Noah Planavsky
· Professor of Earth & Planetary SciencesYale University · Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Active 2007–2024
About
Noah Planavsky is a professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Yale University. He is an isotope geochemist specializing in environmental change in Earth’s past, present, and future. His work combines field studies, analytical chemistry, novel isotope systems, and geochemical modeling. He has extensively researched atmospheric evolution, focusing on changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations. Current projects include studying changes in ocean oxygen levels, tracking historical primary productivity, and exploring carbon capture through enhanced mineral weathering in marine and terrestrial environments. His research group, based at the Yale Geochemistry Center, is generally interested in silicate weathering processes and their implications, as well as the co-evolution of life, climate, and nutrient cycling. The group investigates topics such as carbon capture verification, soil chemistry, greenhouse gas fluxes, and the use of stable isotopes to reconstruct past ocean and atmospheric elemental cycling. Dr. Planavsky has contributed to understanding the co-evolution of Earth's surface environments and life, with a focus on the Precambrian era, and has published extensively on topics related to Earth's oxygenation history, biogeochemical cycles, and the evolution of planetary biospheres.
Research topics
- Geology
- Earth science
- Paleontology
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Oceanography
- Environmental chemistry
- Ecology
- Geochemistry
- Sociology
- Environmental science
- Astrobiology
- Physics
- Computer Security
- Social Science
- Computer Science
- Materials science
- Environmental ethics
- Astronomy
- Evolutionary biology
- Data science
- Geography
- Mineralogy
- Meteorology
Selected publications
The evolution of the marine carbonate factory
Nature · 2023 · 49 citations
Senior authorCorresponding- Geology
- Geochemistry
- Oceanography
Phosphorus availability on the early Earth and the impacts of life
Nature Geoscience · 2023 · 87 citations
- Astrobiology
- Environmental chemistry
- Chemistry
Phosphorus (P) is critical to modern biochemical functions and can control ecosystem growth. It was presumably important as a reagent in prebiotic chemistry. However, on the early Earth, P sources may have consisted primarily of poorly soluble calcium phosphates, which may have rendered phosphate as a minimally available nutrient or reagent if these minerals were the sole source. Here, we review aqueous P availability on the early Earth (>2.5 Gyr ago), considering both mineral sources and geochemical sinks relevant to its solvation, and activation by abiotic and biological pathways. Phosphorus on Earth’s early surface would have been present as a mixture of phosphate minerals, as a minor element in silicate minerals, and in reactive, reduced phases from accreted dust, meteorites and asteroids. These P sources would have weathered and plausibly furnished the prebiotic Earth with abundant and potentially reactive P. After the origin of a biosphere, life evolved to draw on not just reactive available P sources, but also insoluble and unreactive sources. The rise of an ecosystem dependent on this element at some point forged a P-limited biosphere, with evolutionary stress forcing the efficient extraction and recycling of P from both abiotic and biotic sources and sinks. A review of aqueous phosphorus availability on the Earth’s early surface suggests a range of phosphorus sources supplied the prebiotic Earth, but that phosphorus availability declined as life evolved and altered geochemical cycling.
Nature Communications · 2022 · 113 citations
- Geology
- Earth science
- Geochemistry
following a carbon release event. Lastly, these data also demonstrate that high-latitude continental settings are more sensitive than low/middle-latitude sites to shifts in weathering intensity during climatic warming events.
A long-term record of early to mid-Paleozoic marine redox change
Science Advances · 2021 · 82 citations
- Paleontology
- Geology
- Oceanography
The extent to which Paleozoic oceans differed from Neoproterozoic oceans and the causal relationship between biological evolution and changing environmental conditions are heavily debated. Here, we report a nearly continuous record of seafloor redox change from the deep-water upper Cambrian to Middle Devonian Road River Group of Yukon, Canada. Bottom waters were largely anoxic in the Richardson trough during the entirety of Road River Group deposition, while independent evidence from iron speciation and Mo/U ratios show that the biogeochemical nature of anoxia changed through time. Both in Yukon and globally, Ordovician through Early Devonian anoxic waters were broadly ferruginous (nonsulfidic), with a transition toward more euxinic (sulfidic) conditions in the mid-Early Devonian (Pragian), coincident with the early diversification of vascular plants and disappearance of graptolites. This ~80-million-year interval of the Paleozoic characterized by widespread ferruginous bottom waters represents a persistence of Neoproterozoic-like marine redox conditions well into the Phanerozoic.
Felsic volcanism as a factor driving the end-Permian mass extinction
Science Advances · 2021 · 131 citations
- Earth science
- Geology
- Environmental science
injections and argue that this volcanism would have produced several degrees of rapid cooling before or coincident with the more protracted global warming. Large-scale eruptions near the South China block synchronous with the EPME strengthen the case that the STLIP may not have been the sole trigger.
A lithium-isotope perspective on the evolution of carbon and silicon cycles
Nature · 2021 · 152 citations
- Environmental science
- Earth science
- Geology
A largely invariant marine dissolved organic carbon reservoir across Earth's history
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 53 citations
- Environmental science
- Oceanography
- Environmental chemistry
Marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC), the largest pool of reduced carbon in the oceans, plays an important role in the global carbon cycle and contributes to the regulation of atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide abundances. Despite its importance in global biogeochemical cycles, the long-term history of the marine DOC reservoir is poorly constrained. Nonetheless, significant changes to the size of the oceanic DOC reservoir through Earth's history have been commonly invoked to explain changes to ocean chemistry, carbon cycling, and marine ecology. Here, we present a revised view of the evolution of marine DOC concentrations using a mechanistic carbon cycle model that can reproduce DOC concentrations in both oxic and anoxic modern environments. We use this model to demonstrate that the overall size of the marine DOC reservoir has likely undergone very little variation through Earth's history, despite major changes in the redox state of the ocean-atmosphere system and the nature and efficiency of the biological carbon pump. A relatively static marine DOC reservoir across Earth's history renders it unlikely that major changes in marine DOC concentrations have been responsible for driving massive repartitioning of surface carbon or the large carbon isotope excursions observed in Earth's stratigraphic record and casts doubt on previously hypothesized links between marine DOC levels and the emergence and radiation of early animals.
