Department of Earth Sciences

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt first appeared in 2011 and quickly became the largest interconnected floating biome on Earth. In recent years, Sargassum stranding events have caused substantial ecological and socio-economic impacts in coastal communities. Sargassum requires both phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) for growth, yet the primary sources of these nutrients fuelling the extensive Sargassum blooms remain unclear. Here we use coral-bound N isotopes to reconstruct N2 fixation, the ultimate source of the ocean’s bioavailable N, across the Caribbean over the past 120 years. the future of Sargassum in the tropical Atlantic will depend on how global warming affects equatorial Atlantic upwelling and the climatic modes that control it.

What Dinosaur Teeth Reveal About Life 150 Million Years Ago

Study on the diet and behavior of dinosaurs in the Jurassic period published / Researchers examined wear marks on fossil teeth.

What did long-necked dinosaurs eat – and where did they roam to satisfy their hunger? A team of researchers has reconstructed the feeding behaviour of sauropods using cutting-edge dental wear analysis.

- This study reviews the effects of climate change on seven marine coastal habitats.
- Climate change-related stressors affect marine and coastal ecosystems.
- Few studies tested the cumulative effects of local and global stressors.
- Marine ecosystems' tipping points indicate their vulnerability to coastal changes.
- Managing local stressors can increase the resilience of marine and coastal ecosystems.

This second revision of the Graptolite Treatise was necessitated by an explosion of new research linking extant and fossil Hemichordata, as well as substantial increase in newly identified genera. Discussions to produce a new Graptolite Treatise began more than 20 years ago, with Charles E. Mitchell (Buffalo, N.Y, USA) and Michael J. Melchin (Antigonish, N.S., Canada) initiating the first steps with then Treatise Editor Roger Kaessler. In 2010, Jörg Maletz became the coordinating author of this volume, which was finally published in 2023, more than fifty years after the publication of the last version (Bulman, 1970).

Tipping points in the climate system can be the result of a slow but linear development. However, they can also be accompanied by a “flickering", with two stable climatic states that alternate before a final transition occurs – and the climate tips permanently.

Human activities impose significant changes on sedimentation processes and vegetation cover within lake catchments. However, the needed time for an anthropogenically disturbed natural state to be reversed back to its natural state by environmental protection programs is still ambiguous.

There is growing concern on the survival of Mediterranean forests under the projected near-future droughts as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

Our results identify the prime driver of climate variation in Africa’s low latitudes over the past 620 ky—the key time frame for the evolution of our species. Warming and cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean paced by insolation changes modulated the tropical Walker circulation, driving opposing wet–dry states in eastern and western Africa.

Understanding the dynamics between the East Asian summer (EASM) and winter monsoon (EAWM) is needed to predict their variability under future global warming scenarios.

The growth of coral reefs is threatened by the dual stressors of ocean warming and acidification. Despite a wealth of studies assessing the impacts of climate change on individual taxa, projections of their impacts on coral reef net carbonate production are limited.