Instead of separate blog posts for each paper, I’ll try to get these out on a weekly basis. Since most of this reading will be happening while I’m visiting INRA and the CEREGE in France, I may not actually be reading one paper daily. Instead, I’ll indicate what day I read each paper, and at the end of the month I hope to have reached the target 30 papers.
So, how did end up choosing my first reading of the project? A very common and conventional way: whatever shiny objects happened to catch my attention today. In this case, it was the newest issues of Nature Geoscience and Nature Ecol Evol.
1. (June 1) Boye et al. (2017) Thermodynamically controlled preservation of organic carbon in floodplains. Nature Geoscience 10:415–419. doi:10.1038/ngeo2940. Organic carbon decomposition in anoxic soils is presumed to depend on the energetics of available electron acceptors. However, this article also founds that the energetics of the organic carbon substrate itself can determine whether or not it is decomposed.
2. (June 2) Judson (2017) The energy expansions of evolution. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1:0138. doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0138. Separating the history of life on Earth into five energetics epochs: geochemistry, sunlight, oxygen, flesh and fire.
Catching up from the long weekend and travels…
3. (June 6) Sharples et al. (2017) What proportion of riverine nutrients reaches the open ocean? Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 31, 39–58, doi:10.1002/2016GB005483. Was hoping this would be about how much of the nutrients in the stream actually make it to the ocean, but instead it was about how nutrient that arrives at the shelf/estuary makes it to the open ocean.
4. (June 6) Ren et al. (2017) 21st-century rise in anthropogenic nitrogen deposition on a remote coral reef. Science, 356(6339): 749-752. doi:10.1126/science.aal3869. Examining N isotopes from a remote South China Sea coral, authors suggest that anthropogenic atmospheric deposition of N supplies nearly one quarter of the annual N input to the surface ocean in this region.
5. (June 6) Torres-Sallan et al. (2017) Clay illuviation provides a long-term sink for C sequestration in subsoils. Scientific Reports. 7:45635. doi:10.1038/srep45635. “…within the top 30 cm of the soil profiles, and a significant proportion (84% ± 9.5) of this topsoil SOC was located within large and small macroaggregates. A smaller proportion (16.1 ± 9.1%) of the SOC in the top 30 cm was associated with the microaggregates and silt plus clay.” But what do they propose the macroaggregates are made off if not microaggregates, silt and clay? This type of analysis and reporting has always bothered me.
6. (June 7) I read a bunch of papers directly relevant to the project I am currently working on in France. I focused mostly on the methods sections, so I’m not sure these “count” so I’ll bundle them all together. They are a series of papers applying transverse/tangential flow fractionation (TFF) and other similar techniques to isolate and/or characterize nanoparticles from soil or stream samples. Dabrin et al. (2013) Colloidal and truly dissolve metal(oid) fractionation in sediment pore waters using tangential flow filtration. Applied Geochemistry, 31:25-34. doi:10.1016/j.apgeochem.2012.12.002; Jiang et al. (2015) Phosphorous containing water dispersible nanoparticles in arable soil. Journal of Environmental Quality, 44:1772–1781. doi:10.2134/jeq2015.02.0085; Tang et al. (2009) Size fractionation and characterization of nanocolloidal particles in soils. Environ. Geochem. Health, 31:1-10. doi:10.1007/s10653-008-9131-7.
7. (June 8) Sebag (2016) Dynamics of soil organic matter based on new Rock-Eval indices. Geoderma, 284:185-203. doi:10.1016/j.geoderma.2016.08.025. “Feller et al. (2010) also question why this technique is not currently used in soil science” – maybe because the instruments are rare and very expensive? Or maybe because the indices are still being developed and interpreted?
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