{"id":48154,"date":"2017-08-09T10:05:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T17:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=48154"},"modified":"2017-08-10T11:49:42","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T18:49:42","slug":"land-carbon-sink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/land-carbon-sink\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU ecosystem scientist\u2019s study finds more frequent droughts may endanger ecosystem resiliency"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kerry Bennett<\/strong>
\nOffice of the Vice President for Research<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

In a new paper published in Nature<\/em><\/a>, research assistant professor Christopher Schwalm<\/strong> of Northern Arizona University\u2019s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society<\/a> (Ecoss) shares the results of a study investigating the impact of more frequent droughts on ecosystem resiliency and how this phenomenon could endanger the land carbon sink.<\/p>\n

Earth\u2019s land carbon sink comprises all the planet\u2019s soils and vegetation, including forests, grasslands and agricultural land. Currently absorbing an estimated 50 percent of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from human activities, the land carbon sink mitigates carbon dioxide effects on global climate change. The most widespread climatic extreme that negatively affects the land carbon sink is drought.<\/p>\n

Schwalm is the lead author of the paper \u201cGlobal patterns of drought recovery,\u201d representing the work of an interdisciplinary team of scientists, including NAU professor George Koch<\/strong>, also of Ecoss; associate professor of informatics and computing Kiona Ogle<\/strong>; and associate professor of climate science Deborah<\/strong> Huntzinger<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By studying ecosystems as diverse as the tropics and the high northern latitudes, the scientists established drought recovery times are strongly associated with climate and the carbon cycle and are a critical metric for drought impact.<\/p>\n

As droughts become more frequent and more severe, researchers believe the time an ecosystem needs to recover, or revert to its pre-drought functional state, may become longer than the time between droughts. These chronic conditions will impair the normal functioning of plants and trees in an ecosystem, the researchers theorize, resulting in widespread degradation of the land carbon sink.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrent understanding of drought recovery has generally focused on precipitation that ends a drought by alleviating water deficit, as opposed to restoring function in plants, where recovery is often assumed to be rapid and complete once hydrological drought is ameliorated,\u201d Schwalm said. \u201cYet the time needed for plant function to recover is critical for ecosystem function, because if a new drought arrives before full recovery, an ecosystem may transition to a new state.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecovery time is thus a critical metric for assessing ecosystem resilience, as this time scale shapes the odds of crossing a \u2018tipping point.\u2019 In the context of drought, tipping point thresholds are associated with widespread tree mortality\u2014and concomitant degradation in land carbon uptake.\u201d<\/p>\n

At NAU, Schwalm\u2019s climate science research focuses on how carbon, water and plant nutrients cycle through land systems. He examines the natural and global change drivers of terrestrial biogeochemistry, including extensive work on the impact of drought on carbon cycling and ecosystem response and recovery from drought events. He also performs research on improving carbon cycle predictability in Earth system models, statistical upscaling and machine learning to advance current and future understanding of land-atmosphere exchange<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kerry Bennett Office of the Vice President for Research In a new paper published in Nature, research assistant professor Christopher Schwalm of Northern Arizona University\u2019s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) shares the results of a study investigating the impact of more frequent droughts on ecosystem resiliency and how this phenomenon could endanger…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":48155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}