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Title: Using research networks to create the comprehensive datasets needed to assess nutrient availability as a key determinant of terrestrial carbon cycling

Journal Article · · Environmental Research Letters
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [6]; ORCiD logo [1];  [7]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [9];  [2]; ORCiD logo [10]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [11]; ORCiD logo [12]; ORCiD logo [13]
  1. Univ. of Antwerp, Wilrijk (Belgium)
  2. CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Catalonia (Spain); CREAF, Catalonia (Spain)
  3. U.S. Geological Survey, Moab, UT (United States)
  4. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  5. Univ. of Innsbruck (Austria)
  6. USDA-ARS Grassland, Temple, TX (United States)
  7. Univ. of Western Australia, Perth, WA (Australia)
  8. Peking Univ., Beijing (China)
  9. Utrecht Univ. (The Netherlands)
  10. CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Catalonia (Spain); CREAF, Catalonia (Spain); CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, VIC (Australia)
  11. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, VIC (Australia)
  12. Max Planck Inst. for Biogeochemistry, Jena (Germany)
  13. Lab des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environment, Gif sur Yvette (France)

A wide range of research shows that nutrient availability strongly influences terrestrial carbon (C) cycling and shapes ecosystem responses to environmental changes and hence terrestrial feedbacks to climate. Nonetheless, our understanding of nutrient controls remains far from complete and poorly quantified, at least partly due to a lack of informative, comparable, and accessible datasets at regional-to-global scales. A growing research infrastructure of multi-site networks are providing valuable data on C fluxes and stocks and are monitoring their responses to global environmental change and measuring responses to experimental treatments. These networks thus provide an opportunity for improving our understanding of C-nutrient cycle interactions and our ability to model them. However, coherent information on how nutrient cycling interacts with observed C cycle patterns is still generally lacking. Here, we argue that complementing available C-cycle measurements from monitoring and experimental sites with data characterizing nutrient availability will greatly enhance their power and will improve our capacity to forecast future trajectories of terrestrial C cycling and climate. Therefore, we propose a set of complementary measurements that are relatively easy to conduct routinely at any site or experiment and that, in combination with C cycle observations, can provide a robust characterization of the effects of nutrient availability across sites. In addition, we discuss the power of different observable variables for informing the formulation of models and constraining their predictions. Most widely available measurements of nutrient availability often do not align well with current modelling needs. This highlights the importance to foster the interaction between the empirical and modelling communities for setting future research priorities.

Research Organization:
USGS Western Region, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF); Australian Science Fund; QUINCY
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0011806; DEB 1637686; 647204
OSTI ID:
1614629
Journal Information:
Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 12; ISSN 1748-9326
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 30 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Experimental evidence that phosphorus fertilization and arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis can reduce the carbon cost of phosphorus uptake journal August 2019
Towards comparable assessment of the soil nutrient status across scales—Review and development of nutrient metrics journal September 2019
The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx) text January 2020
The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx) journal October 2019