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Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind
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Earth is a chemical battery where, over evolutionary time with a trickle-charge of photosynthesis using solar energy, billions of tons of living biomass were stored in forests and other ecosystems and in vast reserves of fossil fuels. In just the last few hundred years, humans extracted exploitable energy from these living and fossilized biomass fuels to build the modern industrial-technological-informational economy, to grow our population to more than 7 billion, and to transform the biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity of the earth. This rapid discharge of the earth’s store of organic energy fuels the human domination of the biosphere, including conversion of natural habitats to agricultural fields and the resulting loss of native species, emission of carbon dioxide and the resulting climate and sea level change, and use of supplemental nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics governing the trickle-charge and rapid discharge of the earth’s battery are universal and absolute; the earth is only temporarily poised a quantifiable distance from the thermodynamic equilibrium of outer space. Although this distance from equilibrium is comprised of all energy types, most critical for humans is the store of living biomass. With the rapid depletion of this chemical energy, the earth is shifting back toward the inhospitable equilibrium of outer space with fundamental ramifications for the biosphere and humanity. Because there is no substitute or replacement energy for living biomass, the remaining distance from equilibrium that will be required to support human life is unknown.
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Stop misuse of biodiversity offsets
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Governments should not meet existing conservation targets using the compensation that developers pay for damaging biodiversity, say Martine Maron and colleagues.
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On the difference in the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 between deciduous and evergreen forests in the southeastern United States
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The southeastern United States is experiencing a rapid regional increase in the ratio of pine to deciduous forest ecosystems at the same time it is experiencing changes in climate. This study is focused on exploring how these shifts will affect the carbon sink capacity of southeastern US forests, which we show here are among the strongest carbon sinks in the continental United States. Using eight-year-long eddy covariance records collected above a hardwood deciduous forest (HW) and a pine plantation (PP) co-located in North Carolina, USA, we show that the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) was more variable in PP, contributing to variability in the difference in NEE between the two sites (DNEE) at a range of timescales, including the interannual timescale. Because the variability in evapotranspira- tion (ET) was nearly identical across the two sites over a range of timescales, the factors that determined the variabil- ity in DNEE were dominated by those that tend to decouple NEE from ET. One such factor was water use efficiency, which changed dramatically in response to drought and also tended to increase monotonically in nondrought years (P < 0.001 in PP). Factors that vary over seasonal timescales were strong determinants of the NEE in the HW site; however, seasonality was less important in the PP site, where significant amounts of carbon were assimilated outside of the active season, representing an important advantage of evergreen trees in warm, temperate climates. Additional variability in the fluxes at long-time scales may be attributable to slowly evolving factors, including canopy structure and increases in dormant season air temperature. Taken together, study results suggest that the carbon sink in the southeastern United States may become more variable in the future, owing to a predicted increase in drought frequency and an increase in the fractional cover of southern pines.
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Novel climates, no-analog communities, and ecological surprises
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No-analog communities (communities that are compositionally unlike any found today) occurred frequently in the past and will develop in the greenhouse world of the future. The well documented no-analog plant communities of late-glacial North America are closely linked to “novel” climates also lacking modern analogs, characterized by high seasonality of temperature. In climate simulations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A2 and B1 emission scenarios, novel climates arise by 2100 AD, primarily in tropical and subtropical regions. These future novel climates are warmer than any present climates globally, with spatially variable shifts in precipitation, and increase the risk of species reshuffling into future no-analog communities and other ecological surprises. Most ecological models are at least partially parameterized from modern observations and so may fail to accurately predict ecological responses to these novel climates. There is an urgent need to test the robustness of ecological models to climate conditions outside modern experience.
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Formation of soil organic matter via biochemical and physical pathways of litter mass loss
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Soil organic matter is the largest terrestrial carbon pool (1). The pool size depends on the balance between formation of soil organic matter from decomposition of plant litter and its mineralization to inorganic carbon. Knowledge of soil organic matter formation remains limited (2) and current C numerical models assume that stable soil organic matter is formed primarily from recalcitrant plant litter (3) . However, labile components of plant litter could also form mineral-stabilized soil organic matter (4). Here we followed the decomposition of isotopically labelled above-ground litter and its incorporation into soil organic matter over three years in a grassland in Kansas, USA, and used laboratory incubations to determine the decay rates and pool structure of litter-derived organic matter. Early in decomposition, soil organic matter formed when non-structural compounds were lost from litter. Soil organic matter also formed at the end of decomposition, when both non-structural and structural compounds were lost at similar rates. We conclude that two pathways yield soil organic matter efficiently. A dissolved organic matter–microbial path occurs early in decomposition when litter loses mostly non-structural compounds, which are incorporated into microbial biomass at high rates, resulting in efficient soil organic matter formation. An equally efficient physical-transfer path occurs when litter fragments move into soil.
