Project Funding: 2014 - 2017

NRA: 2013 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by USDA, DOE

Abstract:
Land management strategies and land use within urban-suburban, agricultural and forested landscapes can have significant impacts on local and regional carbon, water and energy cycles, but their gross and net effects are complex and not well understood. A better understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between ecological systems, human actions, and changes in climate is needed to drive the decision making process at local to landscape and regional scales. Several states have set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, including conversion of power plants to bioenergy from forests and crops, and thinning high biomass forests to reduce wildfire emissions. However, policies and management are being implemented without adequate assessment of their comprehensive environmental effects. To address these shortcomings, we are studying the effects of land use and land cover on the exchanges of carbon, water and energy in current and future climates across a gradient of urban-suburban agricultural and forested landscapes. Our approach integrates remote sensing observations and data from tall tower CO2 observations and flux sites with comprehensive modeling approaches using the Community Land Model, CLM4.5. We are using artificial neural network analysis to examine current spatio-temporal patterns in carbon, water and energy exchange, and enhancing CLM4.5 to improve its ability to predict these processes and carbon sequestration in different land cover and land management scenarios the future. Our study region is Oregon, as it spans strong gradients from high population/high forest productivity/mesic climate in the west to low population/low productivity/arid climate in the east, and land use is changing to reduce GHG emissions.

Publications:

Berner, L. T., Law, B. E. 2016. Plant traits, productivity, biomass and soil properties from forest sites in the Pacific Northwest, 1999-2014. Scientific Data. 3(1). DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2016.2

Buotte, P. C., Law, B. E., Ripple, W. J., Berner, L. T. 2019. Carbon sequestration and biodiversity co-benefits of preserving forests in the western United States. Ecological Applications. 30(2). DOI: 10.1002/eap.2039

Buotte, P. C., Levis, S., Law, B. E., Hudiburg, T. W., Rupp, D. E., Kent, J. J. 2018. Near-future forest vulnerability to drought and fire varies across the western United States. Global Change Biology. 25(1), 290-303. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.14490

Law, B. E. 2014. Regional analysis of drought and heat impacts on forests: current and future science directions. Global Change Biology. 20(12), 3595-3599. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12651

Law, B. E., Hudiburg, T. W., Berner, L. T., Kent, J. J., Buotte, P. C., Harmon, M. E. 2018. Land use strategies to mitigate climate change in carbon dense temperate forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115(14), 3663-3668. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1720064115

Schmidt, A., Creason, W., Law, B. E. 2018. Estimating regional effects of climate change and altered land use on biosphere carbon fluxes using distributed time delay neural networks with Bayesian regularized learning. Neural Networks. 108, 97-113. DOI: 10.1016/j.neunet.2018.08.004

Schmidt, A., Law, B. E., Gockede, M., Hanson, C., Yang, Z., Conley, S. 2016. Bayesian Optimization of the Community Land Model Simulated Biosphere-Atmosphere Exchange using CO2 Observations from a Dense Tower Network and Aircraft Campaigns over Oregon. Earth Interactions. 20(22), 1-35. DOI: 10.1175/EI-D-16-0011.1

Wagle, P., Xiao, X., Kolb, T. E., Law, B. E., Wharton, S., Monson, R. K., Chen, J., Blanken, P. D., Novick, K. A., Dore, S., Noormets, A., Gowda, P. H. 2016. Differential responses of carbon and water vapor fluxes to climate among evergreen needleleaf forests in the USA. Ecological Processes. 5(1). DOI: 10.1186/s13717-016-0053-5

Wolf, S., Keenan, T. F., Fisher, J. B., Baldocchi, D. D., Desai, A. R., Richardson, A. D., Scott, R. L., Law, B. E., Litvak, M. E., Brunsell, N. A., Peters, W., van der Laan-Luijkx, I. T. 2016. Warm spring reduced carbon cycle impact of the 2012 US summer drought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113(21), 5880-5885. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1519620113

Law, B. E., Waring, R. H. 2015. Carbon implications of current and future effects of drought, fire and management on Pacific Northwest forests. Forest Ecology and Management. 355, 4-14. DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2014.11.023

2015 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• CRDS instrumentation applied at multiple-scales provides spatial or temporal resolution of ecosystem processes: Four example studies   --   (Karrin Alstad, Olivia Salmon, Paul B. Shepson, Brian Stirm, Stefan Metzger, John Musinsky, Chad Hanson, Andres Schmidt, Whitney Moore, Kate Dennis, Jeff Carter, Chris Rella, Graham Legget)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile