LTREB: Continuing a Climate Manipulation Experiment to Test Hypothesis About Intermediate-term Effects on Carbon Sequestration and Plant Species Richness

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

0211025 Harte This LTREB project will continue an 11-year climate manipulation experiment and a 6-year climate-gradient study, thereby providing longer-term data sets to be used to test two hypotheses concerning the linkages between climate and ecosystems. The first hypothesis relates to the effect of climate warming on carbon sequestration, the second to climate controls on plant species richness. Climate change can alter carbon stocks in plants, litter, and soil, resulting in feedback which could either enhance or retard the anthropogenic buildup of atmospheric CO2. Such feedback could be especially strong in montane and high-latitude ecosystems where soils are carbon-rich, vegetation is sensitive to climatic variables such as length of growing season, and climate change is expected to be large due to snow-albedo feedback. The complexity of whole ecosystems renders prediction of the magnitude of this carbon-balance feedback a major challenge in ecology today.