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Open AccessField experiments show no consistent reductions in soil microbial carbon in response to warming
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Sustained Three-Year Declines in Forest Soil Respiration are Proportional to Disturbance Severity
Soil respiration (Rs) is the largest outward flux of carbon (C) from terrestrial ecosystems, accounting for more than half of total temperate forest C loss. Evaluating the drivers of this globally important flux,...
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Open AccessThe global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset
Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, l...
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Article
Decadal forest soil respiration following stem girdling
Large-scale stem-girdling experiment reduced soil respiration for five consecutive years. Timing and magnitude of soil respiration declines are better explained by changes in leaf area rather t...
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Optical vegetation indices for monitoring terrestrial ecosystems globally
Vegetation indices (VIs), which describe remotely sensed vegetation properties such as photosynthetic activity and canopy structure, are widely used to study vegetation dynamics across scales. However, VI-base...
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Open AccessHistorically inconsistent productivity and respiration fluxes in the global terrestrial carbon cycle
The terrestrial carbon cycle is a major source of uncertainty in climate projections. Its dominant fluxes, gross primary productivity (GPP), and respiration (in particular soil respiration, RS), are typically est...
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Open AccessSoil texture and environmental conditions influence the biogeochemical responses of soils to drought and flooding
Climate change is intensifying the global water cycle, with increased frequency of drought and flood. Water is an important driver of soil carbon dynamics, and it is crucial to understand how moisture disturba...
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Forest Structural Complexity and Biomass Predict First-Year Carbon Cycling Responses to Disturbance
The pre-disturbance vegetation characteristics that predict carbon (C) cycling responses to disturbance are not well known. To address this gap, we initiated the Forest Resilience Threshold Experiment, a manip...
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Open AccessRepresenting the function and sensitivity of coastal interfaces in Earth system models
Between the land and ocean, diverse coastal ecosystems transform, store, and transport material. Across these interfaces, the dynamic exchange of energy and matter is driven by hydrological and hydrodynamic pr...
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Open AccessPower laws and critical fragmentation in global forests
The replacement of forest areas with human-dominated landscapes usually leads to fragmentation, altering the structure and function of the forest. Here we studied the dynamics of forest patch sizes at a global...
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Globally rising soil heterotrophic respiration over recent decades
Global soils store at least twice as much carbon as Earth’s atmosphere1,2. The global soil-to-atmosphere (or total soil respiration, RS) carbon dioxide (CO2) flux is increasing3,4, but the degree to which climate...
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Open AccessA moisture function of soil heterotrophic respiration that incorporates microscale processes
Soil heterotrophic respiration (HR) is an important source of soil-to-atmosphere CO2 flux, but its response to changes in soil water content (θ) is poorly understood. Earth system models commonly use empirical mo...
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Using greenhouse gas fluxes to define soil functional types
Soils provide key ecosystem services and directly control ecosystem functions; thus, there is a need to define the reference state of soil functionality. Most common functional classifications are vegetation-c...
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Open AccessShifts in pore connectivity from precipitation versus groundwater rewetting increases soil carbon loss after drought
Droughts and other extreme precipitation events are predicted to increase in intensity, duration, and extent, with uncertain implications for terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration. Soil wetting from above (prec...
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Biospheric feedback effects in a synchronously coupled model of human and Earth systems
Significant feedbacks in energy, agriculture, land use and the carbon cycle are identified for the twenty-first century when climate impacts on land are factored into climate projections so as to allow for two...
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Erratum to: The value of soil respiration measurements for interpreting and modeling terrestrial carbon cycling
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The value of soil respiration measurements for interpreting and modeling terrestrial carbon cycling
An acceleration of model-data synthesis activities has leveraged many terrestrial carbon datasets, but utilization of soil respiration (RS) data has not kept pace.
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Open AccessPore-scale investigation on the response of heterotrophic respiration to moisture conditions in heterogeneous soils
The relationship between microbial respiration rate and soil moisture content is an important property for understanding and predicting soil organic carbon degradation, CO2 production and emission, and their subs...
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Open AccessThe effects of climate sensitivity and carbon cycle interactions on mitigation policy stringency
Climate sensitivity and climate-carbon cycle feedbacks interact to determine how global carbon and energy cycles will change in the future. While the science of these connections is well documented, their econ...
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Open AccessRCP4.5: a pathway for stabilization of radiative forcing by 2100
Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 is a scenario that stabilizes radiative forcing at 4.5 W m−2 in the year 2100 without ever exceeding that value. Simulated with the Global Change Assessment Model (G...
