The continental lithospheric mantle (CLM) beneath the southern margin of the Congo craton has remained elusive, mainly because of the thick Phanerozoic sedimentary cover concealing possible kimberlite and lamproite diatremes. In this study, we explore this lithospheric mantle section using major and trace element compositions of mantle-derived clinopyroxene and garnet xenocrysts from kimberlites of ...

The Norwegian Sea oceanic basins and prograded margins have developed since NE Atlantic break-up in the earliest Eocene. Significant amounts of sediments were fed to the regionally subsiding and widening Norwegian Sea during the Cenozoic as a result of several phases of uplift and erosion of the bounding shelves and their hinterland. Despite an overall passive-margin evolution, the area experienced ...

Methane-rich emissions to the seafloor along the Arctic mid-oceanic ridge hold strong astrobiological significance, as they may represent analogues of putative hydrothermal vent environments on Enceladus. Although such environments on Enceladus would be ideal to sample in future astrobiological missions, this may not be possible due to technological and logistical limitations. As such, searching for ...

Borealis is a recently discovered submerged mud volcano in the Polar North Atlantic, differing from the numerous methane seepages previously identified in the region. Here we show in situ observations from a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), capturing the release of warm (11.5 °C) Neogene sediments and methane-rich fluids from a gryphon at Borealis. The surrounding seafloor within the mud volcano ...

Sunlight penetrates the bare-ice surface of glaciers and ice sheets, giving rise to the presence of a three-dimensional porous matrix of partially melted ice crystals known as the weathering crust. Surface meltwater slowly percolates through this weathering crust, which hosts active and diverse bacterial communities, until it reaches a supraglacial stream. Despite the potential implications of ...

Geologically, the Arctic is one of the least-explored regions of Earth. Obtaining data in the high Arctic is logistically, economically, and environmentally expensive, but the township of Longyearbyen (population of 2617 as of 2024) at 78° N represents a relatively easily accessible gateway to Arctic geology and is home to The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). These unique factors provide a ...

The MIKRONOR monitoring program aims to establish baseline levels of microplastics in the Norwegian environment and to identify potential sources and sinks. This third MIKRONOR report focuses mainly on results from air samples, including data on tyre wear particles (TWP), as well as river and fjord surface water samples, and their correlation to rainfall and river discharge levels. Additionally, ...

This study is the first assessment of a fjord Ecological Quality Status (EcoQS) by comparing both the traditional morphology-based and emerging metabarcoding techniques in benthic foraminifera. For this, we focus on historically polluted Idefjord on the Swedish Norwegian border, which has experienced high effluent load from pulp and paper mill for almost a century. Based on our results, the morphological ...

We develop a semiautomated method for extracting faults and other planar features from two high-resolution (HR) seismic volumes in the eastern Fram Strait. We assess seismic data quality and resolution prior to structural interpretation to determine the appropriate processing workflow. This workflow, designed for HR data sets, identifies meter-scale (>3–4 m) faults and other planar features, picked ...

Benthic foraminifera are one of the major groups of marine protists that also occur in freshwater and terrestrial habitats. They are widely used to monitor current and past environmental conditions. Over the last three decades, thousands of DNA sequences have been obtained from benthic foraminiferal isolates. The results of this long-term effort are compiled here in the form of the first curated ...