Predicting the Response of Terrestrial Ecosystems to Elevated CO2 and Climate Change: A Modeling and Experimental Collaboration

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9524058 Reynolds Predicting the Response of Terrestrial Ecosystems to Elevated CO2 and Climate Change: A Modeling and Experimental Collaboration As a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2, the global climate of the Earth is predicted to change in the future more rapidly than it has over any comparable period of human history. This change is expected to have significant impacts on both natural and agricultural ecosystems. Society's ability to prepare for such changes depends in part on our success in developing predictive simulation models of ecosystem responses that have sufficient confidence and lead time. This study will test the strengths and weaknesses of a suite of existing ecosystem models by comparing their predictions to two on-going terrestrial field projects. One of these projects is a study of the effect of rising CO2 on carbon accumulation and nutrient cycling in a scrub-oak ecosystem in Florida and the other is a study of regional and seasonal variation in CO2 fluxes in northern Russia. Both of these field projects will, in turn, benefit from the development and application of these models to test hypotheses concerning the effect of elevated CO2 and climate on carbon budgets of terrestrial ecosystems. This research is an important "next step" in our efforts to build and apply models to develop a better understanding of the effects of elevated CO2 and climate change on terrestrial ecosystems. ??