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pp. 11-12 ; summary by Ruth Gustafson and Gene R. Majo

Land-Use Change, Soil Process and Trace Gas Fluxes in the Brazilian Amazon Basin

We measured changes in key soil processes and the fluxes of CO2, CH4 and N2O associated with the conversion of tropical rainforest to pasture in Rondonia, a state in the southwest Amazon that has experienced rapid deforestation, primarily for cattle ranching, since the late 1970s. These measurements provide a comprehensive quantitative picture of the nature of surface soil element stocks, C and nutrient dynamics, and trace gas fluxes between soils and the atmosphere during the entire sequence of land-use change from the initial cutting and burning of native forest, through planting and establishment of pasture grass and ending with very old continuously-pastured land. All of our work is done in cooperation with Brazilian scientists at the Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA) through an extant official bi-lateral agreement between the Marine Biological Laboratory and the University of Sao Paulo, CENA's parent institution

Decreased soil organic matter in a long-term soil warming experiment lowers soil water holding capacity and affects soil thermal and hydrological buffering

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research- Biogeosciences 125(4), (2020): e2019JG005158, doi:10.1029/2019JG005158.Long‐term soil warming can decrease soil organic matter (SOM), resulting in self‐reinforcing feedback to the global climate system. We investigated additional consequences of SOM reduction for soil water holding capacity (WHC) and soil thermal and hydrological buffering. At a long‐term soil warming experiment in a temperate forest in the northeastern United States, we suspended the warming treatment for 104 days during the summer of 2017. The formerly heated plot remained warmer (+0.39 °C) and drier (−0.024 cm3 H2O cm−3 soil) than the control plot throughout the suspension. We measured decreased SOM content (−0.184 g SOM g−1 for O horizon soil, −0.010 g SOM g−1 for A horizon soil) and WHC (−0.82 g H2O g−1 for O horizon soil, −0.18 g H2O g−1 for A horizon soil) in the formerly heated plot relative to the control plot. Reduced SOM content accounted for 62% of the WHC reduction in the O horizon and 22% in the A horizon. We investigated differences in SOM composition as a possible explanation for the remaining reductions with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra. We found FTIR spectra that correlated more strongly with WHC than SOM, but those particular spectra did not differ between the heated and control plots, suggesting that SOM composition affects WHC but does not explain treatment differences in this study. We conclude that SOM reductions due to soil warming can reduce WHC and hydrological and thermal buffering, further warming soil and decreasing SOM. This feedback may operate in parallel, and perhaps synergistically, with carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change.We would like to acknowledge Jeffery Blanchard, Priya Chowdhury, Kristen DeAngelis, Luiz Dominguez‐Horta, Kevin Geyer, Rachelle Lacroix, Xaiojun Liu, William Rodriguez, and Alexander Truchonand and for assistance with field sampling. We would like to acknowledge Michael Bernard for assistance with field sampling and lab work. We would like to acknowledge Aaron Ellison for statistical consultation. This research was financially supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research Program (NSF‐DEB‐0620443 and NSF‐DEB‐1237491), the Long Term Research in Environmental Biology Program (NSF DEB‐1456528) , and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE‐DE‐SC0005421 and DOE‐DE‐SC0010740). Data used in this study are available from the Harvard Forest Data Archive (Datasets HF018‐03, HF018‐04, and HF018‐13), accessible at https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/harvard‐forest‐data‐archive.2020-10-0

