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Collection  06 March 2024

Earth, Environment and Ecology Top 100 of 2023

This collection highlights the most downloaded* Earth science, environmental science and ecology research papers published by Scientific Reports in 2023. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.

You can also view the journal's overall Top 100 or the Top 100 within various subject areas . *Data obtained from SN Insights, which is based on Digital Science’s Dimensions.

aerial view of salt marsh and coastline

An extraordinary fossil captures the struggle for existence during the Mesozoic

  • Jordan C. Mallon

ecology research

A new spinosaurid dinosaur species from the Early Cretaceous of Cinctorres (Spain)

  • Andrés Santos-Cubedo
  • Carlos de Santisteban
  • Sergi Meseguer

ecology research

Generation of equatorial plasma bubble after the 2022 Tonga volcanic eruption

  • Atsuki Shinbori
  • Takuya Sori
  • Iku Shinohara

ecology research

An ethological analysis of close-contact inter-cat interactions determining if cats are playing, fighting, or something in between

  • N. Gajdoš-Kmecová
  • D. S. Mills

ecology research

The largest amber-preserved flower revisited

  • Eva-Maria Sadowski
  • Christa-Charlotte Hofmann

ecology research

Climate warming and increasing Vibrio vulnificus infections in North America

  • Elizabeth J. Archer
  • Craig Baker-Austin
  • Iain R. Lake

ecology research

First terror bird footprints reveal functionally didactyl posture

  • Ricardo N. Melchor
  • Silverio F. Feola
  • Lorena Herazo

ecology research

New theropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Japan provides critical implications for the early evolution of ornithomimosaurs

  • Soki Hattori
  • Masateru Shibata
  • Yoichi Azuma

ecology research

Carbon dioxide reduction by photosynthesis undetectable even during phytoplankton blooms in two lakes

  • Karla Münzner
  • Silke Langenheder
  • Eva S. Lindström

ecology research

The rise of macropredatory pliosaurids near the Early-Middle Jurassic transition

  • Daniel Madzia
  • Benjamin P. Kear

ecology research

Large-scale effects of offshore wind farms on seabirds of high conservation concern

  • Stefan Garthe
  • Henriette Schwemmer
  • Moritz Mercker

ecology research

Symbolic innovation at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia shown by the personal ornaments from Tolbor-21 (Mongolia)

  • Solange Rigaud
  • Evgeny P. Rybin
  • Nicolas Zwyns

ecology research

Observed increases in North Atlantic tropical cyclone peak intensification rates

  • Andra J. Garner

ecology research

High probability of successive occurrence of Nankai megathrust earthquakes

  • Yo Fukushima
  • Tomoaki Nishikawa
  • Yasuyuki Kano

ecology research

A simple soil mass correction for a more accurate determination of soil carbon stock changes

  • Ames F. Fowler
  • Bruno Basso
  • William F. Brinton

ecology research

Bone aerophones from Eynan-Mallaha (Israel) indicate imitation of raptor calls by the last hunter-gatherers in the Levant

  • Laurent Davin
  • José-Miguel Tejero
  • François Valla

ecology research

Spontaneous action matching in dog puppies, kittens and wolf pups

  • Claudia Fugazza
  • Andrea Temesi
  • Ákos Pogány

ecology research

Characterization of the spontaneously recharging natural hydrogen reservoirs of Bourakebougou in Mali

  • Eric Deville
  • Aliou Boubacar Diallo

ecology research

Reappraising the evolutionary history of the largest known gecko, the presumably extinct Hoplodactylus delcourti , via high-throughput sequencing of archival DNA

  • Matthew P. Heinicke
  • Stuart V. Nielsen
  • Tony Gamble

ecology research

Brazilian Amazon indigenous territories under deforestation pressure

  • Celso H. L. Silva-Junior
  • Fabrício B. Silva
  • Maycon Melo

ecology research

The risk of being bitten by a dog is higher on hot, sunny, and smoggy days

  • Tanujit Dey
  • Antonella Zanobetti
  • Clas Linnman

ecology research

Thousands of domestic and public supply wells face failure despite groundwater sustainability reform in California’s Central Valley

  • Darcy Bostic
  • Linda Mendez-Barrientos
  • Victoria MacClements

ecology research

Physics-informed deep learning to forecast \({\widehat{{\varvec{M}}}}_{{\varvec{m}}{\varvec{a}}{\varvec{x}}}\) during hydraulic fracturing

  • David W. Eaton
  • Jörn Davidsen

ecology research

A new, rare, small-ranged, and endangered mountain snake of the genus Elaphe from the Southern Levant

  • Daniel Jablonski
  • Marco Antônio Ribeiro-Júnior

ecology research

A widely-used eddy covariance gap-filling method creates systematic bias in carbon balance estimates

