{"title":"Prioritisation of ocean biodiversity data collection to deliver a sustainable ocean.","authors":"Amelia E H Bridges, Kerry L Howell","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02442-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02442-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fundamental ecological questions about the distribution of ocean life remain unanswered, hindering both the effective management of the ocean, and our comprehension of life on this planet. The benthic and pelagic realms are subject to different methods of study, and to understand where to best focus effort, a thorough understanding of existing information is required, allowing identification of critical knowledge gaps. Open-access data repositories provide a valuable means to identify such gaps; however, these repositories are subject to challenges in separating benthic from pelagic data. Here we demonstrate an automated data pipeline for extracting and separating benthic from pelagic data in open-access repositories. By stratifying data against essential ocean variables in a critical gap analysis, we show that large spatial and taxonomic biases exist in both the benthic and pelagic global datasets, favouring depths shallower than ~100 m, the northern hemisphere, and vertebrate species. The newly compiled, cleaned, and classified dataset is used to identify areas of chronic under sampling and high-priority regions for exploration. We argue that coordinated strategic prioritisation of sampling is needed to support modelling and prediction, enabling us to better manage our oceans and comprehend life on Earth.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"473"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12176621/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144368703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lisa W von Friesen, Hanna Farnelid, Wilken-Jon von Appen, Mar Benavides, Olivier Grosso, Christien P Laber, Johanna Schüttler, Marcus Sundbom, Sinhué Torres-Valdés, Stefan Bertilsson, Ilka Peeken, Pauline Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, Lasse Riemann
{"title":"Nitrogen fixation under declining Arctic sea ice.","authors":"Lisa W von Friesen, Hanna Farnelid, Wilken-Jon von Appen, Mar Benavides, Olivier Grosso, Christien P Laber, Johanna Schüttler, Marcus Sundbom, Sinhué Torres-Valdés, Stefan Bertilsson, Ilka Peeken, Pauline Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, Lasse Riemann","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02782-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02782-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>With climate change-induced sea ice decline in the Arctic Ocean, nitrogen is expected to become an increasingly important determinant of primary productivity. Nitrogen fixation is the conversion of molecular nitrogen to bioavailable ammonium by microorganisms called diazotrophs. Here, we report nitrogen fixation rates, diazotroph composition, and expression under different stages of declining sea ice in the Central Arctic Ocean (multiyear ice, five stations) and the Eurasian Arctic (marginal ice zone, seven stations). Nitrogen fixation in the Central Arctic Ocean was positively correlated with primary production, ranging from 0.4 ± 0.1 to 2.5 ± 0.87 nmol N L<sup>-1</sup> d<sup>-1</sup>. Along two transects across the marginal ice zone, nitrogen fixation varied between days and ice regime from below detection up to 5.3 ± 3.65 nmol N L<sup>-1</sup> d<sup>-1</sup> associated with an ice-edge phytoplankton bloom. We show nitrogen fixation in sea ice-covered waters of the Arctic Ocean and provide insight into present and active non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs in the region.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"811"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12537486/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145343876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thomas J Ryan-Keogh, Alessandro Tagliabue, Sandy J Thomalla
{"title":"Global decline in net primary production underestimated by climate models.","authors":"Thomas J Ryan-Keogh, Alessandro Tagliabue, Sandy J Thomalla","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02051-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02051-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Marine net primary production supports critical ecosystem services and the carbon cycle. However, the lack of consensus in the direction and magnitude of projected change in net primary production from models undermines efforts to assess climate impacts on marine ecosystems with confidence. Here we use contemporary remote sensing net primary production trends (1998-2023) from six remote sensing algorithms to discriminate amongst fifteen divergent model projections. A model ranking scheme, based on the similarity of linear responses of net primary production to changes in sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-<i>a</i> and the mixed layer, finds that future declines in net primary production are more likely than presently predicted. Even the best ranking models still underestimate the sensitivity of declines in net primary production to ocean warming, suggesting shortcomings remain. Reproducing this greater temperature sensitivity may lead to even larger declines in future net primary production than presently considered for impact assessment.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"75"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11785529/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143078803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nina Zachlod, Michael Hudecheck, Charlotta Sirén, Gerard George
