Organic carbon accumulation in British saltmarshes.

Saltmarshes are a crucial component of the coastal carbon (C) system and provide a natural climate regulation service through the accumulation and long-term storage of organic carbon (OC) in their soils. These coastal ecosystems are under growing pressure from a changing climate and increasing anthropogenic disturbance. To manage and protect these ecosystems for C and to allow their inclusion in emissions and natural-capital accounting, as well as carbon markets, accurate and reliable estimates of OC accumulation are required. However, globally, such data are rare or of varying quality. Here, we quantify sedimentation rates and OC densities for 21 saltmarshes in Great Britain (GB). We estimate that, on average, saltmarshes accumulate OC at a rate of 110.88 ± 43.12 g C m-2 yr-1. This is considerably less than widely applied global saltmarsh averages. It is therefore highly likely that the contribution of northern European saltmarshes to global saltmarsh OC accumulation has been significantly overestimated. Taking account of the climatic, geomorphological, oceanographic, and ecological characteristics of all GB saltmarshes and the areal extent of different saltmarsh zones, we estimate that the 451.65 km2 of GB saltmarsh accumulates 46,563 ± 4353 t of OC annually. These low OC accumulation rates underline the importance of the 5.20 ± 0.65 million tonnes of OC already stored in these vulnerable coastal ecosystems. Going forward the protection and preservation of the existing stores of OC in GB saltmarshes must be a priority for the UK as this will provide climate benefits through avoided emissions several times more significant than the annual accumulation of OC in these ecosystems.

Constraining the contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to Last Interglacial sea level.

Polar temperatures during the Last Interglacial [LIG; ~129 to 116 thousand years (ka)] were warmer than today, making this time period an important testing ground to better understand how ice sheets respond to warming. However, it remains debated how much and when the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets changed during this period. Here, we present a combination of new and existing absolutely dated LIG sea-level observations from Britain, France, and Denmark. Because of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), the LIG Greenland ice melt contribution to sea-level change in this region is small, which allows us to constrain Antarctic ice change. We find that the Antarctic contribution to LIG global mean sea level peaked early in the interglacial (before 126 ka), with a maximum contribution of 5.7 m (50th percentile, 3.6 to 8.7 m central 68% probability) before declining. Our results support an asynchronous melt history over the LIG, with an early Antarctic contribution followed by later Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss.

Examining the transfer of soils to clothing materials: Implications for forensic investigations.

Soil forensics has proven instrumental in assisting criminal investigation, and there is an increasing demand for experimental studies on such trace evidence. Here we present the first detailed study on the influence of clothing materials on soil transfer. We adopt an experimental approach to test the transfer of five common UK soils to five different clothing materials. Our experiment is designed to represent victim or perpetrator contact with soil at the scene of a crime. We highlight the complex relationship between soil transfer and clothing material type. Whilst over half of our soils tested displayed differential transfer to different clothing materials, soil moisture content and soil type were found to have a greater influence on the transfer of soils overall. Soil transfer is typically more effective across all material types when soils are wet and saturated. However, we find the relationship between soil transfer and material type to be more complex when soils are dry, with a significant bias in soil transfer to fleece material, which we attribute to static attraction. Encouragingly, for the analysis of forensic soils recovered from clothing artefacts, each of the transfer experiments we conducted led to soil transfer to every tested material. We suggest that future empirical studies now focus on the persistence of soils over time to clothing materials after transfer has occurred, and the transfer and persistence of soil palynomorphs present within soils.