New Papers (2013/08/12-2013/08/19)

＜Nature＞

1. Geophysics:Sand collisions kick up storms

Nature 500, 256 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500256a Published online 14 August 2013

Sandstorms whipped up by desert winds owe their strength to mid-air collisions between sand grains.

2. Environmental sciences:Sinking ground poisons wells

Nature 500, 256 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500256b Published online 14 August 2013

3. Climate science: Climate tracking by smartphone

Nature 500, 256 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500256d Published online 14 August 2013

Scientists can gather climate data from smartphones in their owners' pockets.

4. Ecosystems: Climate change must not blow conservation off course

Morgan W. Tingley, Lyndon D. Estes & David S. Wilcove

Nature 500, 271–272 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500271a

Published online 14 August 2013

The best conservation response to global warming is not to beat an orderly retreat while saving the strongest, but to consider climate change as one of a suite of maladies, all of which must be addressed to protect biodiversity.

5. Environmental policy: The biggest wager

Jon Christensen

Nature 500, 273–274 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500273a

Published online 14 August 2013

6. Environment: Curb clearance for oil-palm plantations

Finn Danielsen & Faizal Parish

Nature 500, 276 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500276d

Published online 14 August 2013

7. Climate extremes and the carbon cycle

Markus Reichstein, Michael Bahn, Philippe Ciais, Dorothea Frank, Miguel D. Mahecha, et al.

Nature 500, 287–295 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12350 Received 23 October 2012 Accepted 29 May 2013 Published online 14 August 2013

The effects of climate extremes such as droughts or storms on the carbon cycle of ecosystems are investigated; such extremes can decrease regional carbon stocks.

8. No increase in global temperature variability despite changing regional patterns

Chris Huntingford, Philip D. Jones, Valerie N. Livina, Timothy M. Lenton & Peter M. Cox

Nature 500, 327–330 (15 August 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12310 Received 09 January 2013 Accepted 17 May 2013 Published online 24 July 2013

Although fluctuations in annual temperature have shown substantial geographical variation over the past few decades, which may be more difficult for society to adapt to than altered mean conditions, the time-evolving standard deviation of globally averaged temperature anomalies reveals that there has been little change.

＜Science＞

9. Government Takes Role In Fukushima Cleanup

Science 16 August 2013: Vol. 341 

no. 6147 pp. 698-699 DOI: 10.1126/science.341.6147.698-b

The government of Japan will intervene in the management of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, which so far has been left to Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken reactors.

10. Neandertals Made Bone Tools, Too

Volume 341, Number 6147, Issue of 16 August 2013

Finely made bone tools found at two prehistoric sites in southwest France suggest that Neandertals independently invented these implements without help from Homo sapiens.

11. Gauging Greenland's Subglacial Water

Martin Lüthi

Science 16 August 2013: 721-722.

Subglacial water flow regimes differ between the interior and the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

12. Earthquake Risk in Turkey

Mustafa Erdik

Science 16 August 2013: 724-725.

Recent efforts are helping to increase earthquake preparedness in a region of high earthquake risk.

13. Incision into the Eastern Andean Plateau During Pliocene Cooling

Richard O. Lease and Todd A. Ehlers

Science 16 August 2013: 774-776.

Climate had stronger control of canyon incision than tectonics in the eastern Andes 4 million years ago.

14. Basal Drainage System Response to Increasing Surface Melt on the Greenland Ice Sheet

T. Meierbachtol, J. Harper, and N. Humphrey

Science 16 August 2013: 777-779.

Basal drainage structures at the edges of the Greenland ice sheet differ from those found farther in the interior.

15. Earliest Evolution of Multituberculate Mammals Revealed by a New Jurassic Fossil

Chong-Xi Yuan, Qiang Ji, Qing-Jin Meng, Alan R. Tabrum, and Zhe-Xi Luo

Science 16 August 2013: 779-783.

A fossilized skeleton reveals the origins of diverse feeding and locomotor adaptations of once-common rodent-like multituberculates.

16. Recurrent Insect Outbreaks Caused by Temperature-Driven Changes in System Stability

William A. Nelson, Ottar N. Bjørnstad, and Takehiko Yamanaka

Science 16 August 2013: 796-799.
Published online 1 August 2013 [DOI:10.1126/science.1238477]

Seasonal temperature changes destabilize population cycles in the tea tortrix moth and drive the timing of pest outbreaks.

＜PNAS＞

17. Toba supereruption: Age and impact on East African ecosystems

Richard G. Roberts, Michael Storey, and Michael Haslam

PNAS 2013 110 (33) E3047; published ahead of print June 21, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1308550110

The authors found no evidence of significant climate change at multidecadal to millennial timescales in the sedimentary record, and in their report conclude that the eruption distributed ash much more widely than previously documented but did not trigger a volcanic winter or human bottleneck in East Africa.

