1. |
- Ainsworth, Elizabeth A., et al.
(author)
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Next generation of elevated [CO2] experiments with crops: a critical investment for feeding the future world
- 2008
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In: Plant, Cell and Environment. - : Wiley. - 0140-7791 .- 1365-3040. ; 31:9, s. 1317-1324
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A rising global population and demand for protein-rich diets are increasing pressure to maximize agricultural productivity. Rising atmospheric [CO2] is altering global temperature and precipitation patterns, which challenges agricultural productivity. While rising [CO2] provides a unique opportunity to increase the productivity of C-3 crops, average yield stimulation observed to date is well below potential gains. Thus, there is room for improving productivity. However, only a fraction of available germplasm of crops has been tested for CO2 responsiveness. Yield is a complex phenotypic trait determined by the interactions of a genotype with the environment. Selection of promising genotypes and characterization of response mechanisms will only be effective if crop improvement and systems biology approaches are closely linked to production environments, that is, on the farm within major growing regions. Free air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments can provide the platform upon which to conduct genetic screening and elucidate the inheritance and mechanisms that underlie genotypic differences in productivity under elevated [CO2]. We propose a new generation of large-scale, low-cost per unit area FACE experiments to identify the most CO2-responsive genotypes and provide starting lines for future breeding programmes. This is necessary if we are to realize the potential for yield gains in the future.
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2. |
- Andresen, Louise C., 1974, et al.
(author)
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Moderate nitrogen retention in temperate heath ecosystem after elevated CO2, drought and warming through 7years
- 2023
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In: European Journal of Soil Science. - 1351-0754 .- 1365-2389. ; 74:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nitrogen (N) dynamic is one of the main controlling factors of responses to climate change in N-limited terrestrial ecosystems, which rely on nutrient re-cycling and retention. In this study we investigate the N partitioning in ecosystem compartments of a grassland heath, and the impact of multiple climate change factors on long-term N retention after 15N pulse labelling. The impacts of elevated carbon dioxide (eCO2), warming and drought and the treatments in combination on ecosystem N retention was investigated in a field scale manipulation experiment. A six-year time-course was assessed by pulse-labelling with the stable N isotope 15N and by sampling after 1 day, 1 year and 6years. After the six years we observed that the total ecosystem retained 42 % of the amended 15N across treatments (recovery of the amended 15N in the pool). The fate of the applied 15N was mainly stabilisation in soil, with 36 % recovery, while the plant compartment and microbial biomass each retained only 1-2 % of the added 15N. This suggests a moderate retention of N, for all treatments, as compared to similar long-term studies of forest ecosystems. A decreased ammonium and vegetation N pool combined with higher 15N retention in the soil at eCO2 treatments suggests that eCO2 promoted processes that immobilize N in soil, while warming counteracted this when combined with eCO2. Drought treatments contrastingly increased the vegetation N pool. We conclude that as the organic soil layer has the main capacity for N storage in a temperate heathland-grassland, it is important for buffering nutrient availability and maintaining a resilient ecosystem. However, the full treatment combination of drought, warming and eCO2 did not differ in 15N recovery from the controls, suggesting unchanged long-term consequences of climate change on retention of pulse added N in this ecosystem.
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3. |
- Calfapietra, Carlo, et al.
(author)
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Challenges in elevated CO2 experiments on forests
- 2010
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In: Trends in Plant Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 1360-1385. ; 15:1, s. 5-10
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Current forest Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiments are reaching completion. Therefore, it is time to define the scientific goals and priorities of future experimental facilities. In this opinion article, we discuss the following three overarching issues (i) What are the most urgent scientific questions and how can they be addressed? (ii) What forest ecosystems should be investigated? (iii) Which other climate change factors should be coupled with elevated CO2 concentrations in future experiments to better predict the effects of climate change? Plantations and natural forests can have conflicting purposes for high productivity and environmental protection. However, in both cases the assessment of carbon balance and how this will be affected by elevated CO2 concentrations and the interacting climate change factors is the most pressing priority for future experiments.
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4. |
- Djukic, Ika, et al.
(author)
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Early stage litter decomposition across biomes
- 2018
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In: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 628, s. 1369-1394
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Through litter decomposition enormous amounts of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to understand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litter and methodologies, adding major uncertainty to syntheses, comparisons and meta-analyses across different experiments and sites. In the TeaComposition initiative, the potential litter decomposition is investigated by using standardized substrates (Rooibos and Green tea) for comparison of litter mass loss at 336 sites (ranging from −9 to +26 °C MAT and from 60 to 3113 mm MAP) across different ecosystems. In this study we tested the effect of climate (temperature and moisture), litter type and land-use on early stage decomposition (3 months) across nine biomes. We show that litter quality was the predominant controlling factor in early stage litter decomposition, which explained about 65% of the variability in litter decomposition at a global scale. The effect of climate, on the other hand, was not litter specific and explained <0.5% of the variation for Green tea and 5% for Rooibos tea, and was of significance only under unfavorable decomposition conditions (i.e. xeric versus mesic environments). When the data were aggregated at the biome scale, climate played a significant role on decomposition of both litter types (explaining 64% of the variation for Green tea and 72% for Rooibos tea). No significant effect of land-use on early stage litter decomposition was noted within the temperate biome. Our results indicate that multiple drivers are affecting early stage litter mass loss with litter quality being dominant. In order to be able to quantify the relative importance of the different drivers over time, long-term studies combined with experimental trials are needed.
