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Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

Terrestrial Ecosystem Science

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  • Highlights
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Highlights
Projects
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This program’s focus is to understand and explain mechanisms and processes controlling primary production, carbon cycling, and soil biogeochemistry; the impacts of disturbance on terrestrial ecosystems; and ecosystem feedbacks to climate in vulnerable environments. In addition, it seeks to establish and maintain environmental field observatories.

Highlights

Diagram showing how eddy covariance measurements are collected from wind eddies
Project

AmeriFlux Management Project

The largest flows of carbon between land and atmosphere come from terrestrial ecosystem photosynthesis and respiration, with potentially profound impacts on atmosphere and climate. The AmeriFlux Network, established in 1996, has more than 120 long-term flux sites, independently operated and funded, throughout the Western Hemisphere. The sites are diverse, ranging from the Amazonian rainforests to the North Slope of Alaska, and some span gradients in elevation or rainfall. Site researchers observe ecosystem level exchanges of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, water, and energy, to assess terrestrial ecosystems’ responses and feedbacks to the environment.

TES Lab photo
Project

Belowground Biogeochemistry SFA

In this SFA, we conduct basic research on terrestrial biogeochemistry, with a focus on belowground soil carbon cycling and its role in terrestrial biogeochemistry and climate feedbacks.

NGEE Arctic
Project

Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment – Arctic

The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) seeks to address challenges by quantifying the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.

rain forrest - NGEE Tropics
Project

Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment-Tropics

Tropical forests cycle more CO2 and water than any other biome, and play critical roles in determining Earth’s energy balance. Intact tropical forests, likely Earth’s largest carbon sink, are susceptible to a warming climate. The 10-year vision for NGEE Tropics is to achieve dramatically reduced uncertainty in ESM projections, and increased scientific understanding of how tropical forest ecosystems will respond to climate and atmospheric change.

Program Overview

An accurate understanding of soil processes is critical for predicting climate-ecosystem feedbacks, attributing global CO2 sinks between land and ocean, and optimizing mitigation via biofuels and sequestration. Long-standing gaps in process-level understanding make the role of soils in global change highly uncertain. In our current projects (Belowground Biogeochemistry SFA, NGEE Arctic, and NGEE Tropics), we address these gaps by conducting basic experimental, observational, and numerical research with a focus on terrestrial biogeochemistry and climate feedbacks. Success will provide us with accurate process-level understanding of the controls of soil carbon turnover and stocks, and useful predictions of soil carbon response to climate change and land-use change.

The Terrestrial Ecosystems Science Program is one of three programs within the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Climate & Carbon Sciences Program Area. This program’s focus is to understand and explain mechanisms and processes controlling primary production, carbon cycling, and soil biogeochemistry; the impacts of disturbance on terrestrial ecosystems; and ecosystem feedbacks to climate in vulnerable environments. In addition, it seeks to establish and maintain environmental field observatories.

Featured Projects

Diagram showing how eddy covariance measurements are collected from wind eddies
Project

AmeriFlux Management Project

The largest flows of carbon between land and atmosphere come from terrestrial ecosystem photosynthesis and respiration, with potentially profound impacts on atmosphere and climate. The AmeriFlux Network, established in 1996, has more than 120 long-term flux sites, independently operated and funded, throughout the Western Hemisphere. The sites are diverse, ranging from the Amazonian rainforests to the North Slope of Alaska, and some span gradients in elevation or rainfall. Site researchers observe ecosystem level exchanges of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, water, and energy, to assess terrestrial ecosystems’ responses and feedbacks to the environment.

TES Lab photo
Project

Belowground Biogeochemistry SFA

In this SFA, we conduct basic research on terrestrial biogeochemistry, with a focus on belowground soil carbon cycling and its role in terrestrial biogeochemistry and climate feedbacks.

NGEE Arctic
Project

Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment – Arctic

The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) seeks to address challenges by quantifying the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.

rain forrest - NGEE Tropics
Project

Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment-Tropics

Tropical forests cycle more CO2 and water than any other biome, and play critical roles in determining Earth’s energy balance. Intact tropical forests, likely Earth’s largest carbon sink, are susceptible to a warming climate. The 10-year vision for NGEE Tropics is to achieve dramatically reduced uncertainty in ESM projections, and increased scientific understanding of how tropical forest ecosystems will respond to climate and atmospheric change.

Primary Sponsors

Program Contacts

Margaret Torn

Margaret S. Torn
Senior Scientist

Christin Buechner
Program Manager

News & Events

CESD Expert Writes About the Dangers of Sluggish Tropical Cyclones for Nature Magazine

July 31, 2018

CESD research scientist Christina Patricola weighed in this summer on new research indicating a global slowdown in the rate at which tropical cyclones move over a region. Because the amount of tropical-cyclone-related rainfall that any local area might experience is inversely proportional to this translation speed, these findings could have important implications for regional rainfall…

EESA Scientists Are First to Directly Measure Methane’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface

April 4, 2018

Scientists have directly measured the increasing greenhouse effect of methane at the Earth’s surface for the first time. A research team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) tracked a rise in the warming effect of methane — one of the most important greenhouse gases for the Earth’s atmosphere — over a…

EESA Research Shows Impact of Environmental Changes on Microbes in Arctic Soils

February 23, 2018

New Berkeley Lab research published in the journal Nature Communications Thursday explores the impact of a changing climate on Arctic ecosystems with permanently frozen soils. As the Arctic continues to warm at about twice the rate of the rest of the world, scientists expect these frozen soils known as permafrost to thaw, activating microbes capable…

Negron-Juarez et al. find that most ESMs show carbon uptake bias for tropical forests

October 27, 2015

Robinson Negrón-Juárez, Charles Koven, William Riley, Ryan Knox, and Jeff Chambers, researchers in EESA and CESD, published a letter in Environmental Research Letters showing that most earth system models (ESM) overpredict tropical forest biomass in response to increased forest productivity. In contrast, observations show that as tropical forest productivity increases, trees do not continue to store CO2 at…

Which processes most strongly govern terrestrial carbon cycle feedbacks in Earth system models?

October 12, 2015

ESMs (Earth system models) are crucial in estimating climate sensitivity, but show large uncertainty in carbon cycle feedbacks. A key step of reducing this uncertainty is to identify the processes that govern carbon-climate and carbon-concentration feedbacks driven by changes in terrestrial carbon stocks. Are these changing carbon stocks driven by changes to inputs, or changes…

New Research: Feedback between Permafrost Carbon and Climate

October 5, 2015

Charlie Koven, scientist in Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, discusses newly published research results in LBNL’s News Center today. As global warming causes soil temperatures to increase, some of the billions of tons of carbon frozen in Arctic permafrost will will be released into the atmosphere, and accelerate climate change. This is a big unknown. Now there’s a…

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