Unique soil properties in rhizosphere can affect plant growth and biogeochemical cycles of ecosystems. While rhizosphere has been widely investigated, little is known about differences in the rhizosphere effect (RE) between co-existing overstory trees and understory shrubs and herbs in forest ecosystems. In this study, we investigated REs on soil […]
Evergreen conifer forests are the most prevalent land cover type in North America. Seasonal changes in the color of evergreen forest canopies have been documented with near-surface remote sensing, but the physiological mechanisms underlying these changes, and the implications for photosynthetic uptake, have not been fully elucidated. Here, we integrate […]
Will mature forests absorb enough carbon from the atmosphere to mitigate climate change as levels of carbon dioxide increase? An experiment in a eucalyptus forest provides fresh evidence.
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Like a long-distance food delivery app with no apparent highway, fungi that associate with shallow-rooted shrubs in the tundra are accessing deep stores of nitrogen being released by thawing permafrost. The findings by Northern Arizona University researchers, announced this week in New Phytologist, could change scientists’ understanding of who accesses […]
Clarifying how increased atmospheric CO2 concentration (eCO2) contributes to accelerated land carbon sequestration remains important since this process is the largest negative feedback in the coupled carbon–climate system. Here, we constrain the sensitivity of the terrestrial carbon sink to eCO2 over the temperate Northern Hemisphere for the past five decades, […]
Elevated CO2 (eCO2) experiments provide critical information to quantify the effects of rising CO2 on vegetation1–6. Many eCO2 experiments suggest that nutrient limitations modulate the local magnitude of the eCO2 effect on plant biomass1,3,5, but the global extent of these limitations has not been empirically quantified, complicating projections of the […]
Fertilization is an important management strategy for crop yields by mediating soil fertility. However, rare studies quantitatively assessed the interactions among fertilization, crop yields, and soil fertility. Here, data from a 25-year fertilization experiment in the humid subtropical region of Southern China were used to evaluate and quantify the effect […]
The concentration–carbon feedback (β), also called the CO2 fertilization effect, is a key unknown in climate–carbon-cycle projections. A better understanding of model mechanisms that govern terrestrial ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 is urgently needed to enable a more accurate prediction of future terrestrial carbon sink. We conducted C-only, carbon–nitrogen (C–N) […]
Extracellular enzymes catalyze rate-limiting steps in soil organic matter decomposition, and their activities (EEAs) play a key role in determining soil respiration (SR). Both EEAs and SR are highly sensitive to temperature, but their responses to climate warming remain poorly understood. Here, we present a meta-analysis on the response of […]