Amy T. Austin

TL;DR: The result of the interaction of texture and pulsed rainfall events suggests a corollary hypothesis for nutrient turnover in arid and semiarid ecosystems with a linear increase of N mineralization in coarse-textured soils, but a saturating response for fine- Textured soils due to the importance of soil C and N pools.

TL;DR: For example, this article found that soil and plant δ15N values systematically decreased with increasing mean annual precipitation (MAP) and decreasing mean annual temperature (MAT), suggesting a systematic change in the source of plant available N (organic/NH4+ versus NO3−) with climate.

TL;DR: It is concluded that photodegradation is a dominant control on above-ground litter decomposition in this semi-arid ecosystem and future changes in radiation interception due to decreased cloudiness, increased stratospheric ozone depletion, or reduced vegetative cover may have a more significant effect on the carbon balance in these water-limited ecosystems than changes in temperature or precipitation.

TL;DR: Using output from global chemistry transport models, this article provided the first estimates of recent (mid-1990s) and future (2050) rates and distributions of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition within biodiversity hotspots.

TL;DR: The pattern of decreased foliar nutrient concentrations per unit leaf area and of increased lignin indicates a shift from relatively high nutrient availability to relatively high carbon gain by producers as annual precipitation increases, and nitrogen cycling, the pattern of higher inorganic soil nitrogen concentrations in the drier sites, together with the progressively depleted δ15N signature in both soils and vegetation, suggests that nitrogen cycling is more open at the driers sites, with smaller losses relative to turnover.