Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biogeochemistry
Geosphere and Biosphere coevolution: the role of trace metals availability in the evolution of biogeochemistry
Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Planetary Sciences
Earth’s geosphere and biosphere have coevolved over time, influencing each other’s stability and keeping our planet habitable for most of its 4.543 billion years of history. Biogeochemical cycles play a key role in controlling this interaction, connecting long-term geological cycles and the much faster evolution of the Earth’s outer biologically dominated envelopes. A small set of [...]
Community recommendations for geochemical data, services and analytical capabilities in the 21st century
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry
The majority of geochemical and cosmochemical research is based upon observations and, in particular, upon the acquisition, processing and interpretation of analytical data from physical samples. The exponential increase in volumes and rates of data acquisition over the last century, combined with advances in instruments, analytical methods and an increasing variety of data types analysed, has [...]
Atmospheric carbon emissions from benthic trawling depend on water depth and ocean circulation
Published: 2022-10-28
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Through its vastness, resilience and biogeochemical complexity, the ocean offers humanity some of the largest potential natural pathways for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while avoiding new sources of anthropogenic emissions. In proposing a network of new marine protected areas in service of global ocean conservation, Sala et al. describe a potentially large climate benefit of such [...]
Experimental comparisons of carbonate-associated sulfate extraction methods
Published: 2022-10-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Carbonate-associated sulfate (CAS) refers to trace amounts of sulfate incorporated into carbonate minerals during precipitation. CAS has been the most commonly used approach to recover the paleo-seawater sulfate sulfur isotope composition (δ34Ssw) as carbonate rocks are more common and occur in less restricted marine environments than alternative sulfate-bearing minerals (such as gypsum and [...]
Trait-based modeling revealed higher microbial diversity leads to greater ecological resilience in response to an ecosystem disturbance
Published: 2022-10-15
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Microbiology, Oceanography, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
To quantitatively understand the ecological resilience of an ecosystem with specialized habitats, we focused on deep-sea microbial communities and simulated the response of diverse microbes in specialized habitats to a pulse ecosystem disturbance - the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Two microbial communities with equivalent metabolic libraries were acclimated to the presence [...]
FIELD LEVEL VARIATION INFLUENCED OUTCOMES MORE THAN N-FERTILISER, FYM, COVER CROPS OR THEIR LEGACY EFFECTS FOLLOWING CONVERSION TO A NO-TILL ARABLE SYSTEM
Published: 2022-10-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Soil Science
Crop establishment in no-till arable systems benefits from favourable soil conditions. Combined with the incorporation of crop residues and manures, no-till can influence soil organic carbon (SOC) and organic matter (SOM) dynamics, crop productivity and nutrient cycling. These processes are shaped by spatial and temporal factors and associated microbial processes. There is a lack of diachronic [...]
Influence of macrophytes on stratification and dissolved oxygen dynamics in ponds
Published: 2022-09-24
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Hydrology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Small waterbodies are sensitive to stressors such as nutrient enrichment and heatwaves. However, when present, macrophytes may mediate these compounding stressors through their influence on water column thermal structure. Canopy-forming macrophyte beds can induce thermal stratification, which may limit the depth and degree of water column warming during heatwaves. 2. We leveraged an ecosystem [...]
Much of Zero Emissions Commitment Occurs Before Reaching Net Zero Emissions
Published: 2022-08-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
We explore the response of the Earth’s climate and carbon system to an idealized sequential addition and removal of CO2 to the atmosphere, following a symmetric and continuous emissions pathway, in contrast to the discontinuous emissions pathways that have largely informed our understanding of the climate response to net-zero and net-negative emissions to date. We find, using both an Earth [...]
Improved estimation of phytoplankton abundance and fine-scale water quality features via simultaneous discrete and semi-continuous surveys
Published: 2022-08-06
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography, Water Resource Management
The abundance and distribution of phytoplankton is driven by light and nutrient availability which in turn is controlled by larger-scale regional processes such as climatic variability and global teleconnections. However, such estimates are largely built on evidence gathered from coarse (on the order of kilometers), discrete grab sampling networks where the overall set of measured parameters is [...]
MacroSheds: a synthesis of long-term biogeochemical, hydroclimatic, and geospatial data from small watershed ecosystem studies
Published: 2022-08-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
The U.S. Federal Government supports hundreds of watershed ecosystem monitoring efforts from which solute fluxes can be calculated. While details of instrumentation and sampling methods vary across these studies, the types of data collected and the questions that motivate their analysis are remarkably similar. Nevertheless, little effort toward the compilation of these datasets has previously [...]
Sampling across large-scale geological gradients to study geosphere-biosphere interactions
Published: 2022-07-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Despite being one of the largest microbial ecosystems on Earth, with >1029 microbial cells, many basic open questions remain about how life exists and thrives in the deep subsurface biosphere, inside Earth’s crust. Much of this ambiguity is due to the fact that it is exceedingly difficult and (often prohibitively expensive) to directly sample the deep subsurface, requiring elaborate drilling [...]
Evaluation of preservation protocols for oxygen-sensitive minerals within laminated aquatic sediments
Published: 2022-07-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Sedimentology
Laminated sediments can record seasonal changes in sedimentation of material from anoxic waters, including minerals of the redox-sensitive elements Fe, Mn, and S that form under varying oxygen levels, mineral saturation conditions, and from microbial metabolism. However, preserving both the oxygen-sensitive minerals for identification is challenging when preservation of the spatial arrangement of [...]
Unraveling the role of polysaccharide-goethite associations on glyphosate’ adsorption-desorption dynamics and binding mechanisms
Published: 2022-07-23
Subjects: Agriculture, Analytical Chemistry, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Soil Science
Hypothesis Glyphosate retention at environmental interfaces is strongly governed by adsorption and desorption processes. In particular, glyphosate can react with organo-mineral associations (OMAs) in soils, sediments, and aquatic environments. We hypothesize mineral-adsorbed biomacromolecules modulate the extent and rate of glyphosate adsorption and desorption where electrostatic and noncovalent [...]
Freshwater Suspended Particulate Matter – Key Components and Processes in Floc Formation and Dynamics.
Published: 2022-02-18
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Sedimentology
Freshwater suspended particulate matter (SPM) plays an important role in many biogeochemical cycles and serves multiple ecosystem functions. Most SPM is present as complex floc-like aggregate structures composed of various minerals and organic matter from the molecular to the organism level. Flocs provide habitat for microbes and feed for larger organisms. They constitute microbial bioreactors, [...]
A one-million-year isotope record from siderites formed in modern ferruginous sediments
Published: 2022-02-17
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Other Environmental Sciences, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Ancient iron formations hold important records of environmental conditions during the Precambrian Eons. Reconstructions of past oceanic systems require investigating modern ferruginous analogs to disentangle water column and diagenetic signals recorded in iron-bearing minerals. We analyzed oxygen, iron, and carbon isotopes in siderite, a ferrous carbonate phase commonly used as an environmental [...]