Biogeosciences

Archives / 2020 / December

At the heart of biogeochemistry: pH change interpretation & open peer-review

Alexandra Rodler December 30, 2020

Coastal zone by Konstantinos Kourtidis, Demokritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, Greece (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The utility of logarithmic scales is nothing new to scientists – yet, sound interpretation of pH changes when comparing settings with different initial pH can be challenging. This blogpost highlights a manuscript by Fassbender et al. [1] that was recently submitted to the journal BG and is currently under open peer review. The pH scale was first published by Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen in 1909 [2 ...[Read More]

High-resolution biogeochemistry: Taking snapshots of past climate using mollusk shells

Alexandra Rodler December 10, 2020

Fig. 1: Example of a micro-X-ray Fluorescence map of trace element composition through the cross section of a fossil oyster shell (66 million years old). Red color indicates layers rich in iron and manganese (indicators of poor shell preservation) while blue layers are made of pristinely preserved calcite.

This is a solicited blogpost written by Niels de Winter. Now that the effects of rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions are starting to affect our everyday lives, accurate reconstructions of past climates become more and more relevant. These reconstructions help us to improve climate models used to project future global warming scenarios which in turn inform policy makers. The further we look back in ...[Read More]