Deltas, the low-lying land at river mouths, are sensitive to the delicate balance between sea level rise, land subsidence and sedimentation. Bangladesh and the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta (GBD) have been highlighted as a region at risk from sea-level rise, but reliable estimates of land subsidence have been limited. While early studies suggested high rates of relative sea-level rise, recent papers estimate

Check dams are small engineering structures. They are used worldwide for soil and water conservation, gully rehabilitation, hydrological regulation, and food supply. Eroded materials trapped and buried in check dams constitute an important carbon (C) sink. However, as a typical deposition site, systematic information about C cycling processes in check dams is relatively unknown, despite its crucial

Global temperatures significantly changed from the late Permian to the Early Triassic: the Earth transformed from a cool world to a hothouse climate. This transition undoubtedly had a strong impact on tetrapod physiology and distribution. During the global cooling, tetrapods generally increased their size; and the currently recognized late Permian tetrapod extinction, exemplified by the record preserved

The multitude of periodicities reported from detrital zircon and related geochemical time-series leads to questions about which cycles should be considered valid, which are byproducts of random noise, and the degree of uncertainty associated with the detected periodicities. To enhance understanding of detrital zircon periodicities, we review existing estimates by assessing both methodological reliability

Seismic facies and lithofacies analysis, once considered a breakthrough in exploration applications, is currently a dynamic field because of the addition of several new concepts and interpretive procedures. In terms of basic theory, notable developments have taken place that encompass refinements in geological and geophysical concepts, including several enhancements to sequence-stratigraphic and facies

We discuss the assembly and tectonochronology of the Cycladic Blueschist Unit (CBU) in the central Aegean Sea region, Greece, as a composite, subduction-related, high-pressure (blueschist to eclogite facies) stack of nappes. Our work is based on a review of geochronologic data from the islands of Tinos, Syros and Sifnos. In addition, we present a large set of 34 new, internally consistent Rb-Sr multimineral

The Laurentide Ice Sheet was the largest global ice mass to grow and decay during the last glacial cycle (~115 ka to ~10 ka). Despite its importance for driving major changes in global mean sea level, long-term landscape evolution, and atmospheric circulation patterns, the history of the Laurentide (and neighbouring Innuitian) Ice Sheet is poorly constrained owing to sporadic preservation of stratigraphic

We here review what is known about the dunefields and fluvial systems of the Kalahari Basin in terms of geological setting and Quaternary dynamics and set out what has been hypothesized about the provenance of Kalahari sand so far. Previous work has tackled this problem by applying a limited number of techniques (mostly sediment textures and heavy minerals) to parts of the large dryland. The generally

Organic matter (OM)-hosted pores are important constituents of the pore system of black shales and play a crucial role in determining their methane adsorption capacity and porosity. OM-hosted pores are generally observed and described with scanning electron microscope (SEM) on Ar ion-milled surfaces. However, SEM imaging is not able to reliably distinguish OM types and relate the observed pores to

Soils form the skin of the Earth’s surface, regulating water and biogeochemical cycles and generating production of food, timber, and textiles around the world. Changes in soil and its ability to perform a range of processes have important implications for Earth system function, especially in the critical zone (CZ)—the area that extends from the top of the canopy to the bottom of groundwater and that

Distinctive uppermost Ediacaran–Ordovician rocks (Avalonian overstep sequence) were key in definition of Avalonia, which comprises large areas of the NE Appalachians and the Caledonian and Variscan mountains (Britain and western Europe). This siliciclastic-dominated cover succession unconformably overlies a Neoproterozoic pre-Avalonian basement collage (arc, continental, oceanic fragments; Gwna-type

Noble gases (He, Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe) are important geochemical tracers for exploring the volatile cycles in the whole Earth system through geological time. Noble gases are dissolved more in bridgmanite and ferropericlase, the dominant minerals of the lower mantle, than in the minerals of the upper mantle. In order to understand the incorporation mechanism of noble gases into the crystal structures,

It is predicted that under a warming climate, wildfire frequency will likely increase. The increase in fire activity is hypothesized as a likely consequence of increased atmospheric CO2-driven climate warming having the potential to influence fire weather and increase ignition probability. Periods of greenhouse gas-induced global warming have occurred many times in Earth's history, evidenced as episodes

Pino et al. (2021, hereinafter PIN2021) commented on the paper by Barreca et al. (2021, hereinafter B2021) titled: “The Strait of Messina: Seismotectonics and the source of the 1908 earthquake”, which was published in the journal Earth-Sciences Reviews in May 2021. PIN2021 argued both on the “source model of the 1908 EQ”, as proposed by B2021, and on the existence of the newly discovered causative

