Dryland feedbacks to future climate change: how species mortality and replacement will affect coupled biogeochemical cycles and energy balance (Final Technical Report)
The overall goal of the dryland climate manipulation experiment is to improve our understanding and ability to forecast dryland responses to increasing temperatures and altered precipitation regimes. Drylands cover over 40% of Earth’s terrestrial surface and are predicted to increase in size 11-23% by 2100. Yet our understanding of this vast biome, which exchanges enormous amounts of CO2 and energy with the atmosphere, is exceedingly poor. This project aims to transform and improve that understanding in order to reduce uncertainty and increase the confidence with which we can make global predictions of future climate. We focus on both above- and belowground processes, and explore temperature controls over critical aspects of carbon and nutrient cycling for dryland plants, soil, and microbes. We have 60 climate manipulation plots where plants (from above the canopy) and soils are warmed using infrared lamps and where precipitation has been altered using targeted watering regimes. We have measured myriad aspects of plant physiology, morphology, carbon exchange, energy exchange, and phenology, as well as analogous climate-induced changes to biological soil crusts and soil microbial communities. Our goals are to investigate temperature responses and acclimation potential of dryland plant and soil processes. Concurrent soil incubation experiments complement the in-situ soil warming component and enable more controlled mechanistic investigations of temperature response on microbial function. Automated soil CO2 efflux chambers within the plots provide phenomenal opportunity to improve our understanding of dryland CO2 exchange with the atmosphere and are coupled with plant CO2 exchange measurements. The project has been exceptionally successful, with 35 peer-reviewed publications (and more in review), including in high-profile journals such as Nature Climate Change and PNAS. We have given over fifty presentations on the work and it has been featured in many high-profile media outlets, such as Discover Magazine and on NPR.
- Research Organization:
- US Geological Survey, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Contributing Organization:
- US Geological Survey
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0008168
- OSTI ID:
- 1608533
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-USGS-SC0008168
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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