Volume 13 Issue 7, July 2020

Large-scale land acquisitions accelerate tropical deforestation, suggests an analysis of two decades of land-deal and forest-cover data. Such exploitation will threaten the future of these globally crucial carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.

Compositional signatures of subducted crust in the deep-mantle sources of ocean island volcanoes in the Atlantic Ocean but not the Pacific reveal that plate motions on Earth’s surface influence the characteristics of Earth’s deepest interior.

Pluto’s subsurface ocean may have formed early due to accretionary heating, a comparison of thermal evolution modelling with observed tectonic structures suggests.

Patterns of erosion and deposition by some slope streaks on Mars are consistent with a dry dust avalanche origin, according to an analysis of orbital images before and after new streaks formed.

Regional changes in dry-season water availability over recent decades can be attributed to human-induced climate change, according to analyses of global reconstructions.

Tropical deforestation rates are linked to large-scale land investments, according to georeferenced land deal records and remote sensing of forest loss over the past two decades.

Increased Southern Ocean productivity driven by sea-ice feedbacks contributed to a slowdown in rising CO₂ levels during the last deglaciation, according to analyses of marine-derived aerosols from an Antarctic ice core.

Interactions between magma and water can drive explosive fragmentation eruptions of the type seen in the Havre volcanic eruption, New Zealand, in 2012, even under submarine conditions, according to laboratory fragmentation experiments.

Major sediment-hosted base metal deposits are located within 200 km of the border between thick and thin lithosphere, according to statistical comparisons between global lithospheric thickness and known deposit locations.

Earth’s deep-mantle domains are geochemically distinct. The African domain is enriched in subducted material, which suggests a different history from the Pacific domain and a dynamic relationship between plate tectonics and deep-mantle structures.

High conductance in the lowermost mantle beneath the Pacific deflects the planetary gyre, which results in limited variation in the magnetic field in the region, according to numerical modelling of Earth’s core dynamics.