Because evapotranspiration (ET) is the second largest component of the water cycle and a critical process in terrestrial ecosystems, understanding the inter-annual variability of ET is important in the context of global climate change. Eight years of continuous eddy covariance measurements (2003–2010) in a subtropical coniferous plantation were used to investigate the impacts of climatic factors and ecosystem responses on the inter-annual variability of ET. The mean and standard deviation of annual ET for 2003–2010 were 786.9 and 103.4 mm (with a coefficient of variation of 13.1%), respectively. The inter-annual variability of ET was largely created in three periods: March, May–June, and October, which are the transition periods between seasons. A set of look-up table approaches were used to separate the sources of inter-annual variability of ET. The annual ETs were calculated by assuming that (a) both the climate and ecosystem responses among years are variable (Vcli-eco), (b) the climate is variable but the ecosystem responses are constant (Vcli), and (c) the climate is constant but ecosystem responses are variable (Veco). The ETs that were calculated under the above assumptions suggested that the inter-annual variability of ET was dominated by ecosystem responses and that there was a negative interaction between the effects of climate and ecosystem responses. These results suggested that for long-term predictions of water and energy balance in global climate change projections, the ecosystem responses must be taken into account to

The responses of C3 plants to rising atmospheric CO2 levels are considered to be largely dependent on effects exerted through altered photosynthesis. In contrast, the nature of the responses of C4 plants to high CO2 remains controversial because of the absence of CO2-dependent effects on photosynthesis. In this study, the effects of atmospheric CO2 availability on the transcriptome, proteome and metabolome profiles of two ranks of source leaves in maize (Zea mays L.) were studied in plants grown under ambient CO2 conditions (350+/- 20 µL L-1 CO2) or with CO2 enrichment (700+/- 20 µL L-1 CO2). Growth at high CO2 had no effect on photosynthesis, photorespiration, leaf C/N ratios or anthocyanin contents. However, leaf transpiration rates, carbohydrate metabolism and protein carbonyl accumulation were altered at high CO2 in a leaf-rank specific manner. While no significant CO2-dependent changes in the leaf transcriptome were observed, qPCR analysis revealed that the abundance of transcripts encoding a Bowman-Birk protease inhibitor and a serpin were changed by the growth CO2 level in a leaf rank specific manner. Moreover, CO2-dependent

Recent advances in the climate change biology literature: describing the whole elephant A. Townsend Peterson,1 ∗ Shaily Menon2 and Xingong Li3 Climate change biology is seeing a wave of new contributions, which are reviewed herein. Contributions treat shifts in phenology and distribution, and both document past and forecast future effects. However, many of the current wave of contributions are observational and correlational, and few are experimental in nature, and too often a conceptual framework in which to contextualize the results is lacking. An additional gap is the lack of effective cross-linking among areas of research, for example, connection of sea-level rise and climate change implications for distributions of species, or evolutionary adaptation studies with distributional shift studies. Although numerous important contributions have emerged in recent years, synthesis of this phenomenon and its consequences has not yet been achieved. 2010 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.WIREs Clim Change

We examined the effects of elevated CO2 and O3 and their interaction on leaf litter chemistry and decomposition in pure stands of aspen (Populus tremuloides) and mixed stands of birch (Betula papyrifera) and aspen at the Aspen Free Air CO 2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment. A 935-day in situ incubation study was performed using litterbags filled with naturally senesced leaf litter. We found that elevated CO2 had no overall effects on litter decomposition rates, whereas elevated O3 reduced litter mass loss (-13%) in the first year. The effect

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We examined the effects of elevated CO2 and O3 and their interaction on leaf litter chemistry and decomposition in pure stands of aspen (Populus tremuloides) and mixed stands of birch (Betula pa-pyrifera) and aspen at the Aspen Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment. A 935-day in situ incubation study was performed using litterbags filled with naturally senesced leaf litter. We found that elevated CO2 had no overall effects on litter decomposition rates, whereas elevated O3 reduced litter mass loss (-13%) in the first year. The effect of O3 on mass loss disappeared in the second year. For aspen litter but not mixed birch-aspen litter, decomposition rates were negatively correlated with initial concentrations of condensed tannins and phenolics. Most soluble components (94 % of soluble sugars, 99 % of condensed tannins, and 91 % of soluble phenolics) and any treatment ef-fects on their initial concentrations disappeared rapidly. However, the mean residence time (MRT) of birch-aspen litter (3.1 years) was significantly lower than that of aspen litter (4.8 years). Further, because of variation in total litterfall, total litter mass, C, lignin and N remaining in the ecosystem was highest under elevated CO2 and lowest under elevated O3 during the incubation period. Our re-sults indicate that elevated CO2 and O3 can alter short-term litter decomposition dynamics, but longer-term effects will depend more on indirect effects mediated through changes in forest com-munity composition. Treatment effects on soluble

Grasslands account for a large proportion of global terrestrial productivity and play a critical role in carbon and water cycling. Within grasslands, photosynthetic pathway is an important functional trait yielding different rates of productivity along environmental gradients. Recently, C3-C4 sorting along spatial environmental gradients has been reassessed by controlling for confounding traits in phylogenetically structured comparisons. C3 and C4 grasses should sort along temporal environmental gradients as well, resulting in differing phenologies and growing season lengths. Here we use 10 years of satellite data (NDVI) to examine the phenology and greenness (as a proxy for productivity) of C3 and C4 grass habitats, which reflect differences in both environment and plant physiology. We perform phylogenetically structured comparisons based on 3,595 digitized herbarium collections of 152 grass species across the Hawaiian Islands. Our results show that the clade identity of grasses captures differences in their habitats better than photosynthetic pathway. Growing season length (GSL) and associated productivity (GSP) were not significantly different when considering photosynthetic type alone, but were indeed different when considering photosynthetic type nested within clade. The relationship between GSL and GSP differed most strongly between C3 clade habitats, and not between C3-C4 habitats. Our results suggest that accounting for the interaction between phylogeny and photosynthetic pathway can help improve predictions of productivity, as commonly used C3-C4 classifications are very broad and appear to mask important diversity in grassland ecosystem

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advances in the climate change biology literature: describing the whole elephant