Soil respiration rates ( R s ) were measured in New Zealand dairy grassland. Both season and soil type significantly affected R s . Soil temperature and soil type dominated overall R s . Soil respiration ( R s ), the CO 2 release from root respiration and microbial metabolism, affects global soil carbon storage and cycling. Only few studies have looked at R s in the southern hemisphere, especially regarding the interaction bet...

A recent bathymetric survey of Lake Constance revealed ~ 170 mounds composed of loosely deposited rocks aligned in a ~ 10-km long chain along the southern Swiss shoreline in a water depth of 3–5 m. The mounds are 10–30 m in diameter and up to 1.5 m high. Over their entire length of occurrence, the mounds are estimated to be composed of ~ 60 million individual boulders, with a total weight of ~ 78,000 t. A ground penetrating ra...

Responses of the terrestrial biosphere to rapidly changing environmental conditions are a major source of uncertainty in climate projections. In an effort to reduce this uncertainty, a wide range of global change experiments have been conducted that mimic future conditions in terrestrial ecosystems, manipulating CO 2 , temperature, and nutrient and water availability. Syntheses of results across experiments provide a more gene...

The field of movement ecology has rapidly grown during the last decade, with important advancements in tracking devices and analytical tools that have provided unprecedented insights into where, when, and why species move across a landscape. Although there has been an increasing emphasis on making animal movement data publicly available, there has also been a conspicuous dearth in the availability of such data on large carnivo...

Accurate estimates of biomass pools and their nutrient content are key for assessing the potential of vegetation to mitigate anthropogenic carbon emissions. In this study, we used the harvest method to estimate above‐ and below‐ground biomass (AGB and BGB) and nutrient content of the New Zealand mangrove Avicennia marina var . australasica at Mangawhai Harbour, northern New Zealand. AGB of A. marina was estimated at 5.7 ± 1.79...

Aim Despite increasing evidence for plant growth often being limited by sink (meristem) activity rather than source (photosynthesis) activity, all currently available dynamic global vegetation models ( DGVMs ) simulate plant growth via source‐limited processes. For a given climatic region, this may lead to an overestimation of carbon stock per unit surface area, particularly if a model fails to correctly predict forest cover....

Limiting the increase in global average temperature to 2 °C is the objective of international efforts aimed at avoiding dangerous climate impacts. However, the regional response of terrestrial ecosystems and the services that they provide under such a scenario are largely unknown. We focus on mountain forests in the E uropean A lps and evaluate how a range of ecosystem services ( ES ) are projected to be impacted in a 2 °C war...

We review observational, experimental, and model results on how plants respond to extreme climatic conditions induced by changing climatic variability. Distinguishing between impacts of changing mean climatic conditions and changing climatic variability on terrestrial ecosystems is generally underrated in current studies. The goals of our review are thus (1) to identify plant processes that are vulnerable to changes in the var...

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...

Climatic changes, including altered precipitation regimes, will affect key ecosystem processes, such as plant productivity and biodiversity for many terrestrial ecosystems. Past and ongoing precipitation experiments have been conducted to quantify these potential changes. An analysis of these experiments indicates that they have provided important information on how water regulates ecosystem processes. However, they do not ade...

Reduced stomatal conductance under elevated CO 2 results in increased soil moisture, provided all other factors remain constant. Whether this results in increased runoff critically depends on the interaction of rainfall patterns, soil water storage capacity and plant responses. To test the sensitivity of runoff to these parameters under elevated CO 2 , we combine transpiration and soil moisture data from the Swiss Canopy Crane...

Stomatal conductance of plants exposed to elevated CO 2 is often reduced. Whether this leads to water savings in tall forest‐trees under future CO 2 concentrations is largely unknown but could have significant implications for climate and hydrology. We used three different sets of measurements (sap flow, soil moisture and canopy temperature) to quantify potential water savings under elevated CO 2 in a ca. 35 m tall, ca. 100 ye...