Organic carbon stored in high-latitude permafrost represents a potential positive feedback to climate warming as well as a valuable store of paleoenvironmental information. The below-freezing conditions have effectively removed permafrost organic material from the modern carbon cycle and preserved its pre-freezing bulk and molecular states. The conditions that lead to […]
Predicting future changes in ecosystem services is not only highly desirable but is also becoming feasible as several forces (e.g., available big data, developed data assimilation (DA) techniques, and advanced cyber-infrastructure) are converging to transform ecological research into quantitative forecasting. To realize ecological forecasting, we have developed an Ecological Platform […]
Land managers frequently apply vegetation removal and seeding treatments to restore ecosystem function following woody plant encroachment, invasive species spread, and wildfire. However, the long-term outcome of these treatments is unclear due to a lack of widespread monitoring. We quantified how vegetation removal (via wildfire or management) with or without […]
Tree architecture is crucial to maximizing light capture, determined by carbon allocation of individual trees, and consequently characterizes species-specific growth strategies. Its variation and associated life-history strategies have been examined in tropical and temperate forests, but not in subtropical forests. Moreover, a similar architectural pattern was found using a hierarchical […]
Monitoring drought in real-time using minimal field data is a challenge for ecosystem management and conservation. Most methods require extensive data collection and in-situ calibration and accuracy is difficult to evaluate. Here, we demonstrated how the space-borne canopy “thermal stress”, defined as surface-air temperature difference, provides a reliable surrogate for […]
While we often assume tree growth?climate relationships are time-invariant, impacts of climate phenomena such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the North American Monsoon (NAM) may challenge this assumption. To test this assumption, we grouped ring widths (1900-present) in three southwestern US conifers into La Niña periods (LNP) […]
Soils contain more carbon than plants or the atmosphere, and sensitivities of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks to changing climate and plant productivity are a major uncertainty in global carbon cycle projections. Despite a consensus that microbial degradation and mineral stabilization processes control SOC cycling, no systematic synthesis of long-term […]
RNA is considered to be a short-lived molecule, indicative of cellular metabolic activity, whereas DNA is thought to turn over more slowly because living cells do not always grow and divide. To explore differences in the rates of synthesis of these nucleic acids, we used H218O quantitative stable isotope probing […]
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) […]
Warming temperatures are likely to accelerate permafrost thaw in the Arctic, potentially leading to the release of old carbon previously stored in deep frozen soil layers. Deeper thaw depths in combination with geomorphological changes due to the loss of ice structures in permafrost, may modify soil water distribution, creating wetter […]