18. Reply to Roberts et al.: A subdecadal record of paleoclimate around the Youngest Toba Tuff in Lake Malawi

Christine S. Lane, Ben T. Chorn, and Thomas C. Johnson

PNAS 2013 110 (33) E3048; published ahead of print June 21, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1309815110

19. Why climate change will not dramatically decrease viticultural suitability in main wine-producing areas by 2050

Cornelis van Leeuwen, Hans R. Schultz, Iñaki Garcia de Cortazar-Atauri, Eric Duchêne, Nathalie Ollat, Philippe Pieri, et al.

PNAS 2013 110 (33) E3051-E3052; published ahead of print June 21, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1307927110

 They disagree with the alarming statement that suitability for winegrowing of main wine-producing areas worldwide will dramatically decrease over the next 40 y.

20. Reply to van Leeuwen et al.: Planning for agricultural adaptation to climate change and its consequences for conservation

Lee Hannah, Patrick R. Roehrdanz, Makihiko Ikegami, Anderson V. Shepard, M. Rebecca Shaw, Gary Tabor, Lu Zhi, Pablo A. Marquet, and Robert J. Hijmans

PNAS 2013 110 (33) E3053; published ahead of print June 21, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1308923110

21. Mapping metabolism onto the prebiotic organic chemistry of hydrothermal vents

Rogier Braakman

PNAS 2013 110 (33) 13236-13237; published ahead of print August 1, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1312470110

22. Oxygen, ecology, and the Cambrian radiation of animals

Erik A. Sperling, Christina A. Frieder, Akkur V. Raman, Peter R. Girguis, Lisa A. Levin, and Andrew H. Knoll

PNAS 2013 110 (33) 13446-13451; published ahead of print July 29, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1312778110

Ecological triggers focused on escalatory predator–prey “arms races” can explain the evolutionary pattern but not its timing, whereas environmental triggers, particularly ocean/atmosphere oxygenation, do the reverse.

23. Community-level phenological response to climate change

Otso Ovaskainen, Svetlana Skorokhodova, Marina Yakovleva, Alexander Sukhov, Anatoliy Kutenkov, Nadezhda Kutenkova, Anatoliy Shcherbakov, Evegeniy Meyke,

and Maria del Mar Delgado

PNAS 2013 110 (33) 13434-13439; published ahead of print July 30, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1305533110

They present here a 40-y-long time series on 10,425 dates that were systematically collected in a single Russian locality for 97 plant, 78 bird, 10 herptile, 19 insect, and 9 fungal phenological events, as well as for 77 climatic events related to temperature, precipitation, snow, ice, and frost.

24. Climate, fishing, and fluctuations of sardine and anchovy in the California Current

Martin Lindegren, David M. Checkley, Jr., Tristan Rouyer, Alec D. MacCall, and Nils Chr. Stenseth

PNAS 2013 110 (33) 13672-13677; published ahead of print July 8, 2013,doi:10.1073/pnas.1305733110

＜Nature Communications＞

25. Estimating the tolerance of species to the effects of global environmental change

Serguei Saavedra, Rudolf P. Rohr, Vasilis Dakos, Jordi Bascompte

15 Aug 2013 doi:10.1038/ncomms3350

Global environmental change is affecting the strength of interspecific interactions. The authors here estimate how much change species can tolerate before becoming extinct, and they find that species tolerance is very sensitive to the net direction of change.

26. Fine-scale niche structure of Neotropical forests reflects a legacy of the Great American Biotic Interchange

Brian E. Sedio, John R. Paul, Charlotte M. Taylor, Christopher W. Dick
13 August 2013 doi:10.1038/ncomms3317

＜Geology＞

27. A potential barrier to deep Antarctic circumpolar flow until the late Miocene?

I.W.D. Dalziel, L.A. Lawver, J.A. Pearce, P.F. Barker, A.R. Hastie, D.N. Barfod,H-W. Schenke, and M.B. Davis

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 947-950, first published on July 11, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34352.1

Inception and development of a full deep Antarctic Circumpolar Current may have been important, not in the drop in global temperatures at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary as long surmised, but in the subsequent late Miocene global cooling and intensification of Antarctic glaciation.

28. Elevated pCO₂ leading to Late Triassic extinction, persistent photic zone euxinia, and rising sea levels

Caroline M.B. Jaraula, Kliti Grice, Richard J. Twitchett, Michael E. Böttcher, Pierre LeMetayer, Apratim G. Dastidar, and L. Felipe Opazo

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 955-958, first published on July 11, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34183.1

The Late Triassic mass extinction event is the most severe global warming–related crisis to have affected important extant marine groups such as scleractinian corals, and offers potential insights into climate change scenarios. Here they present evidence from Chlorobi-derived biomarkers of episodic and persistent photic zone euxinia.