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5. |
- Holm, Jennifer A., et al.
(author)
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Exploring the impacts of unprecedented climate extremes on forest ecosystems : Hypotheses to guide modeling and experimental studies
- 2023
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In: Biogeosciences. - 1726-4170. ; 20:11, s. 2117-2142
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Climatic extreme events are expected to occur more frequently in the future, increasing the likelihood of unprecedented climate extremes (UCEs) or record-breaking events. UCEs, such as extreme heatwaves and droughts, substantially affect ecosystem stability and carbon cycling by increasing plant mortality and delaying ecosystem recovery. Quantitative knowledge of such effects is limited due to the paucity of experiments focusing on extreme climatic events beyond the range of historical experience. Here, we present a road map of how dynamic vegetation demographic models (VDMs) can be used to investigate hypotheses surrounding ecosystem responses to one type of UCE: unprecedented droughts. As a result of nonlinear ecosystem responses to UCEs that are qualitatively different from responses to milder extremes, we consider both biomass loss and recovery rates over time by reporting a time-integrated carbon loss as a result of UCE, relative to the absence of drought. Additionally, we explore how unprecedented droughts in combination with increasing atmospheric CO2 and/or temperature may affect ecosystem stability and carbon cycling. We explored these questions using simulations of pre-drought and post-drought conditions at well-studied forest sites using well-tested models (ED2 and LPJ-GUESS). The severity and patterns of biomass losses differed substantially between models. For example, biomass loss could be sensitive to either drought duration or drought intensity depending on the model approach. This is due to the models having different, but also plausible, representations of processes and interactions, highlighting the complicated variability of UCE impacts that still need to be narrowed down in models. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations (eCO2) alone did not completely buffer the ecosystems from carbon losses during UCEs in the majority of our simulations. Our findings highlight the consequences of differences in process formulations and uncertainties in models, most notably related to availability in plant carbohydrate storage and the diversity of plant hydraulic schemes, in projecting potential ecosystem responses to UCEs. We provide a summary of the current state and role of many model processes that give way to different underlying hypotheses of plant responses to UCEs, reflecting knowledge gaps which in future studies could be tested with targeted field experiments and an iterative modeling-experimental conceptual framework.
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6. |
- Holmstrup, Martin, et al.
(author)
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Long-term and realistic global change manipulations had low impact on diversity of soil biota in temperate heathland
- 2017
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In: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In a dry heathland ecosystem we manipulated temperature (warming), precipitation (drought) and atmospheric concentration of CO2 in a full-factorial experiment in order to investigate changes in below-ground biodiversity as a result of future climate change. We investigated the responses in community diversity of nematodes, enchytraeids, collembolans and oribatid mites at two and eight years of manipulations. We used a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach analyzing the three manipulations, soil moisture and temperature, and seven soil biological and chemical ariables. The analysis revealed a persistent and positive effect of elevated CO2 on litter C:N ratio. After two years of treatment, the fungi to bacteria ratio was increased by warming, and the diversities within oribatid mites, collembolans and nematode groups were all affected by elevated CO2 mediated through increased litter C:N ratio. After eight years of treatment, however, the CO2-increased litter C:N ratio did not influence the diversity in any of the four fauna groups. The number of significant correlations between treatments, food source quality, and soil biota diversities was reduced from six to three after two and eight years, respectively. These results suggest a remarkable resilience within the soil biota against global climate change treatments in the long term.
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7. |
- Hovenden, Mark J., et al.
(author)
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Globally consistent influences of seasonal precipitation limit grassland biomass response to elevated CO2
- 2019
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In: Nature Plants. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2055-0278. ; 5, s. 167-173
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- © 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration should stimulate biomass production directly via biochemical stimulation of carbon assimilation, and indirectly via water savings caused by increased plant water-use efficiency. Because of these water savings, the CO 2 fertilization effect (CFE) should be stronger at drier sites, yet large differences among experiments in grassland biomass response to elevated CO 2 appear to be unrelated to annual precipitation, preventing useful generalizations. Here, we show that, as predicted, the impact of elevated CO 2 on biomass production in 19 globally distributed temperate grassland experiments reduces as mean precipitation in seasons other than spring increases, but that it rises unexpectedly as mean spring precipitation increases. Moreover, because sites with high spring precipitation also tend to have high precipitation at other times, these effects of spring and non-spring precipitation on the CO 2 response offset each other, constraining the response of ecosystem productivity to rising CO 2 . This explains why previous analyses were unable to discern a reliable trend between site dryness and the CFE. Thus, the CFE in temperate grasslands worldwide will be constrained by their natural rainfall seasonality such that the stimulation of biomass by rising CO 2 could be substantially less than anticipated.
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8. |
- Sarneel, Judith M., et al.
(author)
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Reading tea leaves worldwide : decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization
- 2024
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In: Ecology Letters. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 27:5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to-degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models.
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9. |
- Sarneel, Judith M., et al.
(author)
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Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization
- 2024
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In: ECOLOGY LETTERS. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 27:5
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to-degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models.
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