Increased cultural eutrophication since the 20th century, caused by phosphorus (P) enrichment, has become a major problem worldwide. In deep, stratified lakes, eutrophication-induced hypolimnetic anoxia often stimulates the release of labile P from the sediment into the water column. This positive feedback, termed internal P loading, maintains or even accelerates eutrophication. However, most studies

Alpine soils can provide valuable paleo-environmental information, representing a powerful tool for paleoclimate reconstruction. However, since Pleistocene glaciations and erosion-related processes erased most of the pre-existing landforms and soils, reconstructing soil and landscape development in high-mountain areas can be a difficult task. In particular, a relevant lack of information exists on

The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) severely impacted global biodiversity. Extinction selectivity of biotas behaved differently in various environmental settings, and biotic variations before, during, and after the EPME on the shallow platform remain unclear. This paper describes a new microbialite near the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) boundary (PTB) from the Xiejiacao section, South China. The PTB microbialite

In the northern Iberian Peninsula, the Pyrenean-Cantabrian orogenic belt extends E-W for ca. 1000 km between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. This orogen developed from the collision between Iberia and Eurasia, mainly in Cenozoic times. Lower-middle Permian sediments crop out in small, elongated basins traditionally considered independent from each other due to misinterpretations on incomplete

The Plenus Cold Event (PCE) temporarily interrupted the supergreenhouse conditions exacerbated during much of the Cenomanian–Turonian Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE 2). The PCE is coeval to the occurrence of Boreal benthic macroinvertebrates and of the nektonic belemnite Praeactinocamax plenus (after which the event is named) in Europe, and to the re-oxygenation of bottom waters in the Northern Hemisphere

High-resolution paleoecological studies elucidate the effects of biotic and abiotic factors on the diversity and distribution of insect herbivory in deep time. Previous analyses of fossil leaf assemblages from intervals of significant environmental change have shown that insect damage frequency and diversity are strongly influenced by temperature and carbon dioxide levels. Similar studies that span

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), the most well-studied transient hyperthermal event in Earth history, is characterized by prominent and dynamic changes in global marine ecosystems. Understanding such biotic responses provides valuable insights into future scenarios in the face of anthropogenic warming. However, evidence of the PETM biotic responses is largely biased towards deep-sea records

To understand the cause of known isotopic differences between grasses and trees, their seasonal variability and environmental drivers, we present a parallel study of a perennial grass, Stipa bungeana, and an evergreen tree, Quercus aquifolioides, in the monsoon-dominated southeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP), by conducting fortnightly paired δ2H analyses of precipitation (δ2Hp), leaf water, and n-alkanes

A north-south subsurface dipole mode (SDM) is found to be the leading mode of interannual variability in the thermocline and subsurface temperature over the tropical Indian Ocean. The present study reports the existence of a decadal SDM with a north-south dominant structure. The mechanisms responsible for the formation of the decadal SDM and its close association with the evolution of local atmospheric

During the late Miocene, the development of topography of the eastern margin of the Puna Plateau of the Central Andes, was related to the onset of the eastward migration and foreland fragmentation. The Guanaco and Piquete formations (late Miocene-early Pleistocene, Jujuy Subgroup) represent a thick succession of the adjacent foreland. These units outcrop in the Río Chico (=Xibi Xibi) locality (Jujuy

An uncommonly continuous Lower Jurassic (uppermost Sinemurian and Pliensbachian) section (Llanbedr (Mochras Farm) Borehole, Cardigan Bay Basin, UK) comprises hemipelagic calcareous mudstone, wackestone/siltstone and subordinate packstone/sandstone. Some beds show bigradational grading, and their sedimentary structures are typical of contourite drift facies. On the basis of the long-term persistence

Few reconstructions of sea-surface temperature (SST) have focused on seasonal and interannual variability, two major components of the global climate system, due to the limited temporal resolution of proxies. This study presents a combined 228-year-long, monthly resolved strontium to calcium ratios (Sr/Ca) record covering the period of 2070–1740 a BP (years before 1950 CE (Common Era)) extracted from

