Project Funding: 2011 - 2014

NRA: 2010 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
A series of recent studies have suggested that the Earth underwent significant synchronous climatic shifts around 1988/89 towards enhanced warming in the northern latitudes and increased solar radiation associated with reduced cloudiness in the tropics. A new synthesis analysis based on the growth rate of atmospheric CO₂, fossil fuel emission estimates, and modeled ocean CO₂ uptake reveals that there may have been also a major shift towards greater land carbon uptake around this time frame. The detection and attribution of rapid large-scale shifts in the global carbon cycle is of primary concern for society since they lead to feedbacks that either amplify or diminish physical climate change. The overall goal of this proposal is, therefore, to develop a general framework for the detection and attribution of rapid regime or large-scale shifts in the terrestrial carbon cycle. The framework consists of statistical methods to detect changes in the fundamental behavior of the carbon cycle as well as terrestrial ecosystem modeling components to unravel the processes that are responsible for these shifts.

Publications:

Trugman, A. T., Fenton, N. J., Bergeron, Y., Xu, X., Welp, L. R., Medvigy, D. 2016. Climate, soil organic layer, and nitrogen jointly drive forest development after fire in the North American boreal zone. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 8(3), 1180-1209. DOI: 10.1002/2015MS000576

Xu, X., Medvigy, D., Powers, J. S., Becknell, J. M., Guan, K. 2016. Diversity in plant hydraulic traits explains seasonal and inter-annual variations of vegetation dynamics in seasonally dry tropical forests. New Phytologist. 212(1), 80-95. DOI: 10.1111/nph.14009

Buermann, W., Beaulieu, C., Parida, B., Medvigy, D., Collatz, G. J., Sheffield, J., Sarmiento, J. L. 2016. Climate-driven shifts in continental net primary production implicated as a driver of a recent abrupt increase in the land carbon sink. Biogeosciences. 13(5), 1597-1607. DOI: 10.5194/bg-13-1597-2016

Buermann, W., Parida, B., Jung, M., MacDonald, G. M., Tucker, C. J., Reichstein, M. 2014. Recent shift in Eurasian boreal forest greening response may be associated with warmer and drier summers. Geophysical Research Letters. 41(6), 1995-2002. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL059450

Parida, B. R., Buermann, W. 2014. Increasing summer drying in North American ecosystems in response to longer nonfrozen periods. Geophysical Research Letters. 41(15), 5476-5483. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060495

Buermann, W., Bikash, P. R., Jung, M., Burn, D. H., Reichstein, M. 2013. Earlier springs decrease peak summer productivity in North American boreal forests. Environmental Research Letters. 8(2), 024027. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024027

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Possible abrupt shift in the land uptake of carbon   --   (Claudie Beaulieu, Jorge L. Sarmiento, Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, Jie Chen, David Medvigy)   [abstract]
• Detection and Attribution of Rapid Large-scale Shifts in the Terrestrial Carbon Cycle   --   (Wolfgang Buermann, Jorge Sarmiento, George James Collatz, David Medvigy, Claudie Beaulieu)   [abstract]

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

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile
• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile