SGER: Rapid Research Repsonse to Determine the Impact of a Natural, Hot Wildfire at the Sky Oaks Biological Field Station on the Horizontal and Vertical Fluxes of Carbon

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In this Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER), San Diego State University's (SDSU) Global Change Research Group under the direction of Dr. Walter Oechel, and in conjunction with collaborators from SDSU and other universities, will explore the ecosystem effects of the wildfire that ravaged the SDSU Sky Oaks Biological Field Station on July 16, 2003. The fire destroyed several decades' worth of long-term global change, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, and ecophysiological research, and burned the chaparral stands where long-term carbon dioxide flux studies had been established. While insurance funds have been instrumental in beginning to replace the equipment that was lost, the research has still been drastically affected by the destruction of site vegetation. The two eddy flux towers that were previously on the site have been replaced, but to maintain a "control" tower in an unburned area of the field station's mature (102-year-old) chaparral, one of the tower sites had to be relocated. This SGER grant will allow SDSU to re-establish a tower at the previous "old stand" site that was burned, and maintain site measurement consistency. Together, the three eddy flux towers will provide information on net carbon dioxide exchange, water vapor, and energy flux changes that result from system recovery following a fire. Specific objectives of this SGER grant are to quantify the effects of a natural summer wildfire (under hot, dry, windy, Santa Ana conditions) on ecosystem function, reestablishment, and erosion and determine the impacts of fire on lateral and downhill carbon transport and carbon fate. The grant was sought to quickly establish new measurements and reestablish previously existing research following the wildfire. The Sky Oaks site is used by multiple researchers and the equipment and support requested here will benefit Dr. David Lipson (SDSU), Dr. George Vourlitis (California State University San Marcos), and Dr. John Gamon (California State University Los Angeles), as well as collaborators in Mexico at Centro de Investigaciones Biologicas del Noroeste (CIBNOR) and Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada (CICESE). As part of this study, an erosion study will be established to assess the lateral transport of carbon and nitrogen via erosion. Physical measurements of erosional processes will be taken in conjunction with chamber-based measurements of net ecosystem flux, soil respiration, and photosynthetic activity. These measurements will help us understand the effect of fire on the patterns of and controls on component fluxes and their contributions to ecosystem fluxes as measured by eddy covariance towers. Ultimately this knowledge will help us better understand carbon balance and global change.