[Enviro-lunch] Enviro-lunch seminar (9/28): Benjamin Sulman, "Water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen: Understanding plant and soil responses to global change"

[Lixia Jin]

[cid:D1A45DF6-C501-454F-8C49-01C548F87EE6 at ucmerced.edu]
Dear all,
Please join us next Thursday for our speaker, Benjamin Sulman, research scholar from Princeton University.

Benjamin Sulman
Princeton University
[cid:DAA7B9D2-720E-4AC2-BADC-F7691E6A4F14 at ucmerced.edu]
Water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen: Understanding plant and soil responses to global change


Abstract: Human alterations to the earth system through carbon dioxide emissions are driving wide-reaching changes in climate and carbon cycling, including warming temperatures, more frequent severe droughts, and more rapid plant growth driven by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. I will present results focused on measuring and modeling two important aspects of these global changes:

Drought: Droughts cause hydrological stress in plants in two ways: Drying soils reduce water available for roots to take up, while rapid evaporation rates due to hot temperatures and dry air cause stress to plant leaves. Using more than ten years of eddy covariance flux measurements, we disentangled the impacts of soil drying and atmospheric demand for evaporation on plant responses to drought. These measurements demonstrated that the acceleration of evaporation rates driven by warming temperatures and drying air can impact ecosystem fluxes as much as declines in soil water availability, and suggest that future warming will intensify drought impacts on plant growth.

CO2 fertilization and nitrogen: Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow, and also require nitrogen to build their tissues. Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations can accelerate plant growth, but it is uncertain how much nitrogen availability will limit how much carbon plants can remove from the atmosphere in the future. We developed a new global-scale ecosystem model that includes multiple strategies that plants can use to acquire nitrogen, including partnering with fungi to extract more nitrogen from organic materials by accelerating their decay and converting atmospheric nitrogen into growth-supporting forms. Simulations using the new model showed that changes in nitrogen acquisition strategies could allow ecosystems to absorb more carbon than previous models have projected.



Biography: Benjamin Sulman is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University, working with the land model group at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), a climate modeling center funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He has previously conducted research using ecosystem models and eddy covariance ecosystem flux measurements at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Indiana University.

When: Sep. 28st, Thursday, 12pm – 1pm
Where: SE2-302

Coffee will be provided and please bring your own mugs.
We look forward to seeing you,

Organizers for 2017-18: Nate Bogie and Lixia Jin
Faculty coordinator: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
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