29. Carbon cycle feedbacks during the Oligocene-Miocene transient glaciation

Elaine M. Mawbey and Caroline H. Lear

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 963-966, first published on July 3, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34422.1

They present new benthic foraminiferal Mg/Ca, Li/Ca, and U/Ca records across the Oligocene-Miocene boundary from Ocean Drilling Program Sites 926 and 929. Their records demonstrate that Atlantic bottom-water temperatures varied cyclically, with the main cooling and warming steps followed by ice growth and decay respectively.

30.Molybdenum isotopic evidence for oxic marine conditions during the latest Permian extinction

Bernadette C. Proemse, Stephen E. Grasby, M.E. Wieser, B. Mayer and B. Beauchamp

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 967-970, first published on July 11, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34466.1

Their results indicate that areas of the continental shelf of northwest Pangea underwent mass extinction under oxic conditions throughout the LPE event, and the shallow-water anoxia was therefore not a global phenomenon.

31. Holocene sea-level change derived from microbial mats

Daniel Livsey and Alexander R. Simms

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 971-974, first published on July 11, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34387.1

The elevations of 22 buried radiocarbon-dated microbial mats plot within error of RSL data derived from the central Texas coast for the past 5.0 ky, suggesting that microbial mats provide a robust proxy for paleo–sea levels along semiarid and arid coastlines.

32.Massive Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary deposit, deep-water Gulf of Mexico: New evidence for widespread Chicxulub-induced slope failure

Richard A. Denne, Erik D. Scott, David P. Eickhoff, James S. Kaiser, Ronald J. Hill, and Joan M. Spaw

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 983-986, first published on July 3, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34503.1

33. Rapid coastal subsidence in the central Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta (Bangladesh) since the 17th century deduced from submerged salt-producing kilns

Till J.J. Hanebuth, Hermann R. Kudrass, Jörg Linstädter, Badrul Islam,and Anja M. Zander

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 987-990, first published on July 3, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34646.1

According to optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, the kilns were last fired ∼300 yr ago, and salt production was terminated by a catastrophic event that affected the kiln sites at different levels and locations. 14 C ages of charcoal at the kilns' bases and associated mangrove stump horizons support the OSL dates.

34.Variation of East Asian monsoon precipitation during the past 21 k.y. and potential CO2 forcing

Huayu Lu, Shuangwen Yi, Zhengyu Liu, Joseph A. Mason, Dabang Jiang, Jn Cheng, Thomas Stevens, Zhiwei Xu, Enlou Zhang, Liya Jin, Zhaohui Zhang,  Zhengtang Guo, Yi Wang, and Bette Otto-Bliesner

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 1023-1026, first published on July 11, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34488.1

Their new data suggest that variation of the monsoon precipitation was probably driven by CO₂ -forced high-northern-latitude temperature changes, shifting the location of the intertropical convergence zone that dominates monsoon precipitation.

35.CO₂ degassing from hydrothermal vents at Kolumbo submarine volcano, Greece, and the accumulation of acidic crater water

Steven Carey, Paraskevi Nomikou, Katy Croff Bell, Marvin Lilley, John Lupton, Chris Roman, Eleni Stathopoulou, Konstantina Bejelou, and Robert Ballard

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 1035-1038, first published on July 11, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34286.1

36. A different ocean acidification hazard—The Kolumbo submarine volcano example

Peter G. Brewer

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. 1039-1040,doi:10.1130/focus092013.1

37. Onset of North Atlantic Deep Water production coincident with inception of the Cenozoic global cooling trend: COMMENT

Martyn Stoker, Alick Leslie, Kevin Smith, Jana Ólavsdóttir, Howard Johnson, and Jan Sverre Laberg

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. e291, doi:10.1130/G33670C.1

REPLY

Michael W. Hohbein, Philip F. Sexton, and Joseph A. Cartwright

Geology, September 2013, v. 41, p. e292, doi:10.1130/G34655Y.1

(Pre-Issue Publication)

38. Time scales and modes of reef lagoon infilling in the Maldives and controls on the onset of reef island formation

C.T. Perry, P.S. Kench, S.G. Smithers, H. Yamano, M. O'Leary, and P. Gulliver

Geology, first published on August 12, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34690.1

The new observations, when combined with previously published data on Maldivian reef island development, suggest that while the velu of the largest faro are unlikely to fill over the next few centuries (at least), other faro with near-infilled velu may provide important foci for future reef-island building, even under present highstand (and slightly rising) sea levels.

39. The Mesozoic Victoria Basin: Vanished link between Antarctica and Australia

Frank Lisker and Andreas L. Läufer

Geology, first published on August 12, 2013, doi:10.1130/G33409.1

40.Basinward nitrogen limitation demonstrates role of terrestrial nitrogen and redox control of δ15N in a Late Devonian black shale

Michael L. Tuite, Jr. and Stephen A. Macko

Geology, first published on August 12, 2013, doi:10.1130/G34549.1