Changes in substrate availability drive carbon cycle response to chronic warming

As earth\u27s climate continues to warm, it is important to understand how the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to retain carbon (C) will be affected. We combined measurements of microbial activity with the concentration, quality, and physical accessibility of soil carbon to microorganisms to evaluate the mechanisms by which more than two decades of experimental warming has altered the carbon cycle in a Northeast US temperate deciduous forest. We found that concentrations of soil organic matter were reduced in both the organic and mineral soil horizons. The molecular composition of the carbon was altered in the mineral soil with significant reductions in the relative abundance of polysaccharides and lignin, and an increase in lipids. Mineral-associated organic matter was preferentially depleted by warming in the top 3 cm of mineral soil. We found that potential extracellularenzyme activity per gram of soil at a common temperature was generally unaffected by warming treatment. However, by measuring potential extracellular enzyme activities between 4 and 30 °C, we found that activity per unit microbial biomass at in-situ temperatures was increased by warming. This was associated with a tendency for microbial biomass to decrease with warming. These results indicate that chronic warming has reduced soil organic matter concentrations, selecting for a smaller but more active microbial community increasingly dependent on mineral-associated organic matter

National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for the United States

The first U.S. National Assessment of the PotentialConsequences of Climate Variability and Change for theUnited States is being conducted under the auspices of theU.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). TheUSGCRP was established through the Global ChangeResearch Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606) and mandatedthrough the statute with the responsibility to undertakeperiodic scientific assessments of the potentialconsequences of global change for the United States. Thegoal of the National Assessment is to analyze andevaluate what is known about the potential consequencesof climate variability and change for the nation in thecontext of other pressures on the public, the environment,and the nation\u27s resources. The conduct of the nationalassessment process will involve a broad spectrum ofstakeholders from state, local, tribal, and Federalgovernments; business; labor; academia; non-profitorganizations; and the general public. The assessmentwill link research by scientists to specific needs of thestakeholders, and will provide planners, managers,organizations, and the public with the information neededto increase resilience to climate variability and cope withclimate change. The national assessment will becomprised of three components: (1) National synthesis,(2) Sectoral analyses (agriculture, forestry, waterresources, human health, and the coastal zone), and(3) Regional analyses. To facilitate comparison,integration, and synthesis of each of the assessmentcomponents, all regional, sectoral, and synthesis analyseswill use a common set of scenarios for climate change and changes in socio-economic conditions. Specific responsibilities have been defined for oversight of the components of the national assessment and forcoordination activities. A National Assessment SynthesisTeam (NAST) will provide overall intellectual oversightof the national assessment process and has responsibilityfor the development of the Synthesis Report. A NationalAssessment Working Group under the auspices of theUSGCRP has lead responsibility for organizing andsponsoring the sectoral analyses and oversight andcoordination responsibilities for regional analyses. ANational Assessment Coordination Office has beenestablished to facilitate coordination of the entire nationalassessment process. The National Assessment SynthesisReport is targeted for completion by January 1, 2000, andis intended to satisfy the mandate for an assessmentdefined in P.L. 101-606 and serve as part of the U.S.contribution to the IPCC Third Assessment Report

Spatial and temporal patterns of carbon emissions from forest fires in China from 1950 to 2000

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 111 (2006): D05313, doi:10.1029/2005JD006198.We have estimated the emission of carbon (C) and carbon-containing trace gases including CO2, CO, CH4, and NMHC (nonmethane hydrocarbons) from forest fires in China for the time period from 1950 to 2000 by using a combination of remote sensing, forest fire inventory, and terrestrial ecosystem modeling. Our results suggest that mean annual carbon emission from forest fires in China is about 11.31 Tg per year, ranging from a minimum level of 8.55 Tg per year to a maximum level of 13.9 Tg per year. This amount of carbon emission is resulted from the atmospheric emissions of four trace gases as follows: (1) 40.66 Tg CO2 with a range from 29.21 to 47.53 Tg, (2) 2.71 Tg CO with a range from 1.48 to 4.30 Tg, (3) 0.112 Tg CH4 with a range from 0.06 to 0.2 Tg, and (4) 0.113 Tg NMHC with a range from 0.05 to 0.19 Tg. Our study indicates that fire-induced carbon emissions show substantial interannual and decadal variations before 1980 but have remained relatively low and stable since 1980 because of the application of fire suppression. Large spatial variation in fire-induced carbon emissions exists due to the spatial variability of climate, forest types, and fire regimes.This work has been supported by NASA Interdisciplinary Science Program (NNG04GM39C), China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) 973 Program (2002CB412500), Chinese Academy of Sciences ODS Program, and NSFC International Cooperative Program (40128005)