{"title":"Sustainable palm oil certification inadvertently affects production efficiency in Malaysia.","authors":"Nina Zachlod, Michael Hudecheck, Charlotta Sirén, Gerard George","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02150-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02150-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sustainability certifications have rapidly gained prominence and become standards across many industries, yet knowledge about the potential unintended consequences of their criteria remains limited. Here, we use European Space Agency multispectral imagery satellite data in combination with economic and location data to investigate whether the certification process for palm oil production results in unintended consequences. Our results indicate decreases in plantation efficiency both prior to and following the certification obtainment. Our findings highlight the importance of considering possible unintended consequences of sustainability certifications beyond their immediate goals and criteria.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"200"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11903298/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143647583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jamie D Howarth, Sean J Fitzsimons, Adelaine Moody, Jin Wang, Mark H Garnett, Thomas Croissant, Alex L Densmore, Andy Howell, Robert G Hilton
{"title":"Long term carbon export from mountain forests driven by hydroclimate and extreme event driven landsliding.","authors":"Jamie D Howarth, Sean J Fitzsimons, Adelaine Moody, Jin Wang, Mark H Garnett, Thomas Croissant, Alex L Densmore, Andy Howell, Robert G Hilton","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02382-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02382-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The export of organic carbon from terrestrial ecosystems by erosion may play a central role in balancing the geological carbon cycle and Earth's climate over millennial timescales. However, constraints on organic carbon yields have come from sampling modern rivers that don't capture variation over decades to millennia driven by changing hydroclimate and erosion during extreme events. Here we use volumetric reconstructions of lake sedimentary fills to generate timeseries of sediment and organic carbon yields from two catchments draining the Southern Alps, New Zealand over the last millennium. The reconstructed yields indicate that earthquake-induced landslides significantly increase sediment and organic carbon yields, contributing to pulsed export that accounts for ~40% of the total. Between extreme events, organic carbon export increased twofold during centuries with a wetter reconstructed climate. Our findings suggest that the link between hydroclimate and organic carbon export may act as a negative feedback in the longer-term carbon cycle.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"432"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12137134/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144246816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Achille Jouberton, Thomas E Shaw, Evan Miles, Marin Kneib, Stefan Fugger, Pascal Buri, Michael McCarthy, Abdulhamid Kayumov, Hofiz Navruzshoev, Ardamehr Halimov, Khusrav Kabutov, Farrukh Homidov, Francesca Pellicciotti
{"title":"Snowfall decrease in recent years undermines glacier health and meltwater resources in the Northwestern Pamirs.","authors":"Achille Jouberton, Thomas E Shaw, Evan Miles, Marin Kneib, Stefan Fugger, Pascal Buri, Michael McCarthy, Abdulhamid Kayumov, Hofiz Navruzshoev, Ardamehr Halimov, Khusrav Kabutov, Farrukh Homidov, Francesca Pellicciotti","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02611-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02611-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Central Asia hosts some of the world's last relatively healthy mountain glaciers and is heavily dependent on snow and ice melt for downstream water supply, though the causes of this stable glacier state are not known. We combine recent in-situ observations, climate reanalysis and remote sensing data to force a land-surface model to reconstruct glacier changes over the last two decades (1999-2023) and disentangle their causes over a benchmark glacierized catchment in Tajikistan. We show that snowfall and snow depth have been substantially lower since 2018, leading to a decline in glacier health and reduced runoff generation. Remote-sensing observations confirm wider snow depletion across the Northwestern Pamirs, suggesting that a lack of snowfall might be a cause of mass losses regionally. Our results provide an explanation for the recent decline in glacier health in the region, and reinforce the need to better understand the variability of precipitation.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"691"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12404989/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144999807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unified failure model for landslides, rockbursts, glaciers, and volcanoes.","authors":"Qinghua Lei, Didier Sornette","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02369-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02369-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Forecasting catastrophic failures that threaten life and property remains a formidable challenge. A major hurdle lies in the intermittent rupture dynamics of heterogeneous materials. This erratic pattern challenges conventional time-to-failure predictive models, which typically assume a smooth, monotonic power law acceleration. Here, we propose a unified failure model based on a log-periodic power law that encapsulates the intermittent acceleration-deceleration sequences within a single framework. We validate this unified model using a global dataset of 109 historical geohazard events including landslides, rockbursts, glacier breakoffs, and volcanic eruptions, spanning a century and across seven continents. We show that our model significantly outperforms the conventional approach, offering a robust and versatile framework for describing the complex rupture behavior of diverse geomaterials such as rock, soil, and ice at the site scale. This unified perspective not only broadens the model's applicability across diverse geohazards but also highlights its potential to enhance early warning systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"390"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12092298/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144126719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chris R Stokes, Jonathan L Bamber, Andrea Dutton, Robert M DeConto
