Research articles

Plant litter additions enhance soil microbial functional potentials for carbon and nitrogen cycling in high-Arctic ecosystems, based on a four-year experiment simulating vegetation expansion under climate warming.

Drought and cold in northern China during the 2.8 ka cold event contributed to the collapse of the Western Zhou Dynasty and subsequent significant southward migration, according to analyses of stalagmite records from Northeast and Southeast China.

Recycling China’s end-of-life trucks promises 44 billion United States dollars and reduces carbon emissions by 58 million metric tons by 2050, according to a multi-factor future projection modeling approach

Diet diversity across northern hemisphere ecosystems affects seabird responses to climate change, with breeding productivity declining in the Arctic and North Atlantic but not in the Pacific from 1993 to 2019, based on 138 time series of breeding success and linear mixed effects models.

Modern control theory can help address the challenge of designing real-time policy action when confronted with limited knowledge and information. Looking at three sustainability challenges shows how monitoring a system and guiding its outcomes can work together in policy design.

Orbital observations identify the presence of hydrated silica and sulfate salts on Mars which is consistent with Early-Amazonian sedimentary volcanism and indicates the remobilization of aqueous reservoirs in the Northern Plains of the planet.

The record-breaking 2022–24 Amazon-drought was caused by prevailing atmospheric stability and extremely high temperatures driven by the transition from 2022–23 La Niña to 2023–24 El Niño, according to the Lagrangian moisture and heat uptake computation with database spanning 1994–2023.

The Patagonian ice sheet not only responded to climate change but also actively influenced it regionally, highlighting the role of topographic forcing in shaping atmospheric circulation during glacial-interglacial cycles, according to a modeling study.

Soils from calcium-rich parent materials contained 33% higher organic carbon, 58% higher total nitrogen, and 55% higher total phosphorus than calcium-poor soils enhanced bacterial network complexity and soil functions, according to a large-scale field survey in Guangxi and Guizhou, China.

Regional variations in critical rainfall patterns are more significant than differences between processes in a warming climate, with increased probability of occurrence and affected area, according to analysis of the critical rainfall conditions for debris-flow initiation in Austria between 2003 and 2022.

Climate change and intensified human activities, such as reservoir exploitation and land-use changes, have amplified downstream runoff variability and water scarcity risks in China’s Yellow River Basin over the period 1952–2021, according to Budyko decomposition and causal network modelling analysis

The unprecedented June 2023 marine heatwave in north-western Europe had a 10% annual likelihood, with climate change accelerating the risk of similar events, according to ensemble climate model simulations.

The North China Craton underwent two distinct crustal stages, characterized by thickening due to Mesozoic collision, followed by extensional collapse and lithospheric thinning likely driven by PaleoPacific plate rollback, according to a crustal thickness reconstruction using Sr/Y and La/Yb ratios as well as εNd isotopic data of granitoids.

Plant functional diversity is highly dynamic over time, driven by seasonal cycles and wet–dry periods and varying across biomes, based on an analysis of over 4,000 hyperspectral satellite scenes at the global scale.

Indigenous and crossbred bovines produce less methane and consume nitrogen more efficiently than improved bovines, according to a meta-analysis combined with measurements of methane emissions from yaks in China.

Carbonates formed under different conditions display varying compositions of lithium isotopes, according to analyses of lithium isotope compositions of authigenic carbonates from the Gulf of Mexico.

Strategic carbon–nitrogen co-sequestration and fertilizer use were insufficient in northeastern China’s warming-vulnerable black soil, causing a loss of about 3.9 Mg carbon per hectare of soil organic carbon from 1980 to 2010, based on 721 soil samples across northern China.

UK members of parliament overestimate the time available to mitigate climate change, with notable partisan differences, and a similar lack of knowledge is evident among publics in Britain, Canada, Chile, and Germany, according to an analysis that uses representative survey data.

A shallow subsurface layer of hydrated minerals in Elysium Planitia may represent fluvial sediments laid down during a warmer, humid Martian climate, according to a joint inversion of seismic and seismoacoustic coupling data from the InSight lander

Natural disconnectivity in paraglacial river networks disrupts downstream trends in channel width and riparian plant richness, as revealed by two catchments with local controls on channel width and species dispersal.