The Hirnantian glaciation, which was the first in the Phanerozoic to occur with elevated CO2 levels, caused severe mass extinctions and disrupted biogeochemical cycling in the latest Ordovician. Previous research that aimed at exploring the triggers and consequences (both abiotic and biotic) of this glacial event have largely been based on condensed or incomplete sections. However, there is much debate

Diversification is a key property of life. Building on John Phillips' (1860) classic, iconic curve, Phanerozoic biodiversity trajectories have been based, subsequently, on the availability of additional and renewed sets of data and increasingly sophisticated analytical methods. Using relatively few single sources of data from global databases, the shapes of recent biodiversity curves for Ordovician

The Marinoan Snowball Earth glaciation (~650–635 Ma) was followed by an increase in atmospheric O2 level and the diversification of eukaryotes. These dramatic changes have been assumed to have resulted from the rapid recovery of primary productivity during deglaciation, but this hypothesis has not yet been tested. Carbonate carbon isotope (δ13Ccarb), closely related to organic matter production and

The Late Paleozoic Icehouse (LPI) provides a deep-time perspective for climate-glaciation-environment coevolution and offers potential insights into future climatic and environmental predictions. Most previous studies attributed climatic and environmental changes during the LPI to perturbations of atmospheric pCO2, yet the driving mechanism for pCO2 changes remains controversial. Although the environmental

Drought conditions are experiencing substantial changes due to global warming, but the contributions of changes in temperature, precipitation, and associated extremes to drought severity at the regional scale remain an important topic for climate change research. Northern East Asia (NEA) has experienced frequent climate extremes and is very sensitive and vulnerable to climate change. We analyze the

Fire is a major disturbance agent in the boreal forest, affecting the structure, dynamics and biogeochemical cycles in this biome. In the Asian section of boreal forest, the records of long-term fire history are few that limits our understanding of factors forcing regional fire dynamics. We presented an annually-resolved 352-year (1666–2017) fire chronology based on fire scars of Scots pine (Pinus

The Guryul Ravine section in Kashmir, northern India is an important reference section for global Lower Triassic stratigraphy. Once a candidate Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Permian-Triassic Boundary (PTB), the section has attracted intense attention for the PTB beds, but few studies have concerned the entire Lower Triassic stratigraphy. As one of the most continuous marine Lower

The current loss of taxa from our planet is considered by many scientists to be the sixth mass extinction; in particular, coral reefs are experiencing significant damage. Scleractinian coral reefs constitute the framework of some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth today as well as throughout the last 250 million years. The Pliensbachian-Toarcian (Pl-To) transition in the Early Jurassic is an important

Glaciers, as massive freshwater reservoirs, support the planet's living systems and have an impact on our daily lives, even for communities living far away. Ongoing and future climate change is predicted to have strong impacts on the mass balance of alpine glacier around the world. To understand the relationship between climate and glacier dynamics, a range of mass balance models are currently used

The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) has been linked with the widespread development of oxygen-poor oceanic conditions. However, information on the spatial extent of anoxia in the Panthalassa super-ocean has been limited. This study reports oceanic redox records from a deep-sea chert succession (the Waiheke 1 section, WHK 1, New Zealand) that was located in southern mid-latitudes of Panthalassa.

