Kimberlites—carrot-shaped volcanic pipes that erupt from mantle depths greater than 150 km—have long fascinated geologists as windows into the deep Earth. Their mantle-derived melt ascends rapidly through the mantle and crust, with some estimates suggesting ascent rates of up to 80 miles per hour before kimberlites erupt violently at the surface. Along the way, the magma captures xenoliths and xenocrysts, fragments of the rocks encountered on its path. Over 70% of the world’s diamonds are mined from these unique volcanic structures. Yet despite decades of study, scientists are still working to understand how exactly kimberlites erupt from deep in Earth’s mantle to the surface. In a study published this month in the journal Geology, Anzulović and colleagues from the University of Oslo have taken a major step toward solving the puzzle.

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s S. Kathleen Lyons, is providing a new framework — Earth system engineering — for examining how organisms, especially humans, have fundamentally altered ecosystems on a global scale. The framework builds on ecosystem engineering, but Earth system engineering is a novel approach that distinguishes between engineering behaviors that have transformed the planet and those that have only local effects.