Going beyond the green : senesced vegetation material predicts basal area and biomass in remote sensing of tree cover conditions in an African tropical dry forest (miombo woodland) landscape

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Environmental Research Letters 12 (2017): 085004, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa7242.In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), tropical dry forests and savannas cover over 2.5 million km2 and support livelihoods for millions in fast-growing nations. Intensifying land use pressures have driven rapid changes in tree cover structure (basal area, biomass) that remain poorly characterized at regional scales. Here, we posed the hypothesis that tree cover structure related strongly to senesced and non-photosynthetic (NPV) vegetation features in a SSA tropical dry forest landscape, offering improved means for satellite remote sensing of tree cover structure compared to vegetation greenness-based methods. Across regrowth miombo woodland sites in Tanzania, we analyzed relationships among field data on tree structure, land cover, and satellite indices of green and NPV features based on spectral mixture analyses and normalized difference vegetation index calculated from Landsat 8 data. From satellite-field data relationships, we mapped regional basal area and biomass using NPV and greenness-based metrics, and compared map performances at landscape scales. Total canopy cover related significantly to stem basal area (r 2 = 0.815, p  60%) at all sites. From these two conditions emerged a key inverse relationship: skyward exposure of NPV ground cover was high at sites with low tree basal area and biomass, and decreased with increasing stem basal area and biomass. This pattern scaled to Landsat NPV metrics, which showed strong inverse correlations to basal area (Pearson r = −0.85, p < 0.01) and biomass (r = −0.86, p < 0.01). Biomass estimates from Landsat NPV-based maps matched field data, and significantly differentiated landscape gradients in woody biomass that greenness metrics failed to track. The results suggest senesced vegetation metrics at Landsat scales are a promising means for improved monitoring of tree structure across disturbance and ecological gradients in African and other tropical dry forests.The project was funded by the US National Science Foundation Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) program, project title 'Ecosystems and Human Well-Being' (Award # 0968211) PI Chris Neill. Additional research and dissertation support was provided to Marc Mayes from Brown University

Land carbon sequestration within the conterminous United States : regional- and state-level analyses

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 120 (2015): 379–398, doi:10.1002/2014JG002818.A quantitative understanding of the rate at which land ecosystems are sequestering or losing carbon at national-, regional-, and state-level scales is needed to develop policies to mitigate climate change. In this study, a new improved historical land use and land cover change data set is developed and combined with a process-based ecosystem model to estimate carbon sources and sinks in land ecosystems of the conterminous United States for the contemporary period of 2001–2005 and over the last three centuries. We estimate that land ecosystems in the conterminous United States sequestered 323 Tg C yr−1 at the beginning of the 21st century with forests accounting for 97% of this sink. This land carbon sink varied substantially across the conterminous United States, with the largest sinks occurring in the Southeast. Land sinks are large enough to completely compensate fossil fuel emissions in Maine and Mississippi, but nationally, carbon sinks compensate for only 20% of U.S. fossil fuel emissions. We find that regions that are currently large carbon sinks (e.g., Southeast) tend to have been large carbon sources over the longer historical period. Both the land use history and fate of harvested products can be important in determining a region's overall impact on the atmospheric carbon budget. While there are numerous options for reducing fossil fuels (e.g., increase efficiency and displacement by renewable resources), new land management opportunities for sequestering carbon need to be explored. Opportunities include reforestation and managing forest age structure. These opportunities will vary from state to state and over time across the United States.This work was supported by NSF grants 104918, 1137306, and 1237491; EPA grant XA-83600001-1; and DOE grant DE-FG02-94ER61937.2015-08-2

Green House Gas Mitigation Policy, Bio-fuels and Land-use Change- a Dynamic Analysis

Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,