Volume 17 Issue 2, February 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science will play a crucial role in improving environmental sustainability, but the energy requirements of these methods will have an increasingly negative effect on the environment without sustainable design and use.

Nephrite jade is a semi-precious gemstone composed of tiny crystals and needles of amphibole. Here, Matthew Tarling and Steven Smith describe how its origins lead to inner toughness and beauty.

Information on past environmental conditions stored within high-altitude glaciers is being lost due to accelerated melting associated with climate change, according to ice core analysis from a Swiss glacier.

Noble gas concentrations in the deep North Pacific indicate that sea-level pressure in Antarctic Bottom Water formation regions has changed over the past 2,000 years.

Petrological reaction experiments and magnesium isotope data suggest that reactive flow with mantle cumulates can explain the composition of Ti-rich basaltic magmas.

The amount of secondary organic aerosol produced from wildfire emissions is much higher than previously thought, according to model simulations of evolution of individual species of organic aerosol over time.

Canopy nitrification contributes up to 80% of the nitrate reaching the soils via throughfall in European forests, according to analyses of nitrogen deposition and oxygen isotopes in nitrate at ten forested sites.

A probabilistic reconstruction of vertical land motion reveals regional variations in relative sea-level changes and large uncertainties in sea-level projections due to nonlinear effects.

Organic carbon in the top layer of mineral soils in cold regions is dominated by the particulate fraction, according to analyses in Arctic and alpine ecosystems.

Erosion rate is a first-order control of abundance and persistence of soil organic carbon in hilly and mountainous regions, according to analyses of the physiochemical properties of soils from field sites in Oregon, USA.

Proto-monsoon expansion doubled rainfall in Central Asia during an early Eocene hyperthermal, leading to a rapid if transient expansion of forests replacing the steppe-desert.

Ocean sediment records suggest that the modern Antarctic Circumpolar Current did not exist before the late Miocene cooling, indicating its origin is linked to the expansion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.