Fire activity is changing dramatically across the globe, with uncertain effects on ecosystem processes, especially below-ground. Fire-driven losses of soil carbon (C) are often assumed to occur primarily in the upper soil layers because the repeated combustion of above-ground biomass limits organic matter inputs into surface soil. However, C losses […]
Snow is important for local to global climate and surface hydrology, but spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the extent of snow cover make accurate, fine-scale mapping and monitoring of snow an enormous challenge. We took 184,453 daily near-surface images acquired by 133 automated cameras and processed them using crowdsourcing and […]
Tundra ecosystems are typically carbon (C) rich but nitrogen (N) limited. Since biological N2 fixation is the major source of biologically available N, the soil N2-fixing (i.e., diazotrophic) community serves as an essential N supplier to the tundra ecosystem. Recent climate warming has induced deeper permafrost thaw and adversely affected […]
Permafrost is a distinct feature of the terrestrial Arctic and is vulnerable to climate warming. Permafrost degrades in different ways, including deepening of a seasonally unfrozen surface and localized but rapid development of deep thaw features. Pleistocene ice-rich permafrost with syngenetic ice-wedges, termed Yedoma deposits, are widespread in Siberia, Alaska, […]
Ecosystems acquire nitrogen from the atmosphere, but this source can’t account for the large nitrogen capital of some systems. The finding that bedrock can also act as a nitrogen source may help solve the riddle.
Carbon (C) buried deep in soil (below 1 m) is often hundreds to thousands of years old, though the stability and sensitivity of this deep C to environmental change are not well understood. We examined the C dynamics in three soil horizons and their responses to changes in substrate availability in […]
A scrub-oak woodland has maintained higher aboveground biomass accumulation after 11 years of atmospheric CO2 enrichment (ambient +350 μmol CO2 mol−1), despite the expectation of strong nitrogen (N) limitation at the site. We hypothesized that changes in plant available N and exploitation of deep sources of inorganic N in soils have sustained greater […]
The Carbon Copy is the Ecoss bi-monthly newsletter featuring news, publications, and comment from around the research center. Read past issues: February 2023 November 2022
In 2002, the Odyssey probe discovered evidence of past ice on Mars. The U.S. Congress authorized the Iraq War resolution. The Anaheim Angels won the World Series. And in a meadow 15 miles north of Flagstaff, scientists began to monitor and move small plots of soil along a mountain gradient […]
On a recent weekday morning, I logged on to a zoom session of Mrs. Mathew’s summer science class at Greyhills Academy High School in Tuba City. A picture of two giant heaps of soil appeared on the screen, and then an image of Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. […]