was unprecedented in the southwestern, warm, and dry part of the Alps. Over the last 2 decades, water has become a co-dominant control of vegetation activity in areas that were, so far, primarily controlled by temperature, and the growth of mountain grasslands has become increasingly sensitive to moisture availability.

We conducted intensive spatial sampling of the hypertrophic fishpond to better understand the spatial dynamics of methane fluxes and environmental heterogeneity in fishponds. The diffusive fluxes of methane accounted for only a minor fraction of the total fluxes and both varied pronouncedly within the pond and over the studied summer season. This could be explained only by the water depth. Wind substantially affected temperature, oxygen and chlorophyll a distribution in the pond.

Human CO₂ emissions are modifying ocean carbonate chemistry, causing ocean acidification and likely already impacting marine ecosystems. Here, we added CO₂ to intertidal pools at the start of emersion to investigate the influence of future ocean acidification on net community production (NCP) and calcification (NCC). By day, adding CO₂ fertilized the pools (+20 % NCP). By night, pools experienced net community dissolution, a dissolution that was further increased (+40 %) by the CO₂ addition.

Total alkalinity (TA) is the oceanic capacity to store CO₂. Estuaries can be a TA source. Anaerobic metabolic pathways like denitrification (reduction of NO₃⁻ to N₂) generate TA and are a major nitrogen (N) sink. Another important N sink is anammox that transforms NH₄⁺ with NO₂⁻ into N₂ without TA generation. By combining TA and N₂ production, we identified a TA source, denitrification, occurring in the water column and suggest anammox as the dominant N₂ producer in the bottom layer of the Ems.

Using a numerical model, we revealed that a large proportion of nutrients in a semi-enclosed sea (Seto Inland Sea, Japan) comes from the Pacific Ocean and supports about half of the phytoplankton growth in the sea. Such results imply that the human-made management of nutrient load from land needs to consider the presence of oceanic nutrients, which act as a background concentration and are not controlled by human activities.

The movement of rubble on coral reefs can lead to persistent unstable rubble beds that hinder reef recovery. To identify where such rubble beds are, we need to know the minimum velocity that will move rubble. We found that loose rubble had a 50 % chance of being moved when near-bed wave orbital velocities reached ~0.3 m s⁻¹; rubble moved more if pieces were small and had no branches. Rubble beds that experience frequent movement would be good candidates for rubble stabilisation interventions.

We successfully developed conceptual models to examine how dissolved carbon distributions change with climate within a small subtropical lake, considering both physical and biochemical processes. Typhoons controlled the seasonal and interannual variation in C fluxes due to large amounts of carbon loading and rapid mixing within the whole lake, resulting in the net primary production being 3.14 times higher in typhoon years than in non-typhoon years in Yuan‒Yang Lake.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and hence it is important to understand its sources and sinks in the environment. Here we present new data from organic-rich surface sediments below an oxygen minimum zone off the coast of California (Santa Barbara Basin) demonstrating the simultaneous microbial production and consumption of methane, which appears to be an important process preventing the build-up of methane in these sediments and the emission into the water column and atmosphere.

We investigated the effect of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions from plants. ENSO events can cause a significant increase in these emissions, which have a long-term impact on the Earth's atmosphere. Persistent ENSO conditions can cause long-term changes in vegetation, resulting in even higher BVOC emissions. We link ENSO-induced emission anomalies with driving atmospheric and vegetational variables.