While the end-Triassic mass extinction has been linked to emplacement of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), evidence for environmental stresses appears hundreds of thousands of years prior to the extinction in some sections from the Panthalassic Ocean. In this study, we measured carbon, sulfur, and mercury concentrations in the Kurusu section, near Inuyama, Japan. These bedded radiolarian

Shales will play an important role in the successful transition of energy from fossil-based resources to renewables in the coming decades. Aside from being a significant source of low-carbon intensity fuels, like natural gas, they also serve as geologic seals of subsurface formations that may be used to isolate nuclear waste, sequester CO2, or store intermittent energy (e.g., solar hydrogen). Despite

Ancient shoreline–shelf depositional systems are influenced by an unusually wide array of geological, biological and hydrodynamic processes, with sediment transport and deposition primarily determined by the interaction of river, wave (including storm) and tidal processes, and changes in relative sea level. Understanding the impact of these processes on shoreline–shelf morphodynamics and stratigraphic

The destruction of the North China Craton (NCC) is a particularly significant event in the history of global cratonic evolution and represents a critical stage of cratonic evolution. Since the Paleozoic, the NCC has been located at the intersection of three dynamic systems: the Paleo-Asian, Tethys, and Pacific (including the Paleo-Pacific) tectonic domains. It has endured through the formation and

As natural disasters are induced by geodynamic activities or abnormal changes in the environment, geological hazards tend to wreak havoc on the environment and human society. Recently, the dramatic increase in the volume of various types of Earth observation ‘big data’ from multiple sources, and the rapid development of deep learning as a state-of-the-art data analysis tool, have enabled novel advances

We discuss the new causative source model for the 1908 Messina Straits earthquake recently proposed by Barreca et al. (2021), where an aseismic slip of 1.13 m along a low-angle discontinuity, preceding the 1908 earthquake, have mechanically destabilized a set of overlying faults, therefore leading them to the rupture. The lack of significant variations of the relative sea level in the Messina harbor

The secular trend of seawater strontium isotope ratio (87Sr/86Sr) reflects changes in the relative contributions of continental versus mantle reservoirs to ocean composition, and informs global tectonic events, weathering rates and biogeochemical cycling through Earth history. However, the Precambrian seawater 87Sr/86Sr curve is known in far less detail than its Phanerozoic counterpart. For this study

The Paleoproterozoic-Mesoproterozoic boundary is associated with onset of supercontinental cycle and global thermal perturbation. In the Singhbhum cratonic province, the 1600 Ma felsic volcanics and metasedimentary successions of the Chandil Formation conformably overlies the mafic volcanic and volcaniclastic successions of the Dalma Formation. Unlike the Dalma Formation and the underlying Singhbhum

The development of evaporite–carbonate assemblages is a common sedimentary process in restricted and evaporitic marine environments. These assemblages provide important reservoir spaces for oil and gas. To establish a systematic understanding of, and scientific basis for, oil and gas exploration, this paper reviews the major genetic environments of evaporite–carbonate assemblages and associated hydrocarbon

This review covers more than twenty-five years of research listing and discussing the biogeochemical, mineralogical, and physical impacts of fungus-growing termites (or FGT, Macrotermitinae sub-family) on savanna sediments and landscapes. The main mechanisms by which FGT transform the surficial geological formations in tropical and sub-tropical environments is investigated from a geological perspective

Palaeoshorelines and associated palaeo-coastal features are studied to reconstruct past sea level, climate, and depositional environments. Their identification typically depends on direct field observations and is therefore challenging in marine environment, where the interpretation mostly relies on sparse geophysical data. This review presents, based on 118 published case studies, a summary of morphological

Large glaciers and ice caps formed in the Mediterranean mountains during the cold stages of the Pleistocene and some small glaciers remain today. Here we review 157 outputs that include radiometric dates on glacial deposits or outwash in the Mediterranean published between 1975 and 2020. The last decade has seen a striking increase in the use of terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) dating and this

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been widely recognized as an effective strategy that may significantly contribute to achieving the net zero emission target by 2050. There are currently more than 50 CCS injection and pilot sites around the globe that may require a long-term integrity assessment to avoid leakages or contamination of subsurface resources. The major concern here is the complex interactions

New fieldwork and tectonic analysis has been carried out along the Andean morphotectonic frontline between 46°30’ and 47°30′S. The right lateral transtensional Marques–Zeballos Pass fault system (MZPRS) controlled the 800–1200 m uplift of the Andes at 16.1–18.1 Ma. Our data and analysis indicate that there was no lower Miocene contractile event along the Andean morphotectonic frontline. The Main Andean

