News & Comment

Burbankite is a rare sodium carbonate mineral that is easily dissolved away in its host igneous rocks. Its formation and dissolution can help concentrate rare earth elements that are vital for a low-carbon future, as Sam Broom-Fendley explains.

Compositional and structural variations within Earth’s lower mantle are a complex puzzle to which seismic data hold clues.

Advances in seismological observational and modelling techniques are needed to constrain complex lowermost mantle structures and understand their influence on the global dynamics and evolution of Earth’s interior.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Samantha Hansen, a geophysicist at the University of Alabama and Sebastian Rost, a global seismologist at the University of Leeds about the ultralow velocity zones in the lowermost mantle.

Schreibersite is found in meteorites and thought to dwell in planetary cores. Tingting Gu explains how it may also have supported life on the early Earth.

Understanding the ecosystem response to global environmental change requires consideration of geological processes, highlighting the interconnected nature of our Earth system.

Nephrite jade is a semi-precious gemstone composed of tiny crystals and needles of amphibole. Here, Matthew Tarling and Steven Smith describe how its origins lead to inner toughness and beauty.

Urgent efforts are needed to collect and preserve ice cores from mountain glaciers before these archives are lost.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science will play a crucial role in improving environmental sustainability, but the energy requirements of these methods will have an increasingly negative effect on the environment without sustainable design and use.

A picture is worth a thousand words, as is a Nature Geoscience cover image.

Magnetite is found throughout the Earth system and has many uses, explains Barbara Maher. It is a tracer of plate tectonic movements, a sub-cellular navigation aid and an economic resource, but also a pollutant.