Reciprocal subsidies between rivers and terrestrial habitats are common where terrestrial leaf litter provides energy to aquatic invertebrates while emerging aquatic insects provide energy to terrestrial predators (e.g., birds, lizards, spiders). We examined how aquatic insect emergence changed seasonally with litter from two foundation riparian trees, whose litter often dominates […]
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas inducing climate change. Increased global CO2 emissions, estimated at 8.4 Pg C yr−1 at present, have accelerated from 1% yr−1during 1990–1999 to 2.5% yr−1 during 2000–2009 (ref. 1). The carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems is the greatest unknown in the global C budget because […]
Soils and other unconsolidated deposits in the northern circumpolar permafrost region store large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC). This SOC is potentially vulnerable to remobilization following soil warming and permafrost thaw, but SOC stock estimates were poorly constrained and quantitative error estimates were lacking. This study presents revised estimates […]
Bacteria grow and transform elements at different rates, and as yet, quantifying this variation in the environment is difficult. Determining isotope enrichment with fine taxonomic resolution after exposure to isotope tracers could help, but there are few suitable techniques. We propose a modification to stable isotope probing (SIP) that enables […]
Ecoss studies the interactions of plants with their physical and biotic environments at a fundamental level common to all organisms: gas exchange, energy balance, and water relations. We explore how plants make a living in diverse environments ranging from deserts to rainforests. A longstanding interest is the biophysical and ecological […]
Overview Over the past several decades, scientists have conducted hundreds of experiments investigating responses of ecosystems to global environmental change. Ecoss synthesizes many of these responses using a statistical technique called meta-analysis. This approach considers all the measurements together and quantifies the overall response, testing whether responses vary among ecosystems, […]
Overview Most global change research focuses on individual components, but the environment is changing in multiple ways simultaneously. The Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment seeks to find out how these combined changes will affect ecosystems. Researchers tested the response of a California grassland to: climate change elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide […]
Early morning at the Carbon in Permafrost Experimental Heating Project (CiPEHR) in Alaska
Global change affects plants and soil in ecosystems across the globe. By doing so, it can alter the composition of ecosystems and the functions they provide. For instance, even small changes in plant growth and soil properties can have a large impact on the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. At Ecoss, we use field experiments to manipulate the temperature, rainfall and other environmental factors in various ecosystems. This allows us to mimic future conditions, and helps us understand how future ecosystems will differ from the ones today. (more…)
In Alaska: Too Many Fires, Not Enough Snow “Normally a cold winter would help re-freeze the soil and slow the melting of permafrost. But the warmer air might prevent that from happening now…As things warm up, places like Alaska that have a lot of carbon stored in the soil might […]
We study antibiotic resistance in human pathogens, genetic sampling of meat for antibiotic resistance, methods to develop a molecular database for strains of E. coli in urinary tract infections, and food safety of kosher vs non-kosher chicken.