Ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole, MIT scientists have found. Using modern tools, they also determined that carbon tetrachloride, a common dry-cleaning and degreasing agent, was at the root of early ozone loss.

Human activity and climate change are estimated to increase the amount of seabed methane leakage. Much of the methane could be consumed by microbes, yet it is unclear how quickly such communities establish. Through six-year seabed monitoring, researchers found that an animal-microbe “biofilter” removing up to100% of the dissolved methane can develop in just 2–3 years, not the decades once thought. Fast-growing methane-oxidizing microbes feed burrowing animals, which churn the seafloor like tiny gardeners to help the microbes feast on the greenhouse gas. This discovery improves our understanding of seafloor methane removal capacity, which is critical to assess the effects of global warming and anthropogenic disturbance in the deep sea.

A recent study published in National Science Review reveals that soil fungi with broad geographic distributions play a disproportionately important role in carbon decomposition. By combining nationwide field surveys across China, and DNA stable isotope probing experiments, researchers found that widespread saprotrophic fungi, not locally diverse but narrowly distributed species, are the main active decomposers of plant residues. The findings establish occupancy as a key biogeographic property linking microbial diversity to ecosystem functioning.