Matthew L. Staitis

New paper with our long-term collaborators from CUG Wuhan (led by Xinyue Dang), showing a threshold response in soil moisture that induces an abrupt shift in soil microbial community and methane emissions. @ogu-bristol.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social @cabot-institute.bsky.social

Stable Isotopes in Ecology Intro This is "Stable Isotopes in Ecology Intro" by GAEAcademy on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Pleased to see lots of new registrants for our Stable Isotope Ecology course on the GAEA platform. Learn more and register for this and other courses at www.gaea.ac.uk
@isotopesuk.bsky.social ky.social
vimeo.com/757190807

Environmental Controls on Green Bands in Marine Sediments In the modern ocean, the appearance of dark colored diagenetic bands is associated with high bottom water oxygen At two core sites in the path of North Atlantic Deep Water, green bands are found ...

Ancient ocean oxygen left green bands on the seafloor

Million-yr records reveal sediment bands formed as deep waters re-oxygenated after low-O2 phases during Pleistocene glaciations; a hidden archive of Earth’s breathing

Our new IODP EXP361 paper 👇

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

What Ian said! 👇

@olakwiecien3.bsky.social @drjosephgraly.bsky.social

Ultimate main character energy... 💅

Gephyrocapsa huxleyi is less than 5 microns wide (you could fit about 20 on the tip of a needle), yet it insists on being visible from actual space.

SEM Micrographs: Frieda Schlegel
Satellite Imagery: ESA (European Space Agency)

Last day @sosbangor.bsky.social before our 23 day cruise on the RRS Discovery for the SeaSTORE project. We'll be studying the impact of bottom trawling on seabed carbon stocks. We'll study the chronic and immediate impacts.

The implications of overshooting 1.5 °C on Earth system tipping elements - a review

"Global warming must peak below 2°C, return to below 1.5°C as quickly as possible (i.e. within this century), and to around 1°C thereafter to limit tipping point risks".

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

I see part of a crinoid stem😅

New Version out 😀

Diagram: Pleistocene-Holocene-Anthropocene 2025 (2026)

zenodo.org/records/1864...

With updated data ☝️. For teaching, public lectures etc etc...

Brought to you by @leizarchaeology.bsky.social research focus "Human-Environment Interactions"

@niklashausmann.bsky.social

An artist’s interpretation of life and death after the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. The three hair-covered forms (left) represent species of plankton found inside the crater made by the impact. The geometric form (bottom left) is a species of algae. The bones belong to an extinct marine reptile. The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences/John Maisano.

How long does it take to recover from a mass extinction? It might be a very short time, geologically speaking, maybe no more than a mere few millennia. On the scale of humans... that is still a substantial chunk of time. 🧪⚒️

Link: pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

‘Daunting but doable’: Europe urged to prepare for 3C of global heating Advisory board member says adapting is ‘not rocket science’ but Europe already paying price for lack of preparation

I really hope everyone understands that this antiscientific nonsense that totally ignores tipping points, first of all the AMOC. Shameful stuff tbh.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Map showing above average groundwater over much of the UK in January 2026

Map showing above average precipitation over much of UK in January 2026 apart from western Scotland and northwest England and Wales

Map showing some exceptionally high river flows in eastern Scotland, Northern Ireland & southern England during January 2026

Map showing variable soil moisture over UK in January 2026

Very wet January 2026 over many UK regions with flooding & some exceptionally high river flows in eastern Scotland, Northern Ireland & southern England plus rising groundwater & reservoir stocks so elevated flood risk in @ukceh.bsky.social hydrological outlook 🌧️💦 nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul...

The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors survey community palaeontological databases, documenting their contributions to science as well as their vulnerabilities, and provide recommendations for the future of open science databas...

The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Concerned about the Point of No Return? Today we published a paper on the risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory. You can read it here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mbW49C~Iu...

Peer review should be a short term paid contract akin to a journal editor. Why this vital scientific process is left entirely to voluntary participation actually dumbfounds me...

Storm-hit Devon road 'a mess' after it breaks up and washes away Storms cause a section of seafront road between Torcross and Slapton to break apart overnight.