  • Henriikka Vekuri
  • Juha-Pekka Tuovinen
  • Annalea Lohila

ecology research

Spatial integration framework of solar, wind, and hydropower energy potential in Southeast Asia

  • Anjar Dimara Sakti
  • Pitri Rohayani
  • Ketut Wikantika

ecology research

Rapid population growth and high management costs have created a narrow window for control of introduced hippos in Colombia

  • Amanda L. Subalusky
  • Suresh A. Sethi

ecology research

The provenance of the stones in the Menga dolmen reveals one of the greatest engineering feats of the Neolithic

  • José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez
  • Leonardo García Sanjuán
  • Francisco Martínez-Sevilla

ecology research

Beaver exploitation, 400,000 years ago, testifies to prey choice diversity of Middle Pleistocene hominins

  • Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser
  • Lutz Kindler
  • Wil Roebroeks

ecology research

Household energy-saving behavior, its consumption, and life satisfaction in 37 countries

  • Xiangdan Piao
  • Shunsuke Managi

ecology research

Comparison of Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Illumina MiSeq sequencing with mock communities and agricultural soil

  • Bo Maxwell Stevens
  • Tim B. Creed
  • Daniel K. Manter

ecology research

The impact of floating photovoltaic power plants on lake water temperature and stratification

  • Konstantin Ilgen
  • Dirk Schindler

ecology research

Partial COVID-19 closure of a national park reveals negative influence of low-impact recreation on wildlife spatiotemporal ecology

  • Alissa K. Anderson
  • John S. Waller
  • Daniel H. Thornton

ecology research

Sampling environmental DNA from trees and soil to detect cryptic arboreal mammals

  • Michael C. Allen
  • Robert Kwait
  • Julie L. Lockwood

ecology research

A new silesaurid from Carnian beds of Brazil fills a gap in the radiation of avian line archosaurs

  • Rodrigo T. Müller
  • Maurício S. Garcia

ecology research

Assessing the climate change mitigation potential from food waste composting

  • Tibisay Pérez
  • Sintana E. Vergara
  • Whendee L. Silver

ecology research

Volcanic glass from the 1.8 ka Taupō eruption (New Zealand) detected in Antarctic ice at ~ 230 CE

  • Stephen B. Piva
  • Simon J. Barker
  • Rewi M. Newnham

ecology research

Land-use change is associated with multi-century loss of elephant ecosystems in Asia

  • Shermin de Silva
  • Peter Leimgruber

ecology research

Impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815 on islands and relevance to future sunlight-blocking catastrophes

  • Nick Wilson
  • Veronika Valler
  • Stefan Brönnimann

ecology research

Statistical evaluation of character support reveals the instability of higher-level dinosaur phylogeny

  • David Černý
  • Ashley L. Simonoff

ecology research

Climate change multi-model projections in CMIP6 scenarios in Central Hokkaido, Japan

  • Shilei Peng
  • Chunying Wang
  • Ryusuke Hatano

ecology research

An extinct deep-snouted Alligator species from the Quaternary of Thailand and comments on the evolution of crushing dentition in alligatorids

  • Gustavo Darlim
  • Kantapon Suraprasit
  • Márton Rabi

ecology research

A new Carboniferous edaphosaurid and the origin of herbivory in mammal forerunners

  • Amy C. Henrici
  • Stephanie E. Pierce

ecology research

The difference between two brachycephalic and one mesocephalic dog breeds’ problem-solving performance suggests evidence for paedomorphism in behaviour

  • Dorottya Júlia Ujfalussy
  • Zsófia Bognár
  • Enikő Kubinyi

ecology research

35,000 years of recurrent visits inside Nerja cave (Andalusia, Spain) based on charcoals and soot micro-layers analyses

  • Mª Ángeles Medina-Alcaide
  • Ségolène Vandevelde
  • Diego Garate

ecology research

Anthropogenic influence on extremes and risk hotspots

  • Francisco Estrada
  • Pierre Perron
  • Yohei Yamamoto

ecology research

Neuroanatomy of the late Cretaceous Thescelosaurus neglectus (Neornithischia: Thescelosauridae) reveals novel ecological specialisations within Dinosauria

  • David J. Button
  • Lindsay E. Zanno

ecology research

A new hazard scenario at Vesuvius: deadly thermal impact of detached ash cloud surges in 79CE at Herculaneum

  • Alessandra Pensa
  • Guido Giordano
  • Pier Paolo Petrone

ecology research

GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration

  • Roeland Kindt
  • Lars Graudal
  • Ramni Jamnadass

ecology research

Marine records reveal multiple phases of Toba’s last volcanic activity

  • G. Del Manzo

ecology research

The degree of urbanisation reduces wild bee and butterfly diversity and alters the patterns of flower-visitation in urban dry grasslands

