The Amazon region is a global hotspot of biodiversity and plays a key role in the climate system because of its ability to store large amounts of carbon and its influence on the global water cycle. The rain forest is threatened, however, by climate change as well as by intensified deforestation activities. An international team of researchers that includes scientists from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, the Faculty of Geosciences, and the Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen, have investigated how a change in Atlantic circulation would impact the Amazon Rain Forest. Their results were now published in Nature Geoscience journal.

The North China Craton (NCC) is a very old and stable geological structure, experiencing deformations since the Mesozoic era. However, the details of the deformation of this craton, also known as ‘decratonization,’ remain unclear. Now, researchers from China have developed a mechanistic mantle-flow model that explains the decratonization of NCC, through a special case of tectonic subduction. Backed by theoretical and empirical data, this model sheds light on the puzzling life cycle of cratons.

Researchers forecast that parts of the Salton Sea’s North Shore are expected to retreat 150 meters by 2030 and an additional 172 meters by 2041 given the current rate of retreat.