EAPSI: What do Observations Tell us about the Response of Global Carbon Cycling to Changing Temperature?

Woods Katharyn D, Flagstaff AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Terrestrial biospheric models are a critical tool used to evaluate the response of the biosphere to future climatic conditions. With these models we aim to understand how ecosystems will respond to changes in climate and particularly increasing temperature, and which mechanisms currently control carbon exchange. The objective of this project is to derive an observation-based, instead of model-based, constraint of temperature-induced variability in the carbon cycle. This project builds a collaborative relationship with Dr. Louis Schipper and Dr. Vic Arcus of the University of Waikato, New Zealand, to gather observations of terrestrial carbon cycling, coincident with sunlight, water and temperature across every vegetated continent and major biome. Arcus and Schipper have developed a new fundamental theory that will allow models to take into account peculiar properties of enzymes that control cycling of carbon to provide new insight into future changes as the globe warms. The research team will statistically attribute both photosynthesis and respiration to temperature, through accounting for the role of other regulating factors (e.g. water availability, sunlight) and build mathematical algorithms which capture observed variability. A new theoretical model of temperature dependence of biological processes (macro-molecular rate theory) will be applied to ecosystem scale photosynthesis and respiration. This project will use data from 10 major biomes located around the globe to understand and better constrain the global carbon cycle, improving the accuracy of terrestrial biosphere models, and our predictions of future concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This work builds our understanding of both short-term events, such as heat waves, as well as long-term events, such as global environmental change. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Royal Society of New Zealand.