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Marine phytoplankton both follow and actively influence the environment they inhabit. Unpacking the complex ecological and biogeochemical roles of these tiny organisms can help reveal the workings of the Earth system.
Phytoplankton are the workers of an ocean-spanning factory converting sunlight and raw nutrients into organic matter. These little organisms — the foundation of the marine ecosystem — feed into a myriad of biogeochemical cycles, the balance of which help control the distribution of carbon on the Earth surface and ultimately the overall climate state. As papers in this issue of Nature Geoscience show, phytoplankton are far from passive actors in the global web of biogeochemical cycles. The functioning of phytoplankton is not just a matter for biologists, but is also important for geoscientists seeking to understand the Earth system more broadly.Phytoplankton are concentrated where local nutrient and sea surface temperatures are optimal, factors which aren’t always static in time. Prominent temperature fluctuations, from seasonal to daily cycles, are reflected in phytoplankton biomass, with cascading effects on other parts of marine ecosystems, such as economically-important fisheries. In an Article in this issue, Keerthi et al., show that phytoplankton biomass, tracked by satellite measurements of chlorophyll for relatively small ( More

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Global statistics on declining biodiversity can give the impression that every population of every species is in a downward spiral. In fact, many populations are stable or growing, while a small number of species faces truly existential challenges. These photos capture some specific crises. They are images of threats unfolding, of desperate attempts at species defence and of the beautiful living world that is at stake.
The 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, COP15, opens in Montreal, Canada, on 7 December. At the meeting, delegates will attempt to agree on goals for stabilizing species’ declines by 2030 and reverse them by mid-century. The current draft framework agreement promises nothing less than a “transformation in society’s relationship with biodiversity”.
Help for the kelp. Tasmania’s forests of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) are dying as climate change shifts ocean currents, bringing warm water to the east coast of the temperate Australian island. The kelp forests host an entire ecosystem, including abalone and crayfish — both economically important species and part of local food culture. Now, researchers at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart are breeding kelp plants that can tolerate warmer conditions, and replanting them along the coast — a trial for what they hope will become a landscape-scale restoration. More

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Whether land acts as a carbon sink or source depends largely on two opposite fluxes: carbon uptake through photosynthesis and carbon release through turnover. Turnover occurs through multiple processes, including but not limited to, leaf senescence, tree mortality, and respiration by plants, microbes, and animals. Each of these processes is sensitive to climate, and ecologists and climatologists have been working to figure out how temperature regulates biological activities and to what extent the carbon cycle responds to global warming. Previous theoretical and experimental studies have yielded conflicting relationships between temperature and carbon turnover, with large variations across ecosystems, climate and time-scale1,2,3,4. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Fan et al.5 find that hydrometeorological factors have an important influence on how the turnover time of land carbon responds to changes in temperature. More