Ecological memory stored in a landscape can help an ecosystem recover from disturbances like fire and outbreaks of disease. But what happens when climate warming disrupts that process? How long before ecological memories stored in the warming Arctic are overwritten by new ones, and what does that mean for the […]
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 […]
Biological nitrogen (N) fixation plays an important role in terrestrial N cycling and represents a key driver of terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP). Despite the importance of N fixation in terrestrial ecosystems, our knowledge regarding the controls on terrestrial N fixation remains poor. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis (based on […]
Biodiversity on the Earth is changing at an unprecedented rate due to a variety of global change factors (GCFs). However, the effects of GCFs on microbial diversity is unclear despite that soil microorganisms play a critical role in biogeochemical cycling. Here, we synthesize 1235 GCF observations worldwide and show that […]
Plant functional traits can be used to predict ecosystem responses to climate gradients, yet precipitation explains very little variation for most traits. Soil water availability directly influences plant water uptake and thus may assist with the improvement of plant trait–water relationships. However, this promise remains poorly realized due to rare […]
The impacts of climate change and extreme weather events (e.g. frost-, heat-, drought-, and heavy rainfall events) on the continuous phenological development over the entire seasonal cycle remained poorly understood. Previous studies mainly focused on modeling key phenological transition dates (e.g. discrete timing of spring bud-break and fall senescence) based […]
Stephen Porder from Brown University will talk about how to move universities off of fossil fuels.
If the fate of carbon is a test that planet Earth is taking right now, one of the answer keys is likely to be found in soil, where microorganisms—which account for nearly 15 percent of global biomass, by some estimates—eat, store and respire carbon and other nutrients. As Earth warms, […]
Plant functional traits can be used to predict ecosystem responses to climate gradients, yet precipitation explains very little variation for most traits. Soil water availability directly influences plant water uptake and thus may assist with the improvement of plant trait–water relationships. However, this promise remains poorly realized due to rare […]
Direct quantification of terrestrial biosphere responses to global change is crucial for projections of future climate change in Earth system models. Here, we synthesized ecosystem carbon-cycling data from 1,119 experiments performed over the past four decades concerning changes in temperature, precipitation, CO2 and nitrogen across major terrestrial vegetation types of […]