Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
Recent Submissions
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Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
(2019)Over the Earth’s evolutionary history, the style of plate subduction has evolved through time due to the secular cooling of the mantle. While continuous subduction is a typical feature of modern plate tectonics, a stagnant-lid tectonic regime with localized episodic subduction likely characterized the early Earth. The timing of the transition between ... -
A subglacial hydrologic drainage hypothesis for silt sorting and deposition during retreat in Pine Island Bay
(2019)Late Holocene sediment deposits in Pine Island Bay, West Antarctica, are hypothesized to be linked to intensive meltwater drainage during the retreat of the paleo-Pine Island Ice Stream after the Last Glacial Maximum. The uppermost sediment units show an abrupt transition from ice-proximal debris to a draped silt during the late Holocene, which is ... -
Timescale dependent sedimentary record during the past 130 kyr from a tropical mixed siliciclastic–carbonate shelf edge and slope: Ashmore Trough (southern Gulf of Papua)
(2021)In tropical and sub-tropical mixed siliciclastic–carbonate depositional systems, fluvial input and in situ neritic carbonate interact over space and time. Despite being the subject of many studies, controls on partitioning of mixed sediments remains controversial. Mixed sedimentary records, from Ashmore Trough shelf edge and slopes (southern Gulf of ... -
The trajectory of soil development and its relationship to soil carbon dynamics
(2021)It has been postulated that the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) associated with soil minerals exhibits a threshold relationship in response to effective soil moisture (estimated as precipitation less evapotranspiration). To better characterize the role of moisture in influencing mechanisms of SOC storage during pedogenesis, we compare soils from ... -
Impacts of Engineered Diversions and Natural Avulsions on Delta-Lobe Stability
(2021)Reduced sediment supply and rising sea levels are driving land submergence on deltas worldwide, motivating engineering practices that divert water and sediment to sustain coastal landforms. However, lobe response following channel abandonment by diversions has not been constrained by field-scale studies. Herein, avulsion and engineered diversion ... -
Oxygen isotope exchange rates between phosphate and water catalyzed by inorganic pyrophosphatase: Implications for the biogeochemical cycle of phosphorus
(2021)The oxygen isotope composition of phosphate (δ18OPO4) has been widely used as (paleo)temperature and bio-signature proxies and a tracer of biogeochemical cycling of phosphorus (P). In natural aqueous systems, reactive inorganic phosphorus is dominantly present as dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP), and reactions involving DIP are primarily carried ... -
Local events-based fast RTM surface-offset gathers via dip-guided interpolation
(2021)Reverse Time Migration (RTM) Surface Offset Gathers (SOGs) are demonstrated to deliver more superior residual dip information than ray-based approaches. It appears more powerful in complex geological settings, such as salt areas. Still, the computational cost of constructing RTM SOGs is a big challenge in applying it to 3D field data. To tackle this ... -
Adjoint traveltime tomography unravels a scenario of horizontal mantle flow beneath the North China craton
(2021)The North China craton (NCC) was dominated by tectonic extension from late Cretaceous to Cenozoic, yet seismic studies on the relationship between crust extension and lithospheric mantle deformation are scarce. Here we present a three dimensional radially anisotropic model of NCC derived from adjoint traveltime tomography to address this issue. We ... -
Optimized river diversion scenarios promote sustainability of urbanized deltas
(2021)Socioeconomic viability of fluvial-deltaic systems is limited by natural processes of these dynamic landforms. An especially impactful occurrence is avulsion, whereby channels unpredictably shift course. We construct a numerical model to simulate artificial diversions, which are engineered to prevent channel avulsion, and direct sediment-laden water ... -
Rapid endogenic rock recycling in magmatic arcs
(2021)In subduction zones, materials on Earth’s surface can be transported to the deep crust or mantle, but the exact mechanisms and the nature of the recycled materials are not fully understood. Here, we report a set of migmatites from western Yangtze Block, China. These migmatites have similar bulk compositions as forearc sediments. Zircon age distributions ... -
