Extreme climate-driven quartz dissolution alters global river-ocean silicon and carbon cycles

Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.

Carbon is the basis of all organic matter on Earth, and is recycled through the ecosystem in two primary processes: one in which carbon is exchanged among living organisms, and one in which carbon is cycled over long periods of time through fossilized organic remains, weathering of rocks, and volcanic activity. Human activities, including increased agricultural practices and the burning of fossil fuels, has greatly affected the balance of the natural carbon cycle.

The certainty of climate change remains a public controversy despite the consensus among approximately 97% of active climate researchers, who not only agree that the Earth’s climate is changing but also state that this change is intensified by human activity, predominantly carbon emissions 1. The disconnect between the public and the experts is partly due to poor understanding of the mechanisms involved in climate change as well as the differences among essential concepts such as weather...

This work presents a detailed protocol for the microfabrication of nanostructured α-quartz cantilever on a Silicon-On-Insulator(SOI) technology substrate starting from the epitaxial growth of quartz film with the dip coating method and then nanostructuration of the thin film via nanoimprint...

A protocol is presented for the preparation of piezoelectric macroporous epitaxial films of quartz on silicon by solution chemistry using dip-coating and thermal treatments in air.

Special care using "clean techniques" is required to properly collect and process water samples for trace metal studies in aquatic environments. A protocol for sampling, processing, and analytical procedures with the aim of obtaining reliable environmental monitoring data and results with high sensitivity for detailed trace metal studies is...