Computer models reveal how human-driven climate change will dramatically overhaul critical nutrient cycles in the ocean. Researchers report evidence that marine nutrient cycles -- essential for ...

Litter decomposition is a key process that controls carbon and nutrient cycles in forest ecosystems. In litter decomposition at local or broad special scales, the three factors including litter ...

In a warming corner of Iceland, tiny soil microbes are quietly rewriting one of Earth’s most fundamental life-support systems. Instead of passing nitrogen along to plants, they are increasingly ...

New research shows prairie dogs play an outsized role in nutrient cycling, adding to their list of beneficial services as ecosystem engineers. Soil nutrients support plants, and the animals who ...

Soil erosion is widely known for degrading land and reducing agricultural productivity. But new research shows it may also play a far more complex and important role in regulating the global nitrogen ...

Reduced snow cover and vegetation shifts in the Alps, driven, to some degree, by climate change, are leading some mountain ecosystems to struggle to hold onto nutrients that feed vegetation, a new ...

Scientists exploring ways to use the ocean as a carbon sink are running into a problem that could limit the technology’s long-term effectiveness: the nutrients that marine life needs to pull carbon ...

As deep-sea waters warm, scientists expected trouble for the microbes that help keep ocean chemistry in balance. Instead, researchers found that Nitrosopumilus maritimus can adapt to warmer, ...

Soil nutrients support plants, and the animals who consume plants return these nutrients to the soil, creating a nutrient cycle. In a new study published in Ecology, scientists from the Smithsonian’s ...