The ocean plays an essential role in regulating Earth’s climate, influencing weather conditions, providing sustenance for large populations, moderating anthropogenic climate change, encompassing massive biodiversity, and sustaining the global economy. Human activities are changing the oceans, stressing ocean health, threatening the critical services the ocean provides to society, with significant consequences for human well-be...

Rationale To examine the acute effects of ayahuasca use and their relationship to sub-acute changes in affect and mindfulness in a non-clinical sample, addressing the need for a better understanding of ayahuasca’s immediate and short-term impacts as interest in its use grows. Objectives Using prospective ecological assessment, this study investigates how ayahuasca used at a 4-day retreat affects positive/negative affect and mi...

Enhancement of net primary production (NPP) in forests as atmospheric [CO 2 ] increases is likely limited by the availability of other growth resources. The Duke Free Air CO 2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment was located on a moderate‐fertility site in the southeastern US, in a loblolly pine ( Pinus taeda L.) plantation with broadleaved species growing mostly in mid‐canopy and understory. Duke FACE ran from 1994 to 2010 and combin...

Coral reefs are in global decline due to climate change and anthropogenic influences (Hughes et al., Conservation Biology , 27: 261–269, 2013). Near coastal cities or other densely populated areas, coral reefs face a range of additional challenges. While considerable progress has been made in understanding coral responses to acute individual stressors (Dominoni et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution , 4: 502–511, 2020), the impact...

Elevated atmospheric CO 2 (eCO 2 ) typically increases aboveground growth in both growth chamber and free‐air carbon enrichment (FACE) studies. Here we report on the impacts of eCO 2 and nitrogen amendment on coarse root biomass and net primary productivity (NPP) at the Duke FACE study, where half of the eight plots in a 30‐year‐old loblolly pine ( Pinus taeda , L.) plantation, including competing naturally regenerated broadle...

Reef-building corals live in symbiosis with the phototrophic dinoflagellate family Symbiodiniaceae, which comprises diverse genera such as Cladocopium and Durusdinium . Pachyseris speciosa , a widely distributed Indo-Pacific coral found in a variety of reef habitats, is known to be associated with these two Symbiodiniaceae genera, but little is known about the biogeographic variability of the endosymbiont communities across th...

Changes in evapotranspiration ( ET ) from terrestrial ecosystems affect their water yield ( WY ), with considerable ecological and economic consequences. Increases in surface runoff observed over the past century have been attributed to increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations resulting in reduced ET by terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we evaluate the water balance of a Pinus taeda (L.) forest with a broadleaf component that wa...

We evaluated the effect on soil CO 2 efflux ( F CO 2 ) of sudden changes in photosynthetic rates by altering CO 2 concentration in plots subjected to +200 ppmv for 15 years. Five‐day intervals of exposure to elevated CO 2 ( eCO 2 ) ranging 1.0–1.8 times ambient did not affect F CO 2 . F CO 2 did not decrease until 4 months after termination of the long‐term eCO 2 treatment, longer than the 10 days observed for decrease of F CO...

Fisheries provide nutrition and livelihoods for coastal populations, but many fisheries are fully or over‐exploited and we lack an approach for analysing which factors affect management tool performance. We conducted a literature review of 390 studies to assess how fisheries characteristics affected management tool performance across both small‐scale and large‐scale fisheries. We defined success as increased or maintained abun...

Soil CO 2 efflux ( F soil ) is the largest source of carbon from forests and reflects primary productivity as well as how carbon is allocated within forest ecosystems. Through early stages of stand development, both elevated [ CO 2 ] and availability of soil nitrogen (N; sum of mineralization, deposition, and fixation) have been shown to increase gross primary productivity, but the long‐term effects of these factors on F soil...

In recent years, increased awareness of the potential interactions between rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations ([ CO 2 ]) and temperature has illustrated the importance of multifactorial ecosystem manipulation experiments for validating Earth System models. To address the urgent need for increased understanding of responses in multifactorial experiments, this article synthesizes how ecosystem productivity and soil processes...

For herbaceous species, elevated CO 2 often increases seed production but usually leads to decreased seed quality. However, the effects of increased atmospheric CO 2 on tree fecundity remain uncertain, despite the importance of reproduction to the composition of future forests. We determined how seed quantity and quality differed for pine trees grown for 12 years in ambient and elevated (ambient+200 μL L −1 ) CO 2 , at the Duk...

Vegetation plays a central role in controlling terrestrial carbon (C) exchange, but quantifying its impacts on C cycling on time scales of ecological succession is hindered by a lack of long‐term observations. The net ecosystem exchange of carbon (NEE) was measured for several years in adjacent ecosystems that represent distinct phases of ecological succession in the southeastern USA. The experiment was designed to isolate the...

Soil fungi couple plant and ecosystem resource demands to pools of soil resources. Research on these organisms is needed to predict how rising atmospheric CO 2 will influence forest ecosystem processes and soil carbon (C) sequestration potential. We examined the influence of free‐air‐CO 2 ‐enrichment (FACE) on mycorrhizal and extraradical rhizomorph dynamics over a 5‐year period in a loblolly pine forest using minirhizotrons....

Increased canopy leaf area ( L ) may lead to higher forest productivity and alter processes such as species dynamics and ecosystem mass and energy fluxes. Few CO 2 enrichment studies have been conducted in closed canopy forests and none have shown a sustained enhancement of L . We reconstructed 8 years (1996–2003) of L at Duke's Free Air CO 2 Enrichment experiment to determine the effects of elevated atmospheric CO 2 concentra...

We combined Eddy‐covariance measurements with a linear perturbation analysis to isolate the relative contribution of physical and biological drivers on evapotranspiration (ET) in three ecosystems representing two end‐members and an intermediate stage of a successional gradient in the southeastern US (SE). The study ecosystems, an abandoned agricultural field [old field (OF)], an early successional planted pine forest (PP), and...

We compared four existing process‐based stand‐level models of varying complexity (physiological principles in predicting growth, photosynthesis and evapotranspiration, biogeochemical cycles, and stand to ecosystem carbon and evapotranspiration simulator) and a new nested model with 4 years of eddy‐covariance‐measured water vapor ( LE ) and CO 2 ( Fc ) fluxes at a maturing loblolly pine forest. The nested model resolves the ‘fa...

Above forest canopies, eddy covariance (EC) measurements of mass (CO 2 , H 2 O vapor) and energy exchange, assumed to represent ecosystem fluxes, are commonly made at one point in the roughness sublayer (RSL). A spatial variability experiment, in which EC measurements were made from six towers within the RSL in a uniform pine plantation, quantified large and dynamic spatial variation in fluxes. The spatial coefficient of varia...