The Changjiang Delta (CD) is one of well-studied large deltas of critical socio-economical and ecological importance regionally and global representativeness. Cumulated field data and numerical modeling has facilitated scientific understanding of its hydro-morphodynamics at multiple spatial and time scales, but the changing boundary forcing conditions and increasing anthropogenic influences pose management

Although the term orogenic gold has become widely accepted over the past 20 years for disseminated- to lode-style gold deposits that formed in a variety of tectonic environments within convergent margins, models for orogenic gold systems have remained controversial. The main debates include interpretation of stable isotope and fluid inclusion data that are particularly equivocal for orogenic gold systems

The western Himalaya of Pakistan forms a classic fold and thrust belt with a foreland defined by the Salt Range thrust, Main Boundary thrust, and Panjal-Khairabad thrust, and a hinterland that stretches northward from the Panjal-Khairabad thrust across the Peshawar Basin, through the mountains of Swat and Hazara, to the Main Mantle thrust (MMT), which is the westward extension of the Indus suture zone

Submarine landslides pose a hazard to coastal communities as they can generate powerful tsunamis, and threaten critical offshore infrastructure such as seafloor cable networks that underpin global communications. Such events can be orders of magnitude larger than their onshore equivalents. Despite the hazard they pose, many aspects of submarine landslides remain poorly understood, such as why they

Major advances continue to be made in development and application of the connectivity concept as a framework for analysis of runoff and sediment fluxes in catchments and landscapes and it is becoming a major paradigm in geomorphology and hydrology. It involves the identification of the locations and patterns of pathways of water and sediment movement and extent of their linkage. However, significant

A key question about the end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) is why it has been so difficult to determine its impact on land plants: some analyses show a very clear loss of diversity and yet others show little change. Perhaps the key issue is the scale at which the diversity data are analysed. Here we investigate plant diversity changes through the Permian to Middle Triassic in the North China Block

The role of seasonality is indisputable in climate and ecosystem dynamics. Seasonal temperature and precipitation variability are of vital importance for the availability of food, water, shelter, migration routes, and raw materials. Thus, understanding past climatic and environmental changes at seasonal scale is equally important for unearthing the history and for predicting the future of human societies

An understanding of step-pool geometry has important practical applications in ecological restoration, erosion control and hazard assessment in mountain streams. However, published analysis is insufficient: (1) fully to identify the controls on step-pool geometry, and; (2) to allow inference to be made as to the origin of step-pools and the hydraulic conditions during step-pool formation. The choice

The use of muon tomography in geoscience projects has been continuously increasing over the past few years. This led to a variety of applications that often use custom-tailored solutions for data acquisition and processing. The respective know-how is splintered and mainly available in a semi-published state in various physics departments that developed these methods. This complicates the design of

C3 land plants dominated the Paleozoic landscape since the Devonian and played an essential role in enhancing continental chemical weathering. Vast amount of organic carbon isotope data exist from Paleozoic-aged sediments deposited in fluvial, lacustrine, and floodplain environments. These carbon isotope data are measured from well-preserved plant fossils, paleosols, coals, charcoals, and bulk organic

The dimensions, the geographical position and the complex geological history of the Iberian Peninsula makes it a unique and singular target to study its crustal and upper mantle structure and geodynamical evolution using geophysical methods. The lithospheric structure beneath Iberia has been investigated since the 1970’s using deep multichannel seismic reflection and refraction/wide-angle reflection

Shadow dunes – simple linear dunes that are obstacle-related – occur on the non-erodible bedform, mostly occur under unimodal wind regime but also bimodal wind regime, and extend parallel to the resultant drift direction. Their morphology is dominantly controlled by the incident wind regime, the topographic obstacle dimensional parameters (e.g., height, width and aspect ratio), spatial alignment and

The role of carbon-rich or carbonatitic melts as an important metasomatizing agent in the Earth's mantle is supported by direct and indirect evidence of their involvement, ranging from the presence of erupted carbonatitic lavas to metasomatic reactions documented in minerals and melt inclusions from mantle xenoliths. Carbonatite metasomatism in hot-spot settings, and more particularly in the mantle

During the Early–Middle Triassic, the biosphere was recovering from the most severe mass extinction event of multicellular life, in the Permian–Triassic transition. Continental basins corresponding to present-day Mallorca (Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean) were located in the equatorial region of the supercontinent Pangaea, in the western peri-Tethys. Its recorded stratigraphic succession can

River bed sediments typically fine downstream, where fining of median grain sizes are often described as exponential, except where fine gravel abruptly transitions to sand. Across the gravel-sand transition, median grain sizes can reduce by more than 10 mm (>90%) over a distance of only a few channel widths. There are several viable theories for why the gravel-sand transition occurs, but they remain