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Tree mortality predicted from drought-induced vascular damage
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The projected responses of forest ecosystems to warming and drying associated with twenty-first-century climate change vary widely from resiliency to widespread tree mortality (1–3). Current vegetation models lack the ability to account for mortality of overstory trees during extreme drought owing to uncertainties in mechanisms and thresholds causing mortality (4,5). Here we assess the causes of tree mortality, using field measurements of branch hydraulic conductivity during ongoing mortality in Populus tremuloides in the southwestern United States and a detailed plant hydraulics model. We identify a lethal plant water stress threshold that corresponds with a loss of vascular transport capacity from air entry into the xylem. We then use this hydraulic-based threshold to simulate forest dieback during historical drought, and compare predictions against three independent mortality data sets. The hydraulic threshold predicted with 75% accuracy regional patterns of tree mortality as found in field plots and mortality maps derived from Landsat imagery. In a high-emissions scenario, climate models project that drought stress will exceed the observed mortality threshold in the southwestern United States by the 2050s. Our approach provides a powerful and tractable way of incorporating tree mortality into vegetation models to resolve uncertainty over the fate of forest ecosystems in a changing climate.
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Comparative Drought Responses of Quercus ilex L. and Pinus sylvestris L. in a Montane Forest Undergoing a Vegetation Shift
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Different functional and structural strategies to cope with water shortage exist both within and across plant communities. The current trend towards increasing drought in many regions could drive some species to their physiological limits of drought tolerance, potentially leading to mortality episodes and vegetation shifts. In this paper, we study the drought responses of Quercus ilex and Pinus sylvestris in a montane Mediterranean forest where the former species is replacing the latter in association with recent episodes of drought-induced mortality. Our aim was to compare the physiological responses to variations in soil water content (SWC) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) of the two species when living together in a mixed stand or separately in pure stands, where the canopies of both species are completely exposed to high radiation and VPD. P. sylvestris showed typical isohydric behavior, with greater losses of stomatal conductance with declining SWC and greater reductions of stored non-structural carbohydrates during drought, consistent with carbon starvation being an important factor in the mortality of this species. On the other hand, Q. ilex trees showed a more anisohydric behavior, experiencing more negative water potentials and higher levels of xylem embolism under extreme drought, presumably putting them at higher risk of hydraulic failure. In addition, our results show relatively small changes in the physiological responses of Q. ilex in mixed vs. pure stands, suggesting that the current replacement of P. sylvestris by Q. ilex will continue.
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The links between ecosystem multifunctionality and above- and belowground biodiversity are mediated by climate
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Plant biodiversity is often correlated with ecosystem functioning in terrestrial ecosystems. However, we know little about the relative and combined effects of above- and belowground biodiversity on multiple ecosystem functions (for example, ecosystem multifunctionality, EMF) or how climate might mediate those relationships. Here we tease apart the effects of biotic and abiotic factors, both above- and belowground, on EMF on the Tibetan Plateau, China. We found that a suite of biotic and abiotic variables account for up to 86% of the variation in EMF, with the combined effects of above- and belowground biodiversity accounting for 45% of the variation in EMF. Our results have two important implications: first, including belowground biodiversity in models can improve the ability to explain and predict EMF. Second, regional-scale variation in climate, and perhaps climate change, can determine, or at least modify, the effects of biodiversity on EMF in natural ecosystems.
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Mapping tree density at a global scale
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The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.39 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.61 trillion in temperate regions. Biome-level trends in tree density demonstrate the importance of climate and topography in controlling local tree densities at finer scales, as well as the overwhelming effect of humans across most of the world. Based on our projected tree densities, we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.
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Increasing Northern Hemisphere water deficit
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A monthly water-balance model is used with CRUTS3.1 gridded monthly precip- itation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) data to examine changes in global water deficit (PET minus actual evapotranspiration) for the Northern Hemisphere (NH) for the years 1905 through 2009. Results show that NH deficit increased dramatically near the year 2000 during both the cool (October through March) and warm (April through September) seasons. The increase in water deficit near 2000 coincides with a substantial increase in NH temperature and PET. The most pronounced increases in deficit occurred for the latitudinal band from 0 to 40°N. These results indicate that global warming has increased the water deficit in the NH and that the increase since 2000 is unprecedented for the 1905 through 2009 period. Additionally, coincident with the increase in deficit near 2000, mean NH runoff also increased due to increases in P. We explain the apparent contradiction of concurrent increases in deficit and increases in runoff.
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