ALBERT

Description: Biophotonic nanostructures rarely withstand fossilization processes occurring after burial over geologic time. Even more distinctive is a change introduced to the optical properties during diagenetic processes resulting in a different optical appearance. Here, we report and explain the optical appearance of centric diatom frustules obtained from ash-bearing carbonate-cemented concretions on the Greifswalder Oie island (Pomeranian Bay, Germany, southern Baltic Sea). The ultrastructural and mineralogical analysis of the fossil frustules were carried out using electron microscopy techniques and were correlated to the macroscopic and microscopic optical appearance of the frustules before and after acid etching. The unique optical properties of the fossil diatoms were associated with diagenetic nanocrystalline calcite filling the frustules’ areolae. This fill created the macroscopic pale-yellow colour of many frustules, a microscopic iridescence probably associated with diffraction grating behaviour, and microscopic colour rings. The results highlight the unique permineralization process of diatom frustules and might be an addition to the emerging studies on frustule optics and photonics.

Description: Scientific drilling expeditions offer a unique op- portunity to characterize microbial communities in the sub- surface that have long been isolated from the surface. With subsurface microbial biomass being low in general, biologi- cal contamination from the drilling fluid, sample processing, or molecular work is a major concern. To address this, char- acterization of the contaminant populations in the drilling fluid and negative extraction controls are essential for assess- ing and evaluating such sequencing data. Here, rock cores down to 2250 m depth, groundwater-bearing fractures, and the drilling fluid were sampled for DNA to characterize the microbial communities using a broad genomic approach. However, even after removing potential contaminant popu- lations present in the drilling fluid, notorious contaminants were abundant and mainly affiliated with the bacterial order Burkholderiales. These contaminant microorganisms likely originated from the reagents used for isolating DNA despite stringent quality standards during the molecular work. The detection of strictly anaerobic sulfate reducers such as Candi- datus Desulforudis audaxviator suggested the presence of au- tochthonous deep biosphere taxa in the sequenced libraries, yet these clades represented only a minor fraction of the se- quence counts (〈 0.1 %), hindering further ecological inter- pretations. The described methods and findings emphasize the importance of sequencing extraction controls and can support experimental design for future microbiological stud- ies in conjunction with continental drilling operations.

Description: Most of in-situ stress data in the Australian continent comes from wellbore stress analysis in deep hydrocarbon reservoirs, and earthquake focal mechanism solutions near the Australian plate boundaries, where geophysical tools facilitate understanding of the present-day stress patterns. This resulted in a paucity of stress information in many other regions such as the northern Bowen Basin, which is an active mining province, but with low seismicity rates and limited deep petroleum exploration. The mining industry runs several hundred kilometres of image logs annually to characterise geotechnical attributes. These logs provide an image from the borehole wall, which facilitates analysis of stress-related borehole deformations for in-situ stress characterisation. This paper examines the orientation of horizontal in-situ stress using different types of image logs in mine boreholes across the northern Bowen Basin. Analyses of 128 km of image logs in 680 vertical boreholes resulted in the interpretation of 9046 pairs of stress-related indicators including 735 drilling induced fractures and 8311 borehole breakouts. Our comprehensive database comprises 890 quality-ranked data records for the orientation of maximum horizontal stress (SHmax), which makes the Bowen Basin as a basin with the highest data density in the world in terms of quality-ranked stress information according to the World Stress Map. Statistical analysis of SHmax orientation reveals that the mean SHmax orientation in northern Bowen Basin is N018◦ ± 16◦. The results show that this orientation is consistent over long distances, which is in contrast with several eastern Australian basins. This uniform stress pattern agrees well with plate-scale geomechanical model predictions, which further highlights the impact of plate boundary forces in the contemporary stress pattern of this region. Detailed image log investigation did not show any systematic rotation of stress; however, some small-scale stress perturbations were observed in the vicinity of sharp stiffness contrasts and geological structures.

Description: The microbiota is attributed to be important for initial soil formation under extreme climate conditions, but experimental evidence for its relevance is scarce. To fill this gap, we investigated the impact of in situ microbial communities and their interrelationship with biocrust and plants compared to abiotic controls on soil formation in initial arid and semiarid soils. Additionally, we assessed the response of bacterial communities to climate change. Topsoil and subsoil samples from arid and semiarid sites in the Chilean Coastal Cordillera were incubated for 16 weeks under diurnal temperature and moisture variations to simulate humid climate conditions as part of a climate change scenario. Our findings indicate that microorganism-plant interaction intensified aggregate formation and stabilized soil structure, facilitating initial soil formation. Interestingly, microorganisms alone or in conjunction with biocrust showed no discernible patterns compared to abiotic controls, potentially due to watermasking effects. Arid soils displayed reduced bacterial diversity and developed a new community structure dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota, and Planctomycetota, while semiarid soils maintained a consistently dominant community of Acidobacteriota and Proteobacteria. This highlighted a sensitive and specialized bacterial community in arid soils, while semiarid soils exhibited a more complex and stable community. We conclude that microorganism-plant interaction has measurable impacts on initial soil formation in arid and semiarid regions on short time scales under climate change. Additionally, we propose that soil and climate legacies are decisive for the present soil microbial community structure and interactions, future soil development, and microbial responses.

