Drylands (hyperarid, arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid ecosystems) cover almost half of Earth’s land surface and are highly vulnerable to environmental pressures. Here we provide an inventory of soil properties including carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) stocks within the current boundaries of drylands, aimed at serving as a […]
Ecoss ecologist Yiqi Luo and collaborators in a multi-site research team have been awarded a 6-year, $6.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study dryland ecosystems at the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research site in New Mexico. Luo and his team will be studying how the changing climate […]
Land surface phenology (LSP) has been widely retrieved from time series of various satellite instruments in order to monitor climate change and ecosystem dynamics. However, any evaluation of the quality of LSP data sets is quite challenging because the in situ observations on a limited number of individual trees, shrubs, […]
Quantifying the ecological patterns of loss of ecosystem function in extreme drought is important to understand the carbon exchange between the land and atmosphere. Rain-use efficiency [RUE; gross primary production (GPP)/precipitation] acts as a typical indicator of ecosystem function. In this study, a novel method based on maximum rain-use efficiency […]
Plant phenology is a sensitive indicator of the effects of global change on terrestrial ecosystems and controls the timing of key ecosystem functions including photosynthesis and transpiration. Aerial drone imagery and photogrammetric techniques promise to advance the study of phenology by enabling the creation of distortion-free orthomosaics of plant canopies […]
1. Dryland vegetation is characterized by discrete plant patches that accumulate and capture soil resources under their canopies. These “fertile islands” are major drivers of dryland ecosystem structure and functioning, yet we lack an integrated understanding of the factors controlling their magnitude and variability at the global scale. 2. We […]
At the global scale, the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide by terrestrial ecosystems through photosynthesis is commonly estimated through vegetation indices or biophysical properties derived from optical remote sensing data. Microwave observations of vegetated areas are sensitive to different components of the vegetation layer than observations in the optical domain […]
1.Dams disrupt the river continuum, altering hydrology, biodiversity and energy flow. Although research indicates that tributary inputs have the potential to dilute these effects, knowledge at the food‐web level is still scarce. 2.Here, we examined the riverine food‐web structure of the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam, focusing on organic […]
Nitrogen (N) is frequently a limiting nutrient in soil; its availability can govern ecosystem functions such as primary production and decomposition. Assimilation of N by microorganisms impacts the availability of N in soil. Despite its established ecological significance, the contributions of microbial taxa to N assimilation are unknown. Here we […]
We conducted a model-based assessment of changes in permafrost area and carbon storage for simulations driven by RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 projections between 2010 and 2299 for the northern permafrost region. All models simulating carbon represented soil with depth, a critical structural feature needed to represent the permafrost carbon–climate feedback, but […]