Aim Vertical root distributions (‘profiles’) influence plant water use and productivity, and the differentiation of root profiles between neighbouring species can indicate the degree of plant interactions and niche partitioning. However, quantifying multiple species’ root distributions in the field can be labour intensive and highly destructive to the soil and […]
Both geomorphic setting and dynamic environmental variables influence riverine wetland vegetation distributions. Most studies of species distributions in riverine systems emphasize either hydrological variability or geomorphic controls, but rarely consider the interaction between the two. It is unknown whether and to what extent the relationship between the geomorphic template and […]
PhD and MS positions in Ecosystem Ecology are available in the Center for Ecosystem Science in Society (Ecoss) at Northern Arizona University. The Ecoss mission is to conduct high-impact, innovative research on ecosystems and how they respond to and shape environmental change, to train next-gen scientists, and to communicate discovery […]
Plants can grow faster as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase, but only if they have enough nitrogen or partner with fungi that help them get it, according to new research published this week in Science. The study was lead by César Terrer Moreno, a PhD student at Imperial College London, and […]
When it comes to climate change, not all carbon is created equal. Among greenhouse gases, methane is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In this recent study published in Nature Climate Change, Northern Arizona University assistant research professor and lead author of the study, Christina Schädel, analyzed carbon release […]
Ecoss’ own Kees Jan van Groenigen, Assistant Research Professor, received a Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Award from Northern Arizona University. Van Groenigen won the award in the category “most significant research/scholarly work” for his paper Faster Decomposition Under Increased Atmospheric CO2 Limits Soil Carbon Storage, published in Science in 2014. The […]
The link between lineage and behavior has inspired research across the spectrum of life. For plants and animals, genetically close cousins tend to act in similar ways. Finches, for example, eat seeds, while swallows eat insects. For bacteria, however, the question is up for debate. Does evolutionary history predict how […]
Forest management, climatic change, and atmospheric N deposition can affect soil biogeochemistry, but their combined effects are not well understood. We examined the effects of water and N amendments and forest thinning and burning on soil N pools and fluxes in ponderosa pine forests near Flagstaff, Arizona (USA). Using a […]
1. Despite the importance of microorganisms for leaf litter decomposition in streams, little is known about which factors affect community composition of bacterial and fungal communities. Standard morphological techniques probably underestimate microbial diversity. 2. We used terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms of the ITS regions for fungi, and the 16S […]
Flow diversion and invasive species are two major threats to freshwater ecosystems, threats that restoration efforts attempt to redress. Yet, few restoration projects monitor whether removal of these threats improve target charac- teristics of the ecosystem. Fewer still have an appropriate experimental design from which causal inferences can be drawn […]