Description: Inland water bodies play a vital role at all scales in the terrestrial water balance and Earth’s climate variability. Thus, an inventory of inland waters is crucially important for hydrologic and ecological studies and management. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to develop a deep learning-based method for inventorying and mapping inland water bodies using the RGB band of high-resolution satellite imagery automatically and accurately. The Sentinel-2 Harmonized dataset, together with ZABAGED-validated ground truth, was used as the main dataset for the model training step. Three different deep learning algorithms based on U-Net architecture were employed to segment inland waters, including a simple U-Net, Residual Attention U-Net, and VGG16-U-Net. All three algorithms were trained using a combination of Sentinel-2 visible bands (Red [B04; 665nm], Green [B03; 560nm], and Blue [B02; 490 nm]) at a 10-meter spatial resolution. The Residual Attention U-Net achieved the highest computational cost due to the increased number of trainable parameters. The VGG16-U-Net had the shortest run time and the lowest number of trainable parameters, attributed to its architecture compared to the simple and Residual Attention U-Net architectures, respectively. As a result, the VGG16-U-Net provided the best segmentation results with a mean-IoU score of 0.9850, a slight improvement compared to other proposed U-Net-based architectures. Although the accuracy of the model based on VGG16-U-Net does not make a difference from Residual Attention U-Net, the computation costs for training VGG16-U-Net were dramatically lower than Residual Attention U-Net.

Description: Adequate tools for evaluating the Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture (SIA) level are crucial, especially in drylands with limited resources. Based on emergy indices and environmental footprints, We propose an evaluation framework for the case of major crop intensification in Xinjiang, China, and examine the local SIA from 2001 to 2020. The results show that increases in emergy input (EI) of the crop system were achieved with simultaneous increases in water consumption and carbon emissions. The most EI to the system is from economically non-free non-renewable resources (75.1 %), and only 5.4 % from environmentally free renewable resources. The emergy output (EO) of cotton was less than 80 % of wheat and maize, but the carbon footprint (CF) and water footprint (WF) of cotton were much higher than wheat and maize (〉1.18 times and 〉 5.01 times, respectively). We group historical results covering emergy indices, CF, WF, and other production indicators into five dimensions and comprehensively evaluate the level of SIA in Xinjiang according to the changes in the five dimensions. It was found that raising the SIA depended on improving management, productivity, and environmental impact dimension from 2000 to 2005. After 2005, the SIA’s down-turning was due to the trade-offs between management, environmental dimensions, and their indicators and the continuous reduction of sustainability of other dimensions. In addition, the progress and realization of SDG 2, SDG 6, SDG 7, SDG 8, SDG 11, and SDG 12 can effectively improve the SIA. Our study serves as a helpful example for evaluating the level of sustainability of intensive agricultural policies not just in Xinjiang but also in other drylands of the world.

Description: Rewetting drained peatlands is recognized as a leading and effective natural solution to curb greenhouse gas emissions. However, rewetting creates novel ecosystems whose emission behaviors are not adequately captured by currently used emission factors. These emission factors are applied immediately after rewetting, thus do not reflect the temporal dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions during the period wherein there is a transition to a rewetted steady-state. Here, we provide long-term data showing a mismatch between actual emissions and default emission factors and revealing the temporal patterns of annual carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in a rewetted peatland site in northeastern Germany. We show that site-level annual emissions of carbon dioxide and methane approach the IPCC default emission factors and those suggested for the German national inventory report only between 13 to 16 years after rewetting. Over the entire study period, we observed a source-to-sink transition of annual carbon dioxide fluxes with a decreasing trend of −0.36 t CO2-C ha−1 yr−1 and a decrease in annual methane emissions of −23.6 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1. Our results indicate that emission factors should represent the temporally dynamic nature of peatlands post-rewetting and consider the effect of site characteristics to better estimate associated annual emissions.

Description: We present the first sequential structural restoration with flexural backstripping of the Gulf of Mexico US-Mexico conjugate margin salt basin. We construct four large-scale (100s of km) balanced, sequential structural restorations to investigate spatio-temporal patterns of subsidence, geometry of the original salt basin, feedbacks between post-salt structural and stratigraphic evolution, paleo-bathymetry, and crustal configurations. The restorations are based on interpretations of 2D and 3D seismic data, and include sequential sedimentary decompaction, flexural isostatic backstripping, and thermal isostatic corrections. The spatially variable crustal thinning factor is directly measured from seismic data, and lithologic parameters are determined by well penetrations. We present a model for the original salt basin and discuss evidence for and implications of a deep water salt basin setting for the GoM. Our analysis suggests a salt basin that contained ∼1–2 km thick salt in a basin 175–390 km across with ∼1 km of bathymetry after salt deposition. The base of salt is mostly smooth with 〈1 km of local relief in the form of normal faults that disrupt a pre-salt sedimentary section. We find that supra-salt extension and shortening are not balanced, with measurable extension exceeding shortening by 18–30 km on each cross-section. Our subsidence analysis reveals anomalous subsidence totaling 1–2 km during Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous times that may reflect dynamic topography or depth-dependent thinning. We offer an interpretation of crustal breakup invoking pre-salt clastic sedimentation, salt deposition in a deep water syn-thinning basin, and post-salt lower-crustal exhumation.