Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biogeochemistry
Carbon storage in Northern Ireland’s aquatic ecosystems: an evidence synthesis to support policy development.
Published: 2024-09-06
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Marine Biology, Oceanography
Blue carbon is defined as carbon that is naturally sequestered and stored in the world’s aquatic ecosystems. Governments around the world are currently seeking to develop a range of tools to help meet their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and potentially reverse anthropogenic climate change. As such, there is growing interest from policy makers in natural processes which may be [...]
Sensitivities of soil respiration and heterotrophic respiration to temperature in a cool-temperate forest with sika deer-induced understory vegetation alteration
Published: 2024-08-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Soil Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Overpopulated ungulates reduce the biomass of understory vegetation and promote the expansion of unpalatable plants in world forests. These understory degradations possibly influence sensitivities of soil respiration (Rs) and heterotrophic respiration (Rh) to temperature and moisture. Here, we examined this possibility in a cool-temperate forest in southern Kyushu, Japan. At the study site, the [...]
Relating Multi-Scale Plume Detection and Area Estimates of Methane Emissions: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis
Published: 2024-07-23
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Methodologies for inferring surface emissions of atmospheric trace gases can be categorized into plume detection and area-scale estimation. Plume detections are observations of emissions from either individual or clustered point sources. Area estimates are derived from top-down atmospheric flux inversion models or bottom-up inventories, which infer mean emissions typically over spatial scales [...]
Excitable Dynamics of Neoproterozoic to Early Paleozoic Atmospheric and Ocean Oxygen
Published: 2024-07-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry
The geochemical carbon isotope and redox proxy record indicates that Earth’s surface oxygenation involved a prolonged period of extreme variability in atmospheric and oceanic oxygen, spanning from the early Neoproterozoic to the early Paleozoic. This variability has been linked to external tectonic and evolutionary forcings, as well as to internal nonlinear feedbacks related to the [...]
Diversity at Goldschmidt conference
Published: 2024-06-19
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Sciences
The field of geochemistry has grown significantly over the past seventy years, contributing to our understanding of Earth's processes. However, geochemists often identify with broader fields like geology or oceanography, reflecting an identity crisis within the discipline. The Goldschmidt Conference, established in 1988, serves as a central international meeting for geochemists, promoting their [...]
Taxon-specific hydrogen isotope signals in cultures and mesocosms facilitate ecosystem and hydroclimate reconstruction
Published: 2024-06-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry
Phytoplankton play a key role in biogeochemical cycles, impacting atmospheric and aquatic chemistry, food webs, and water quality. However, it remains challenging to reconstruct changes in algal community composition throughout the geologic past, as existing proxies are suitable only for a subset of taxa and/or influenced by degradation. Here, we investigate if compound-specific hydrogen [...]
Limited long-term cooling effects of flood basalt emplacements
Published: 2024-04-22
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Volcanology
The emplacement of large igneous provinces (LIPs) is known to have been a driver of climate change in Earth’s past, particularly during the breakup of Pangaea. However, the balance between climate warming through CO2 emission and climate cooling through increased weathering is poorly understood. To better understand the role of LIP emplacement on long-term climate change, we utilize a coupled [...]
Plant controls over tropical wetland nitrous oxide dynamics: a review
Published: 2024-03-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Tropical wetlands are an important global source of greenhouse gas emissions, including nitrous oxide, a potent and long-last greenhouse gas. Tropical wetland ecosystems can be highly heterogeneous, featuring a variety of vegetation types, from grasses through to palms and mangroves. A variety of plant-mediated processes can exert key controls over wetland plant/soil nitrogen transportation and [...]
Scaling High-resolution Soil Organic Matter Composition to Improve Predictions of Potential Soil Respiration Across the Continental United States
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Soil Science
Despite the importance of microbial respiration of soil organic matter (SOM) in regulating carbon flux between soils and atmosphere, soil carbon cycling models remain primarily based on climate and soil properties, leading to large uncertainty in predictions. With data from the 1000 Soils Pilot of the Molecular Observation Network (MONet), we analyzed high resolution water-extractable SOM [...]
Graph Characterization of Higher Order Structure in Atmospheric Chemical Reaction Mechanisms
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Other Applied Mathematics, Other Environmental Sciences
Atmospheric chemical reactions play an important role in air quality and climate change. While the structure and dynamics of individual chemical reactions are fairly well understood, the emergent properties of the entire atmospheric chemical system, which can involve many different species that participate in many different reactions, are not well described. In this work, we leverage [...]
Subsurface microbial community structure shifts along the geological features of the Central American Volcanic Arc
Published: 2024-02-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Microbiology, Volcanology
Subduction of the Cocos and Nazca oceanic plates beneath the Caribbean plate drives the upward movement of deep fluids enriched in carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and iron along the Central American Volcanic Arc (CAVA). These compounds fuel diverse subsurface microbial communities that in turn alter the distribution, redox state, and isotopic composition of these compounds. Microbial community [...]
Microbial indicators and detection of Cu-sulfide ore mineralization
Published: 2024-01-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rapid electrification of society is placing unprecedented demand on critical mineral and metal resources. New strategies and technologies are thus needed to promote mineral discovery in regions where deposits are likely buried deep under soil and glacial till. We show that microbial communities from different soil types change in composition in response to amendment with copper. We also show [...]
Convergence in simulating global soil organic carbon by structurally different models after data assimilation
Published: 2023-11-20
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences
The current generation of biogeochemical models produce large uncertainty in carbon-climate feedback projections. Structural differences in these models have been identified as a major source of inter-model uncertainties when simulating soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics worldwide. However, parameterization could also play a role, particularly when common observational data are used to constrain [...]
Changes in mesophotic carbonate-platform export across the end of the last glacial cycle (Saya de Malha Bank, western Indian Ocean)
Published: 2023-11-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Geochemistry, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Paleobiology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
The export of neritic material from the top of carbonate platforms is a key process in the construction of their slopes. However, our knowledge of the supply pattern of materials from platforms is dominantly based on platforms lying in the euphotic zone during the present sea-level highstand. This is a somewhat biased perspective as through geological time not all platforms were euphotic. The [...]
High methane emissions from a eutrophic marine coastal basin driven by bubble release from the sediment
Published: 2023-10-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The production of methane in coastal sediments and its release to the water column is intensified by anthropogenic eutrophication and bottom water hypoxia, and it is yet uncertain whether methane emissions to the atmosphere will be enhanced. Here, we assess seasonal variations in methane dynamics in a eutrophic, seasonally euxinic coastal marine basin (Scharendijke, Lake Grevelingen). In-situ [...]