In December 2018, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission deployed a seismometer on the surface of Mars. In preparation for the data analysis, in July 2017, the marsquake service initiated a blind test in which participants were asked to detect and characterize seismicity embedded in a one Earth year long synthetic data set of continuous waveforms. Synthetic data were computed for a single station, mimicking the streams that will be available from InSight as well as the expected tectonic and impact seismicity, and noise conditions on Mars (Clinton et al., 2017). In total, 84 teams from 20 countries registered for the blind test and 11 of them submitted their results in early 2018. The collection of documentations, methods, ideas, and codes submitted by the participants exceeds 100 pages. The teams proposed well established as well as novel methods to tackle the challenging target of building a global seismicity catalog using a single station. This article summarizes the performance of the teams and highlights the most successful contributions.

Analyzing video data from an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) of two short-lived dome building events at Anak Krakatau volcano (Indonesia), we determine vertical and horizontal movements of the dome surface prior to explosions, as well as initial eruption velocities and mass eruption rates via automated feature tracking and other photogrammetric methods. Initial eruption velocities and mass eruption rates are estimated as a proxy for eruptive strength. Eruptive strength is found to correlate with deformation magnitude, i.e., larger pre-explosion surface displacements are followed by both higher initial eruption velocities and mass fluxes. In accord with other studies, our observations can be explained by an overpressure underneath the dome’s surface. We assume that the dome seals the underlying vent efficiently, meaning that pre-explosion pressure build-up controls both deformation magnitude and eruptive strength. We support this assumption by a simple numerical model indicating that pre-explosion pressure increases between 8 and 16 MPa. The model further reveals that the two events vary significantly with respect to the importance of lateral visco-elastic flow for pressurization and deformation. The video sequences also show considerable variations in the gas release and associated deformation characteristics. Both constant and accelerating deformation is observed. Our case study demonstrates that photogrammetric methods are suitable to provide quantitative constraints on both effusive and explosive activity. Future work can build on our or similar approaches to develop automated monitoring strategies that would enable the observation and analysis of volcanic activity in near real time during a volcanic crisis.

The interplay of phytoplankton competition and adaptation affects how phytoplankton, and ultimately marine ecosystems, respond to global warming. However, current ecosystem models do not consider both processes simultaneously. To study how the interplay of competition and adaptation affects phytoplankton responses to global warming, we developed an innovative ecosystem model for the Baltic Sea that simulates competition between three functional phytoplankton groups and allows for adaptation to changing temperatures. We found that competition and adaptation influence each other, with the outcome depending on environmental conditions. In a steady environment, competition drives adaptation to individual niches to reduce competition pressure. In a changing environment, adaptation enhances the competition pressure by allowing inferior competitors to mitigate the dominance of pre-adapted superior competitors. Our results demonstrate that by neglecting adaptation, models can overestimate warming-related changes in species dominance. Ecosystem models should include both competition and adaptation to accurately simulate phytoplankton responses to global warming.