A reminder that we live on a geologically active planet! This road was much tranversed by @ueaenv.bsky.social students and myself on the Slapton Field course just back in Apr 2023!!!🌊 🛣️
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Environmental changes at the seafloor of the Faro drift (Gulf of Cadiz) during the transition from the Early to the Middle Pleistocene Abstract. This study explores the ecology of the benthic foraminifera fauna and reconstructs bottom water oxygenation, organic matter fluxes, and Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) dynamics in the Gulf...

My freshly and first PhD related paper is out! I can’t believe it was published one day before my birthday 🎂

jm.copernicus.org/articles/45/...

Check out the @pnas.org highlight for our new paper on how Paleoclimate Pattern Effects in the Pliocene lead to tighter constraints on the modern response to CO2 (a.k.a. climate sensitivity)

It’s 85 seconds to midnight 👇

Article image

"Doomsday Clock" moves to 85 seconds to midnight, closest point to catastrophe since its debut: The "Doomsday Clock," a symbolic representation of humanity's proximity to self-destruction, has been advanced to 85 seconds before midnight, marking its closest setting to… https://ranked.news/146454?u=b

Lest we forget

To follow up on that, was happy to be interviewed by @tmitchellbrown.bsky.social for his piece on this study.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Oligocene deep ocean oxygen isotope variations primarily driven by temperature - Nature Geoscience Large benthic oxygen isotope fluctuations in the Oligocene Southern Ocean primarily represent deep water temperature changes, suggesting the Antarctic ice sheet volume was relatively stable, according...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@bjerknes.uib.no @marumunibremen.bsky.social @unibremen.bsky.social

Deglaciation of the Prudhoe Dome in northwestern Greenland in response to Holocene warming - Nature Geoscience The ~500-metre-thick Prudhoe Dome in northwestern Greenland completely deglaciated 7,000 years ago, highlighting the sensitivity of the ice sheet to mid-Holocene warming, according to luminescence and...

⚒️ Article: The ~500-meter-thick Prudhoe Dome in northwest Greenland completely deglaciated 7000 years ago, highlighting the sensitivity of the ice sheet to mid-Holocene warming

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Palm phytoliths in subarctic Canada imply ice-free winters 48 million years ago during the late early Eocene AbstractBackground and Aims. Phytoliths are microscopic siliceous structures produced in specific tissues by many plant families. The morphological feature

2
Palm phytoliths in subarctic Canada imply ice-free winters 48 million years ago during the late early Eocene
doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

Palm phytoliths in 48 Ma lake seds from subarctic Canada prove that winter temps remained above freezing during early Eocene greenhouse climate.

Teaser - Into the Core First Season

🎙️ Teaser Alert! 🎙️

The @icdp-ecn.bsky.social podcast is OFFICIALLY on the way! 🎧

Listen to the teaser now and get ready for Episode 1 on 16 January 2026‼️

▶️ Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/7mcn...

Support the next generation of science storytellers!
#ICDP-ECRpodcast #Scientificdrlling

56 million years ago, the Earth suddenly heated up – and many plants stopped working properly It could be a sign of what’s to come.

Global warming 56 million years ago
Lower latitude "shift to smaller plants such as palms and ferns. Leaf mass per area also increased as deciduous trees declined. Fossil soils indicate reduced soil organic carbon levels" ⚒️🧪
theconversation.com/56-million-y...

Major heat wave in the North Atlantic had widespread and lasting impacts on marine life | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Conceptual models of ice-sheet extent and associated depositional processes along a transect. During peak interglacials with inland ice-sheet retreat, icebergs calve from the retreating ice margin and drift onto the Amundsen Sea shelf. As these icebergs ground and melt, they release most of their detritus on the shelf. During early glacial stages, the ice masses around the Amundsen Sea embayment could regrow rapidly and coalesce into an ice sheet. The advancing grounded ice “bulldozed” the sediments, which had accumulated on the shelf during the previous interglacial, toward the shelf break. From there, the fine-grained detritus is transported down to the continental slope mainly by gravitational processes.

West Antarctic Ice Sheet glaciers underwent at least five major inland retreats during the Pliocene—a period with temperatures similar to projected future warming—suggesting the possibility of meter-scale global sea-level rise in our future. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/I6NZ50XRaap