The past two decades of research on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) seem to have finally become fruitful as global leaders and energy-intensive industries are cooperating to materialize CCS projects and reach the promised reduction in CO2 emissions. Traditionally, CCS projects targeted mostly high permeability sandstone formations, despite the numerous carbonate fields undergoing CO2 injection for

The carbon isotopic composition of C3 plant leaf tissue (δ13CC3) provides insights into carbon cycling, climate, and vegetation at various spatiotemporal scales. By disentangling the competing influences of climatic and biological factors, modern δ13CC3 calibrations can offer quantitative constraints on their applications. In this work, we examined the response of δ13CC3 values to rainfall, temperature

Metalliferous sediments deposited on and near spreading ridges show contrasting geochemical signatures depending on whether deposition occurred in a restricted basin filled with anoxic dense brines, or in an open ocean characterized by oxidized and well-circulated seawater. Metalliferous sediments of the Atlantis II Deep, which are precipitated from ca. 60 °C dense brines, display a wide range of mineralogical

The Early 20th Century Warming (ETCW) in the northern high latitudes was comparable in magnitude to the present-day warming yet occurred at a time when the growth in atmospheric greenhouse gases was rising significantly less than in the last 40 years. The causes of ETCW remain a matter of debate. The key issue is to assess the contribution of internal variability and external natural and human impacts

Spatiotemporal forecasting (STF) extends traditional time series forecasting or spatial interpolation problem to space and time dimensions. Here, we review the statistical, physical and artificial intelligence (AI) methods, data and model uncertainties, predictability and future directions for STF problems. Statistical STF methods have limitations in high-level feature extractions and long-term memory

Natural fractures are widespread in shales in sedimentary basins and can significantly increase the bulk permeability and enhance fluid flow, which are thereby considered to be a key factor in shale gas development, seal integrity analysis, site selection for CO2 sequestration and nuclear waste disposal. Although many fractures in shale owe their origin to tectonism, a substantial proportion of fractures

Coal, containing all the elements that are present in nature and more than 200 minerals, has a complex chemical structure, making it one of the most complex geological materials. Inorganic matter in coal includes minerals (in which element concentration may vary from trace to major), non-crystalline mineraloids, and elements with non-mineral associations such as those occurring in pore waters, organically

Low-temperature thermochronology has long been utilised in the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden rift systems and adjacent hinterlands to examine exhumation cooling histories of basement blocks, particularly where datable syn-tectonic strata and/or markers are often absent. Such data have provided insights into the spatio-temporal evolution of rift basins, morphotectonic rift shoulder development and timing and

Our understanding of folds and folding builds on detailed geometrical analysis. Proper description of folds and their relation to other structures such as fractures, cleavage and lineations form, together with physical and numerical modelling, the foundation for linking folds to stress, strain, kinematics, mechanics, and underlying tectonic processes. A large number of classification schemes and approaches

Nitrogen contamination of groundwater and the environment is an increasing problem in today's society. Since the invention of the Haber-Bosh process in 1913, the impacts of N on human health and the environment have become increasingly widespread due to the industrial scale production of reactive N (Nr). As a result, government organisations and the scientific community continue to make advances towards

A new Devonian oxygen isotope record based on 180 measurements of conodont apatite is reported from South China. The comparison with published Devonian δ18Oapatite data shows a considerable offset between records from different paleocontinents. This difference can be interpreted by regional variations in salinity, with the epicontinental seas having a distinctly lower salinity and δ18Oseawater than

We review estimates of collisional shortening along the Alpine Chain and reassess its amounts, showing that it increases from south to north in the Western Alps, attaining a maximum in the Central Alps, and decreasing in the Eastern Alps. We suggest that previous calculations overestimated shortening in the Western Alps, but underestimated it in the Central Alps. Based on these new determinations,

Salt tectonics at salt-bearing margins is often interpreted as the combination of gravity spreading and gravity gliding, mainly driven by differential sedimentary loading and margin tilting, respectively. Nevertheless, in the Western Mediterranean Sea, the classical salt-tectonic models are incoherent with its morpho-structural setting: Messinian salt was deposited in a closed system formed several

The intracontinental response to plate-boundary and mantle processes, such as subduction or continental collisions, is an important topic in the Earth Sciences. Cretaceous to Cenozoic extension across East China is related to the interaction between the Asian continental lithosphere and western Pacific oceanic subduction system, and the associated intra-plate structures and basins provide robust temporal

The Iapetus Ocean opened during the fission of the supercontinent Rodinia, from the breakup of three of its core continental constituents: Laurentia, Baltica and Amazonia. The timing of Iapetus opening is still much debated, with estimates ranging from 700 to 550 Ma. Similarly debated is exactly how Laurentia, Baltica and Amazonia were positioned relative to each other immediately before their breakup