The accelerating sea-ice, ice sheet and glacial melt associated with climate warming have resulted in important changes in the Arctic region over the past decades. In northern Baffin Bay, the formation of the North Open Water (NOW) polynya, which is intrinsically linked to regional sea-ice conditions and ocean circulation, has become more variable in recent years. To understand how climate-driven changes

Coiling direction is a basic characteristic of trochospiral planktic foraminifera. Modifications in the coiling direction within ancient planktic foraminiferal populations may reflect important changes in evolution or environment, yet they remain scarcely discussed. Here we investigate fluctuations in the coiling direction within Morozovella assemblages from sections that span the interval of peak

Global tectonic and climatic models for the Permian-Triassic boundary (PTB) are highly debated. One of the most disputed topics is the temperature increase associated with CO2 emissions generated by the Siberian Trap volcanism and its potential influence on chemical weathering and associated variations in sediment fluxes. By integrating crustal architecture, plate modelling, structural kinematics,

Burgess Shale-type biotas have been widely reported from the Cambrian in North America, Siberia, Greenland, China, and Australia; they are crucial in reconstructing the biotic evolution and ecological interactions of early metazoans. Here, we report an atypical Burgess Shale-type fossil assemblage from the Shilongdong Formation (Cambrian Stage 4) in the Jingshan area, central Hubei Province, South

The Ediacaran Period (ca. 635–541 Ma) witnessed the earliest paleontological evidence for macroscopic animals (i.e., Ediacara biota) and geochemical observations of the largest carbon cycle anomaly in Earth history (i.e., Shuram Excursion, SE). Numerous hypotheses have been proposed for the origins of the SE, ranging from primary seawater anomaly to syn- or post-depositional diagenesis. Despite intensive

Arctic Ocean surface circulation plays an important role in the global ocean circulation system. In recent years, its position and velocity have been changing constantly, attracting increasing attention. The cause of this change, however, is still a matter of disagreement. In this paper, we use empirical orthogonal function analysis (EOF) to analyze the spatial and temporal distributions of sea level

Reconstructing sediment load in deep-time is one of the greatest challenges in the reconstruction of ancient sediment routing systems, particularly because solid statistical models are absent and paleo-climatic, paleo-tectonic, and sedimentary constraints are lacking. This study proposes a reliable workflow for the estimation of paleo-sediment fluxes (Qs) applying the BQART model to a case study from

Planktonic foraminiferal population dynamics and benthic foraminiferal and radiolaria distributions combined with δ13C and δ18O measurements of both bulk carbonate and foraminifera provide clues concerning the paleoceanographic changes across the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary interval and the Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE 2) at southern high latitudes. Samples analyzed are from Integrated Ocean Discovery

The Global climate reorganisation in the late Pliocene linked to enhancement of the Atlantic Ocean Thermohaline Circulation (AOTC), instigated a transition to glacial-interglacial cyclicity in the Quaternary. Enhancement of the AOTC amplified atmospheric precipitation over the Eurasian interior strengthening Northern Hemisphere Glaciation. Increased rainfall on the vast Russian Plain drained into the

Microbial sulfate reduction (MSR) and microbial iron reduction (MIR) are two major anaerobic metabolic pathways, and account for the majority of anaerobic organic matter degradation in modern marine sediments. Because it is thermodynamically more favorable, the zone of porewater Fe2+ accumulation usually overlies the zone of porewater H2S accumulation in modern marine sediments. The sequence of redox

Investigation of the end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) has been greatly facilitated by high-resolution conodont biostratigraphic studies. To date, however, a detailed biostratigraphic framework has been lacking for shallow-marine successions of the Tethys region. In the present study, we analyzed carbonate microfacies, conodont biostratigraphy, and carbonate carbon isotopes of the Yangou Quarry section

Marine influence on low-salinity environments can trigger aquatic ecosystem shifts, including biodiversity turnovers. High-resolution palaeoenvironmental records of marine connection events are particularly valuable, as they provide natural laboratories to understand analogous oceanographic and biodiversity turnover events in present-day climate- and anthropogenically-induced incursions. One such incursion

The global occurrence of parabolic dunes and their reactivation potential make them significant features in the present global landscape. Several studies have assessed the distribution and structure of parabolic dunes and their relationship to local climate factors with the aim to constrain the processes influencing their activation and potential reactivation. However, none of them have addressed the

