Ngeo figures

Nature Geoscience Figures (ngeo-figures)

When to trigger

• You have many candidate maps, sections, and time series and must choose 4–6
• Your lead figure does not convey the Earth-system advance at a glance
• Panels are dense, captions are long, or map/section elements are unreadable at column width
• You are over the display-item ceiling and must merge or relocate
• A coauthor wants to "add one more panel just in case"

Display-item budget for an Article

A Nature Geoscience Article carries 4–6 display items (figures and/or tables combined; verify). Every one must earn its place and be legible to a non-specialist. The hierarchy:

• Lead figure (Fig. 1) — conveys the headline advance at a glance. A reader skimming should grasp the result, and ideally its uncertainty, from this figure plus its caption alone. Often a map or cross-section that situates the study and shows the key signal.
• Supporting figures — each makes exactly one additional point (a mechanism, a dependence, a data–model comparison, a time series with error envelope).
• Everything else — extended maps, all model members, secondary proxies, raw traces → Supplementary Information (Fig. Sn).

If a display item does not advance the single headline result or one essential support, move it to SI.

Earth-science lead-figure rules

Principle	Practice
One glance, one message	The eye lands on the advance immediately
Show the uncertainty	Error bars, shaded confidence envelopes, or stippling for significance
Locate the reader	An inset locator map / schematic orients out-of-subfield readers
Data and model together	Overlay the decisive comparison, not in separate figures
Honest cartography	State projection, scale, and data source; avoid misleading color scales
Annotate the key feature	Arrow / label on the anomaly, front, transition, or trend that matters

Production standards

• Design for the Nature column grid; check legibility at final printed size.
• Use perceptually-uniform, color-blind-safe colormaps (e.g. viridis, cividis, batlow); never rainbow/jet for quantitative fields, and never encode by color alone.
• For maps: label projection and scale; show the color-bar with units; mark significance (stippling/hatching) rather than hiding it.
• Vector formats for line art and schematics; high-resolution raster for satellite imagery and gridded fields.
• Define every symbol, unit, and abbreviation in the caption; match notation to the main text and Methods.
• Tables: reserve for values that cannot be shown graphically; they count against the display-item budget.

Panel discipline

• Prefer fewer panels with a clear reading order; label (a), (b), (c).
• A dense multi-panel map grid usually signals that supporting panels belong in SI.
• Insets (locator map, zoom, schematic of the mechanism) are powerful but must stay legible.

Checklist

• Total display items are within the 4–6 ceiling and each is essential
• Fig. 1 conveys the Earth-system advance at a glance
• Uncertainty / significance is shown, not hidden
• Every figure makes exactly one point
• Maps state projection, scale, units, and data source
• Color-blind-safe, perceptually-uniform colormaps; no rainbow/jet; not color-only
• Decisive data–model comparison shown directly
• Captions define all symbols/units and are as short as clarity allows
• Non-essential panels/datasets moved to SI

Anti-patterns

• A lead figure too dense to parse without the main text
• Multi-panel map grids that bury the headline
• Rainbow/jet colormaps or color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for color-blind readers
• Maps with no scale, projection, or units
• Hiding uncertainty by plotting only best-estimate fields
• Decorative figures that do not advance the headline result
• Long captions that quietly consume space

Output format

【Display-item count】N (≤6) — each essential?  yes / cut list
【Fig. 1 conveys the advance at a glance】yes / redesign
【Uncertainty shown】yes / fix
【Per-figure single point】list
【Cartography: projection/scale/units】complete / fix
【Colormap: perceptual + color-blind-safe】yes / fix
【Moved to SI】list
【Next】ngeo-supplementary (SI) or ngeo-length-management (fit limit)

Display-item counts, figure specs, and colormap guidance are durable in spirit but specific in detail — verify current Nature Geoscience figure rules on the official author pages (Checked: 2026-07-16).