  • Johann Herrmann
  • Sascha Buchholz
  • Panagiotis Theodorou

ecology research

Episodic transient deformation revealed by the analysis of multiple GNSS networks in the Noto Peninsula, central Japan

  • Takuya Nishimura
  • Yoshihiro Hiramatsu
  • Yusaku Ohta

ecology research

Unraveling Amazon tree community assembly using Maximum Information Entropy : a quantitative analysis of tropical forest ecology

  • Luiz de Souza Coelho
  • Hans ter Steege

ecology research

An assessment of whether long-term global changes in waves and storm surges have impacted global coastlines

  • Mandana Ghanavati
  • Arjen P. Luijendijk

ecology research

Organic geochemical evidence of human-controlled fires at Acheulean site of Valdocarros II (Spain, 245 kya)

  • Lavinia M. Stancampiano
  • Susana Rubio-Jara
  • Clayton R. Magill

ecology research

Playing “hide and seek” with the Mediterranean monk seal: a citizen science dataset reveals its distribution from molecular traces (eDNA)

  • Elena Valsecchi
  • Giacomo Tavecchia
  • Paolo Galli

ecology research

Air-conditioning adoption and electricity demand highlight climate change mitigation–adaptation tradeoffs

  • Francesco Pietro Colelli
  • Ian Sue Wing
  • Enrica De Cian

ecology research

Assessing the United Nations sustainable development goals from the inclusive wealth perspective

  • Yogi Sugiawan
  • Robi Kurniawan

ecology research

Palaeoenvironments and hominin evolutionary dynamics in southeast Asia

  • Anne-Marie Bacon
  • Nicolas Bourgon
  • Jean-Jacques Hublin

ecology research

Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over the past six decades

  • Audrey Minière
  • Karina von Schuckmann

ecology research

A bolder conservation future for Indonesia by prioritising biodiversity, carbon and unique ecosystems in Sulawesi

  • Wulan Pusparini
  • Andi Cahyana
  • David W. Macdonald

ecology research

Assessing the relative impacts and economic costs of Japanese knotweed management methods

  • Sophie Hocking
  • Trisha Toop
  • Daniel Eastwood

ecology research

Machine learning and statistical classification of birdsong link vocal acoustic features with phylogeny

  • Moises Rivera
  • Jacob A. Edwards
  • Sarah M. N. Woolley

ecology research

Genetic diversity patterns of lionfish in the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean reveal a rapidly expanding stepping-stone bioinvasion process

  • Rodrigo Maggioni
  • Rafael S. Rocha
  • Marcelo O. Soares

ecology research

AMOC decline and recovery in a warmer climate

  • Paulo Nobre
  • Sandro F. Veiga
  • Carlos A. Nobre

ecology research

A collaborative and near-comprehensive North Pacific humpback whale photo-ID dataset

  • Ted Cheeseman
  • Ken Southerland
  • Phil Clapham

ecology research

Explaining population booms and busts in Mid-Holocene Europe

  • Dániel Kondor
  • James S. Bennett
  • Peter Turchin

ecology research

Centenarian lifespans of three freshwater fish species in Arizona reveal the exceptional longevity of the buffalofishes ( Ictiobus )

  • Alec R. Lackmann
  • Stuart A. Black
  • Jeffrey A. Lackmann

ecology research

Necrophagy by insects in Oculudentavis and other lizard body fossils preserved in Cretaceous amber

  • Mónica M. Solórzano‑Kraemer
  • Enrique Peñalver
  • Adolf M. Peretti

ecology research

The first description of dermal armour in snakes

  • Petra Frýdlová
  • Veronika Janovská
  • Daniel Frynta

ecology research

Seafood label quality and mislabelling rates hamper consumer choices for sustainability in Australia

  • Megan E. Cundy
  • Julia Santana-Garcon
  • Chris Wilcox

ecology research

The first petrographic characterisation of a prehistoric rock crystal mine in the Swiss Alps

  • Thomas Hess
  • Josef Mullis
  • Leander Franz

ecology research

Data driven pathway analysis and forecast of global warming and sea level rise

  • Jiecheng Song
  • Guanchao Tong

ecology research

Scenarios of land use and land cover change in the Colombian Amazon to evaluate alternative post-conflict pathways

  • William-J. Agudelo-Hz
  • Natalia-C. Castillo-Barrera
  • Murcia-García Uriel

ecology research

The median eyes of trilobites

  • Brigitte Schoenemann
  • Euan N. K. Clarkson

ecology research

Subsistence of early anatomically modern humans in Europe as evidenced in the Protoaurignacian occupations of Fumane Cave, Italy

