Topic
Ecosystem
About: Ecosystem is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25460 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1291375 citations. The topic is also known as: ecological system & Ecosystem.
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TL;DR: Altered rainfall regimes are likely to be an important element of climate change scenarios in this grassland, and the nature of interactions with other climate change elements remains a significant challenge for predicting ecosystem responses to climate change.
Abstract: Rainfall variability is a key driver of ecosystem structure and function in grasslands worldwide. Changes in rainfall patterns predicted by global climate models for the central United States are expected to cause lower and increasingly variable soil water availability, which may impact net primary production and plant species composition in native Great Plains grasslands. We experimentally altered the timing and quantity of growing season rainfall inputs by lengthening inter-rainfall dry intervals by 50%, reducing rainfall quantities by 30%, or both, compared to the ambient rainfall regime in a native tallgrass prairie ecosystem in northeastern Kansas. Over three growing seasons, increased rainfall variability caused by altered rainfall timing with no change in total rainfall quantity led to lower and more variable soil water content (0–30 cm depth), a ~10% reduction in aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), increased root to shoot ratios, and greater canopy photon flux density at 30 cm above the soil surface. Lower total ANPP primarily resulted from reduced growth, biomass and flowering of subdominant warm-season C4 grasses while productivity of the dominant C4 grass Andropogon gerardii was relatively unresponsive. In general, vegetation responses to increased soil water content variability were at least equal to those caused by imposing a 30% reduction in rainfall quantity without altering the timing of rainfall inputs. Reduced ANPP most likely resulted from direct effects of soil moisture deficits on root activity, plant water status, and photosynthesis. Altered rainfall regimes are likely to be an important element of climate change scenarios in this grassland, and the nature of interactions with other climate change elements remains a significant challenge for predicting ecosystem responses to climate change.
430 citations
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01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this article, the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the global carbon cycle and their response to large-scale environmental change is discussed, with a focus on the effects of urban land use change on Biogeochemical cycles.
Abstract: Global change and the Earth System.- Global Ecology, Networks, and Research Synthesis.- Carbon and Water Cycles in the 21st Century.- CO2 Fertilization: When, Where, How Much?.- Ecosystem Responses to Warming and Interacting Global Change Factors.- Insights from Stable Isotopes on the Role of Terrestrial Ecosystems in the Global Carbon Cycle.- Effects of Urban Land-Use Change on Biogeochemical Cycles.- Saturation of the Terrestrial Carbon Sink.- Changing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning.- Functional Diversity - at the Crossroads between Ecosystem Functioning and Environmental Filters.- Linking Plant Invasions to Global Environmental Change.- Plant Biodiversity and Responses to Elevated Carbon Dioxide.- Predicting the Ecosystem Consequences of Biodiversity Loss: the Biomerge Framework.- Landscapes under Changing Disturbance Regimes.- Plant Species Migration as a Key Uncertainty in Predicting Future Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystems: Progress and Challenges.- Understanding Global Fire Dynamics by Classifying and Comparing Spatial Models of Vegetation and Fire.- Plant Functional Types: Are We Getting Any Closer to the Holy Grail?.- Spatial Nonlinearities: Cascading Effects in the Earth System.- Dynamic Global Vegetation Modeling: Quantifying Terrestrial Ecosystem Responses to Large-Scale Environmental Change.- Managing Ecosystem Services.- Wheat Production Systems and Global Climate Change.- Pests Under Global Change - Meeting Your Future Landlords?.- Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Potential in Agricultural Soils.- Carbon and Water Tradeoffs in Conversions to Forests and Shrublands.- Natural and Human Dimensions of Land Degradation in Drylands: Causes and Consequences.- Regions under Stress.- Southeast Asian Fire Regimes and Land Development Policy.- Global Change Impacts on Agroecosystems of Eastern China.- Terrestrial Ecosystems in Monsoon Asia: Scaling up from Shoot Module to Watershed.- Responses of High Latitude Ecosystems to Global Change: Potential Consequences for the Climate System.- Future Directions: the Global Land Project.- The Future Research Challenge: the Global Land Project.
430 citations
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TL;DR: It appears that the features and processes driving the engineering effects on distribution and activity of associated organisms operate differently for sesarmid and fiddler crabs, and the most obvious and well-documented difference appears to be associated with foraging.
430 citations
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TL;DR: How climatic change affects soil microbes and soil microbe-plant interactions directly and indirectly is explored, and what ramifications changes in these interactions may have on the composition and function of ecosystems are discussed.
Abstract: Global change is altering species distributions and thus interactions among organisms. Organisms live in concert with thousands of other species, some beneficial, some pathogenic, some which have little to no effect in complex communities. Since natural communities are composed of organisms with very different life history traits and dispersal ability it is unlikely they will all respond to climatic change in a similar way. Disjuncts in plant-pollinator and plant-herbivore interactions under global change have been relatively well described, but plant-soil microorganism and soil microbe-microbe relationships have received less attention. Since soil microorganisms regulate nutrient transformations, provide plants with nutrients, allow co-existence among neighbors, and control plant populations, changes in soil microorganism-plant interactions could have significant ramifications for plant community composition and ecosystem function. In this paper we explore how climatic change affects soil microbes and soil microbe-plant interactions directly and indirectly, discuss what we see as emerging and exciting questions and areas for future research, and discuss what ramifications changes in these interactions may have on the composition and function of ecosystems.
429 citations
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TL;DR: The productivity and nutrient cycling in examples of the major forest types in interior Alaska are considered and the ecosystem properties are examined from the standpoint of the control exertion.
Abstract: This paper considers the productivity and nutrient cycling in examples of the major forest types in interior Alaska. These ecosystem properties are examined from the standpoint of the control exert...
429 citations