Reciprocity-gap misfit functional for distributed acoustic sensing, combining data from passive and active sources
(2021)Quantitative imaging of subsurface earth properties in elastic media is performed from distributed acoustic sensing data. A new misfit functional based upon the reciprocity gap is designed, taking crosscorrelations of displacement and strain, and these products further associate an observation with a simulation. In comparison with other misfit ... -
Phosphorus Release and Regeneration Following Laboratory Lysis of Bacterial Cells
(2021)The availability of phosphorus limits primary production in large regions of the oceans, and marine microbes use a variety of strategies to overcome this limitation. One strategy is the production of alkaline phosphatase (APase), which allows hydrolysis of larger dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP) compounds in the periplasm or at the cell surface for ... -
Aquifer Monitoring Using Ambient Seismic Noise Recorded With Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) Deployed on Dark Fiber
(2021)Groundwater is a critical resource for human activities worldwide, and a vital component of many natural ecosystems. However, the state and dynamics of water-bearing aquifers remain uncertain, mostly due to the paucity of subsurface data at high spatial and temporal resolution. Here, we show that analysis of infrastructure-generated ambient seismic ... -
Utilizing distributed acoustic sensing and ocean bottom fiber optic cables for submarine structural characterization
(2021)The sparsity of permanent seismic instrumentation in marine environments often limits the availability of subsea information on geohazards, including active fault systems, in both time and space. One sensing resource that provides observational access to the seafloor environment are existing networks of ocean bottom fiber optic cables; these cables, ... -
Constraining maximum event magnitude during injection-triggered seismicity
(2021)Understanding mechanisms controlling fluid injection-triggered seismicity is key in defining strategies to ameliorate it. Recent triggered events (e.g. Pohang, Mw 5.5) have exceeded predictions of average energy release by a factor of >1000x, necessitating robust methodologies to both define critical antecedent conditions and to thereby constrain ... -
Holocene progradation and retrogradation of the Central Texas Coast regulated by alongshore and cross-shore sediment flux variability
(2021)Fifteen transects of sediment cores located off the central Texas coast between Matagorda Peninsula and North Padre Island were investigated to examine the offshore record of Holocene evolution of the central Texas coast. The transects extend from near the modern shoreline to beyond the toe of the shoreface. Lithology, grain size and fossil content ... -
A zero-dimensional view of atmospheric degradation of levoglucosan (LEVCHEM_v1) using numerical chamber simulations
(2021)Here, we developed a zero-dimensional (0-D) modeling framework (LEVCHEM_v1) to provide insights into the atmospheric degradation of a key tracer emitted during biomass burning – levoglucosan (LEV), while additionally exploring its effects on the dynamics of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) and other gases. For this, we updated existing chemical ... -
Translating New Synthetic Biology Advances for Biosensing Into the Earth and Environmental Sciences
(2021)The rapid diversification of synthetic biology tools holds promise in making some classically hard-to-solve environmental problems tractable. Here we review longstanding problems in the Earth and environmental sciences that could be addressed using engineered microbes as micron-scale sensors (biosensors). Biosensors can offer new perspectives on open ... -
Reduced Lower Mississippi River Discharge During the Medieval Era
(2021)Changes in climate are expected to influence discharge of the lower Mississippi River, but projections disagree on whether discharge will increase or decrease over the coming century. Using a reconstructed median peak annual flow for the past 1,500 years based on geomorphic scaling laws, we show that discharge on the lower Mississippi River decreased ... -
Reconciling bubble nucleation in explosive eruptions with geospeedometers
(2021)Magma from Plinian volcanic eruptions contains an extraordinarily large numbers of bubbles. Nucleation of those bubbles occurs because pressure decreases as magma rises to the surface. As a consequence, dissolved magmatic volatiles, such as water, become supersaturated and cause bubbles to nucleate. At the same time, diffusion of volatiles into ...
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