Scientists know iron oxide minerals store large amounts of carbon in soils, but lack a detailed, quantitative understanding of the specific chemical mechanisms that allow them to bind such a wide ...

Iron oxide in soil performs the same transformation as plants and microbes that are known to secrete enzymes to transform organic phosphorus into bioavailable inorganic phosphorus. Northwestern ...

A common iron mineral hiding in soil turns out to be far better at trapping carbon than scientists realized. Its surface isn’t uniform — it’s a nanoscale patchwork of positive and negative charges ...

Phosphorus is a key element for all life on Earth. For decades, researchers thought that, in nature, only enzymes could transform organic phosphorus—phosphates within biomolecules—into its ...

When NASA's Mars rovers found manganese oxides in rocks in the Gale and Endeavor craters on Mars in 2014, the discovery sparked some scientists to suggest that the red planet might have once had more ...

These unexpected strategies turn iron oxide minerals into highly versatile carbon snatchers, capable of grabbing and holding onto many different types of organic molecules. The findings offer new ...