Oxygenation, Life, and the Planetary System during Earth's Middle History: An Overview
Astrobiology · 2021 · 194 citations
- Astrobiology
- Earth science
- Ecology
around 800 million years ago is coincident with major developments in complex life. Multiple geochemical and paleontological records point to a major biogeochemical transition at that time, but whether rising and still dynamic biospheric oxygen triggered or merely followed from innovations in eukaryotic ecology, including the emergence of animals, is still debated. This paper focuses on the geochemical records of Earth's middle history, roughly 1.8 to 0.5 billion years ago, as a backdrop for exploring possible cause-and-effect relationships with biological evolution and the primary controls that may have set its pace, including solid Earth/tectonic processes, nutrient limitation, and their possible linkages. A richer mechanistic understanding of the interplay between coevolving life and Earth surface environments can provide a template for understanding and remotely searching for sustained habitability and even life on distant exoplanets.
On the co‐evolution of surface oxygen levels and animals
Geobiology · 2020 · 140 citations
Senior authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Astrobiology
- Ecology
Few topics in geobiology have been as extensively debated as the role of Earth's oxygenation in controlling when and why animals emerged and diversified. All currently described animals require oxygen for at least a portion of their life cycle. Therefore, the transition to an oxygenated planet was a prerequisite for the emergence of animals. Yet, our understanding of Earth's oxygenation and the environmental requirements of animal habitability and ecological success is currently limited; estimates for the timing of the appearance of environments sufficiently oxygenated to support ecologically stable populations of animals span a wide range, from billions of years to only a few million years before animals appear in the fossil record. In this light, the extent to which oxygen played an important role in controlling when animals appeared remains a topic of debate. When animals originated and when they diversified are separate questions, meaning either one or both of these phenomena could have been decoupled from oxygenation. Here, we present views from across this interpretive spectrum-in a point-counterpoint format-regarding crucial aspects of the potential links between animals and surface oxygen levels. We highlight areas where the standard discourse on this topic requires a change of course and note that several traditional arguments in this "life versus environment" debate are poorly founded. We also identify a clear need for basic research across a range of fields to disentangle the relationships between oxygen availability and emergence and diversification of animal life.
The effects of diagenesis on lithium isotope ratios of shallow marine carbonates
American Journal of Science · 2020 · 78 citations
- Geology
- Geochemistry
- Mineralogy
In this study, we present new data on the δ^7^Li values and Li/(Ca+Mg) ratios of carbonate cores from the Great Bahama Bank (Clino, Unda), a deep water core off of the bank top (ODP Leg 166 Site 1007), and the coralline Key Largo Limestone. We use these samples to evaluate the influence of meteoric diagenesis, marine burial diagenesis, and dolomitization on the Li isotope system in carbonates. We find that recrystallization of aragonite to low-Mg calcite in the presence of meteoric fluids results in a systematic decrease of the Li/(Ca+Mg) ratio in Clino, Unda and Key Largo samples, due to the lower Li/(Ca+Mg) ratio in meteoric fluids compared to seawater. For Li isotopes, we observe that the δ^7^Li of meteorically altered low-Mg calcite is +22.0±3.8‰ (n=28, 1σ), which is coincidentally similar to the original aragonite-rich sediments (+22±1‰ in the Bahamas, +18±1‰ in Key Largo), but with a larger variability (from +15 to +27‰). We interpret these features as reflecting the overprinting of primary Li during meteoric alteration with a highly variable isotope signature that may be controlled by a combination of local porewater and/or global climatic conditions; in either case, meteoric diagenesis produces isotopic signatures that are unrelated to seawater composition. In contrast, marine burial diagenesis and dolomitization of Clino and Unda sediments under "fluid-buffered" conditions result in Li isotope composition that is similar (+30.2±1.5‰, n=36, 1σ) to modern seawater (+31‰). For Site 1007, the δ^7^Li values range between +23 permil and +31 permil. We interpret this range as reflecting a combination of varying diagenesis style (fluid to sediment-buffered) and varying contribution of calcite derived from pelagic sediments, with distinct isotopic composition due to primary mineralogy. Altogether, our results show that diagenesis does not invalidate the use of bulk carbonates for deriving Li isotope paleo-records, but the reliability of past carbonates as recorders of seawater δ^7^Li values will depend on carefully characterizing their diagenetic history.
Recent grants
Frequent coauthors
- 236 shared
Christopher T. Reinhard
Georgia Institute of Technology
- 110 shared
Mingyu Zhao
Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 108 shared
Lidya G. Tarhan
Yale University
- 98 shared
Timothy W. Lyons
- 93 shared
Dan Asael
Planetary Science Institute
- 91 shared
Xiangli Wang
- 82 shared
Mojtaba Fakhraee
Yale University
- 62 shared
Shuang Zhang
Texas A&M University
Labs
Yale Geochemistry CenterPI
Education
- 2023
Dr. sc., Earth Sciences
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
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