Carbon cycling refers to the set of biogeochemical processes that regulate the transformation, transport, and storage of carbon among major Earth system reservoirs, including the atmosphere, terrestrial biosphere, oceans, and lithosphere. It encompasses autotrophic carbon fixation, heterotrophic respiration, decomposition, sedimentation, weathering, and anthropogenic fluxes such as fossil fuel combustion and land-use change. Research on carbon cycling quantifies fluxes and pool sizes, characterizes feedbacks between carbon reservoirs and climate, and employs observational networks, isotopic tracers, and Earth system models to constrain budgets, residence times, and perturbation responses across temporal scales from diurnal to geologic.
Coral reefs have long been celebrated as biodiversity hotspots—but new research shows they have also played a much deeper role: conducting the rhythm of Earth's carbon and climate cycles for more than 250 million years.
Earth Sciences
Dec 1, 2025
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247
In a new study published in New Phytologist on Nov. 23, Prof. Zeng Fanjiang's team from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has identified the key pathway driving the soil carbon ...
Ecology
Nov 28, 2025
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19
Florida State University oceanographers have discovered a significant connection between small-scale microbial processes and ecosystem-wide dynamics, offering new insights into the mechanisms driving marine carbon storage.
Earth Sciences
Nov 24, 2025
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51
Researchers from the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have uncovered how soil food webs promote the transformation and storage of photosynthetic carbon in farmlands. Their results ...
Ecology
Nov 21, 2025
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28
As global efforts intensify around restoring coastal wetlands to curb climate change, a new JCU-led study published in Reviews of Geophysics is the first to link wetland restoration and carbon cycling with groundwater dynamics, ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 20, 2025
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20
Soil stores more carbon than Earth's atmosphere and plants combined, which makes the speed of soil carbon's decomposition an important variable in models used to predict changes to our climate.
Earth Sciences
Nov 19, 2025
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67
In a new study published in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment on Nov. 5, Prof. Zeng Fanjiang's team from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has unveiled distinct soil ...
Ecology
Nov 19, 2025
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13
Soils release approximately 40–60 petagrams (Pg) of carbon annually into the atmosphere through microbial metabolism. Climate warming is projected to further enhance soil microbial respiration, intensifying positive carbon–climate ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 13, 2025
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24
Climate change and the associated rising temperatures are melting more and more frozen ground in the Arctic. This dissolved matter contains large amounts of organic carbon which is flowing into the central Arctic Ocean.
Earth Sciences
Nov 12, 2025
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33
For decades, scientists have generally thought that rivers emit more carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, than they take in. But a new analysis of every river network in the contiguous United States—including underrepresented ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 6, 2025
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26