{"title":"Warming of +1.5 °C is too high for polar ice sheets.","authors":"Chris R Stokes, Jonathan L Bamber, Andrea Dutton, Robert M DeConto","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02299-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02299-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mass loss from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica has quadrupled since the 1990s and now represents the dominant source of global mean sea-level rise from the cryosphere. This has raised concerns about their future stability and focussed attention on the global mean temperature thresholds that might trigger more rapid retreat or even collapse, with renewed calls to meet the more ambitious target of the Paris Climate Agreement and limit warming to +1.5 °C above pre-industrial. Here we synthesise multiple lines of evidence to show that +1.5 °C is too high and that even current climate forcing (+1.2 °C), if sustained, is likely to generate several metres of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures. To avoid this requires a global mean temperature that is cooler than present and which we hypothesise to be closer to +1 °C above pre-industrial, possibly even lower, but further work is urgently required to more precisely determine a 'safe limit' for ice sheets.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"351"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12092291/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144126743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bartholomew Hill, Tim Marjoribanks, Harriet Moore, Lee Bosher, Mark Gussy
{"title":"Market-based instruments to fund nature-based solutions for flood risk management can disproportionately benefit affluent areas.","authors":"Bartholomew Hill, Tim Marjoribanks, Harriet Moore, Lee Bosher, Mark Gussy","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02706-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02706-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Market-based instruments, including competitive tenders, are central to funding global environmental restoration and management projects. Recently, tenders have been utilised to fund Nature-based Solutions schemes for Natural Flood Management, with the explicit purpose of achieving co-benefits; flood management <i>and</i> reducing inequities. While multiple studies consider the efficacy of Nature-based Solutions for tackling inequities, no prior research has quantified whether the resource allocation for these projects has been conducted equitably. We analyse two national natural flood management programmes funded through competitive tenders in England to explore <i>who benefits</i> by considering the characteristics of projects, including socio-economic, geographical (e.g. rurality) and flood risk dynamics. Our results suggest that inequity occurs at both the application and funding stages of Nature-based Solutions projects for flood risk management. This reflects wider international challenges of using market-based instruments for environmental resource allocation. Competitive tenders have the potential to undermine the equitable benefits of Nature-based Solutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"714"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12394074/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144945757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mitigation efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and meet the Paris Agreement have been offset by economic growth.","authors":"Jitong Jiang, Skylar Shi, Adrian E Raftery","doi":"10.1038/s43247-025-02743-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s43247-025-02743-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Projecting future climate change is important for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit greenhouse gas emissions to a level that would keep the global average temperature increase to 2100 below 2 °C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses emissions scenarios for projecting climate change, but since 2017, an alternative fully statistical Bayesian probabilistic approach has been developed. Both approaches rely on an equation that expresses emissions as the product of population, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, and carbon intensity, namely carbon emissions per unit of GDP. Here, we use data on these quantities for 2015-2024 to probabilistically assess the changes in climate change prospects associated with post-Paris emissions. These show that carbon intensity declined (i.e., improved) substantially over that period, but that overall carbon emissions rose, due to the rapid rise in world GDP, which more than canceled out the progress made. We found that the projected temperature increase to 2100 declined only slightly, from 2.6° C to 2.4 °C. Meanwhile, the chance of staying below 2 °C remained low, at 17%. However, the chance of the most catastrophic climate change, above 3 °C, has gone down substantially, from 26% to 9%.</p>","PeriodicalId":10530,"journal":{"name":"Communications Earth & Environment","volume":"6 1","pages":"823"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12534177/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145328383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}