Photosynthesis plays a key role in the carbon cycle, being the primary mechanism through which carbon dioxide (CO2) is converted into organic compounds by plants, algae, and certain bacteria. On average, terrestrial ecosystems uptake around one-third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and participate to the mitigation of climate change. Temperature, so...
Published in Environmental Research Letters
The phenological cycles of terrestrial ecosystems have shifted with the changing climate, and the altered timings of biogeochemical fluxes may also exert feedback on the climate system. As regulators of land carbon balance, relative shifts in photosynthetic and respiratory phenology under climate change are of great importance. However, the relativ...
Forests are the primary global source of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), which play a key role in atmospheric chemistry. While emissions of isoprene and monoterpenes, the two most emitted BVOCs at the global scale, are generally well estimated by state-of-the-art emission models, uncertainties remain regarding the diversity, magnitude,...
According to classic stomatal optimization theory, plant stomata are regulated to maximize carbon assimilation for a given water loss. A key component of stomatal optimization models is marginal water-use efficiency (mWUE), the ratio of the change of transpiration to the change in carbon assimilation. Although the mWUE is often assumed to be consta...
Published in Frontiers in Environmental Science
In the process of their formation, northern peatlands were accumulating vast amounts of carbon (C). When drained for agricultural use, a large proportion of that C is oxidized and emitted as carbon dioxide (CO2), turning those peatlands to strong CO2 emitters. As a mitigation option, setting-aside farmland on drained peat is being incentivized by p...
Published in Frontiers in Plant Science
The desert riparian forests are susceptible to meteorological changes and contribute significantly to the net ecosystem productivity (NEP) variations of arid ecosystems. However, the responsive patterns of their NEP variations to the meteorological variabilities remain inadequately comprehended. To address this gap, we utilized seven years of eddy ...
Latent and sensible heat flux observations are essential for understanding land-atmosphere interactions. Measurements from the eddy covariance technique are widely used but suffer from systematic energy imbalance problems, partly due to missing large eddies from sub-mesoscale transport. Because available energy drives the development of large eddie...
Chaparral ecosystems (Adenostoma fasciculatum) are the most extensive native plant community in California and are a biodiversity hotspot for native fauna and flora. Undisturbed chaparral ecosystems have been reported to be significant carbon sinks under normal weather conditions (Luo et al., 2007). With climate models predicting an increase in fir...
Published in Frontiers in Remote Sensing
Introduction: Machine learning methods combined with satellite imagery have the potential to improve estimates of carbon uptake of terrestrial ecosystems, including croplands. Studying carbon uptake patterns across the U.S. using research networks, like the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network, can allow for the study of broader trends i...
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Carbon dioxide and water vapor exchanges between tropical forest canopies and the atmosphere through photosynthesis, respiration, and evapotranspiration (ET) influence carbon and water cycling at the regional and global scales. Their inter- and intra-annual variations are sensitive to seasonal rhythms and longer-timescale tropical climatic events. ...