The Congo Basin (CB) occupies a large part of the Congo Craton, which formed from the amalgamation of different cratonic blocks of Archean age. It records the history of deposition of up to 1 Gyr of sediments, one of the longest geological records on Earth above a crystalline basement. It is considered as a typical intracratonic basin, with its slow and long-lived subsidence history and the largely

With a growing concern over rapid Antarctic ice loss in recent years, the Amundsen Sea, one of the fastest-melting areas in Antarctica, currently becomes a hotspot for the Earth sciences in the context of its linkage to global climate. As a center of strong physical and biological coupling processes, polynyas of the Amundsen Sea could act as sentinels of changes in atmosphere–ice–ocean interactions

Evolutionary processes in ant-plant mutualisms are mediated by intrinsic features of the association and by change through time in abiotic components of the system (e.g. geography and climate). Incorporating both biotic and abiotic components and the phylogenies of the taxa involved is central to understanding their respective roles in mutualism evolution. We used a comparative phylogeographic approach

Movement toward our current climate state began in the middle Eocene to early Oligocene interval when the global temperature cooled and the first Antarctic ice sheet appeared. This dramatic climate change caused a significant global turnover in both marine and terrestrial biotas. The biotic response to this event at low latitudes remains mostly unexplored. Here, we studied a recently discovered Eocene

The narrow active temperature ranges of ectothermic tetrapods can be used as proxies for reconstructing paleoclimates. Here we deduce the climatic preferences of major Permo-Triassic tetrapod groups based on their known geographic distributions, the critical thermal limits of living tetrapods, and paleoclimate information from other sources. The resulting preferred temperature sequence of amniotes

Clinoforms and clinothems are important and common architectural elements in the sedimentary record of many basins worldwide. The influence that they exert on chronostratigraphic interpretations, however, is often underestimated. This is especially true in non-marine basins, such as the Central European to Central Asian Neogene Paratethyan basins, where chronostratigraphic division and correlation

Global warming has a significant effect on global and regional hydrological cycles and is expected to exacerbate the uneven distribution of rainfall in various regions, thereby influencing water-related human activities (e.g., agriculture) and the development of human society, especially in densely populated East Asia. As an analog to predict the future impact of global warming on hydrological regimes

The ancestral South Sandwich arc (ASSA) records evidence of Oligocene – Miocene intra-oceanic island arc volcanism in the central Scotia Sea and potentially formed an important topographic barrier to deep ocean currents during the early development of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. New geochemistry and geochronology of dredged basaltic samples from multiple sites across Discovery Bank, in the southern

Microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS) are microbial traces in sandy deposits. They are formed by various modes of microbial behaviour in response to the prevailing physical dynamics in shallow marine environments since the early Archean. The Guojiaba Formation (Cambrian Stage 3), composed of laminated sandstones, siltstones, and mudstones mainly, is characterized by two units of MISS (biolaminite)

The potential causes of megadroughts over North China (NC) in the preindustrial period were investigated using eight climate models evolved using CMIP5/PMIP3 and multiple proxy data. The full forcing experiments driven by both external forcing and internal variability show that megadroughts in NC were accompanied by extensive decadal drying over the Northern Hemisphere (NH), particularly in most of

The end Permian mass extinction (EPME) is the greatest among the “Big Five” extinctions of the Phanerozoic, and is believed to have been triggered primarily by the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province (STLIP). This hypothesis is supported by the temporal correlation of STLIP with the EPME by radiometric ages and Hg enrichments in sedimentary rocks. However, how signatures of volcanic Hg emissions

The dynamic environments of western Amazonia during the Neogene (23 to 2.58 million years ago [Ma]) included continental-scale wetlands that were episodically influenced by marine incursions originating from the Caribbean. The nature and frequency of such events is highly debated, with a general consensus on short events during the early (23 to 16) and middle (16 to 11.6 Ma) Miocene. However, scattered