  • Ana B. Marín-Arroyo
  • Gabriele Terlato
  • Marco Peresani

ecology research

Possible origins and implications of atypical morphologies and domestication-like traits in wild golden jackals ( Canis aureus )

  • Ayelet Barash
  • Shlomo Preiss-Bloom
  • Yaron Dekel

ecology research

Environmental ranking of European industrial facilities by toxicity and global warming potentials

  • Szilárd Erhart
  • Kornél Erhart

ecology research

Three-dimensional dental microwear in type-Maastrichtian mosasaur teeth (Reptilia, Squamata)

  • Femke M. Holwerda
  • Jordan Bestwick
  • Anne S. Schulp

ecology research

Understanding physical climate risks and their implication for community adaptation in the borana zone of southern Ethiopia using mixed-methods research

  • Mulugeta Shibru
  • Alfred Opere
  • Maina Gichaba

ecology research

Multiple mitogenomes indicate Things Fall Apart with Out of Africa or Asia hypotheses for the phylogeographic evolution of Honey Bees ( Apis mellifera )

  • Steven M. Carr

ecology research

Skeletal convergence in thunniform sharks, ichthyosaurs, whales, and tunas, and its possible ecological links through the marine ecosystem evolution

  • Ryosuke Motani
  • Kenshu Shimada

ecology research

A new toothless pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota with comments on the Chaoyangopteridae

  • Xiaolin Wang
  • Alexander W. A. Kellner
  • Zhonghe Zhou

ecology research

Hunting behavior of a solitary sailfish Istiophorus platypterus and estimated energy gain after prey capture

  • Ryan K. Logan
  • Sarah M. Luongo
  • Mahmood S. Shivji

ecology research

Critically endangered Rice’s whales ( Balaenoptera ricei ) selectively feed on high-quality prey in the Gulf of Mexico

  • Jeremy J. Kiszka
  • Michelle Caputo
  • Lance P. Garrison

ecology research

Machine learning-based country-level annual air pollutants exploration using Sentinel-5P and Google Earth Engine

  • Bijay Halder
  • Iman Ahmadianfar
  • Zaher Mundher Yaseen

ecology research

Climate-driven habitat shifts of high-ranked prey species structure Late Upper Paleolithic hunting

  • Peter M. Yaworsky
  • Shumon T. Hussain
  • Felix Riede

ecology research

Regional and temporal variability of Indian summer monsoon rainfall in relation to El Niño southern oscillation

  • K. S. Athira
  • Raju Attada

ecology research

Applying an ecosystem services framework on nature and mental health to recreational blue space visits across 18 countries

  • Joanne K. Garrett
  • Mathew P. White
  • Lora E. Fleming

ecology research

Exponential increases in high-temperature extremes in North America

  • Ali Davariashtiyani
  • Mohsen Taherkhani
  • Sean Vitousek

ecology research

Human-mediated dispersal drives the spread of the spotted lanternfly ( Lycorma delicatula )

  • Zachary S. Ladin
  • Donald A. Eggen
  • Vincent D’Amico

ecology research

The environmental controls on efficiency of enhanced rock weathering in soils

  • Eric Sonnenthal

ecology research

Resolving the 21st century temperature trends of the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere with satellite observations

  • Florian Ladstädter
  • Andrea K. Steiner
  • Hans Gleisner

ecology research

Regionally high risk increase for precipitation extreme events under global warming

  • Cristian Martinez-Villalobos
  • J. David Neelin

ecology research

Effects of Climate change on temperature and precipitation in the Lake Toba region, Indonesia, based on ERA5-land data with quantile mapping bias correction

  • Hendri Irwandi
  • Mohammad Syamsu Rosid

ecology research

A probable koala from the Oligocene of central Australia provides insights into early diprotodontian evolution

  • Arthur I. Crichton
  • Robin M. D. Beck
  • Gavin J. Prideaux

ecology research

Overwintering and breeding patterns of monarch butterflies ( Danaus plexippus ) in coastal plain habitats of the southeastern USA

  • Michael R. Kendrick
  • John W. McCord

ecology research

Ancient DNA re-opens the question of the phylogenetic position of the Sardinian pika Prolagus sardus (Wagner, 1829), an extinct lagomorph

  • Valerio Joe Utzeri
  • Elisabetta Cilli
  • Luca Fontanesi

ecology research

Increase in the wave power caused by decreasing sea ice over the Sea of Okhotsk in winter

  • Shinsuke Iwasaki

ecology research

Identification of illegally dumped plastic waste in a highly polluted river in Indonesia using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery

  • Emenda Sembiring
  • Danang Surya Candra

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