DOE-Supported Scientist Gives Keynote Address at Nordic Conference

Summary

Dr. Beverly Law, Science Chair of the AmeriFlux Network, a network providing continuous observations of ecosystem-level exchanges of CO₂, water, energy, and momentum since 1996, gave the opening address at an international conference on greenhouse gases and aerosols held by the Nordic Centres of Excellence in Iceland. In her talk, “Interactions between Northern Ecosystems and Climate,” Dr. Law provided an overview of observations and modeling for determining climate feedbacks and discussed protocols for evaluating climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. The unique, decade-long, AmeriFlux datasets are increasingly important for (1) evaluating coupled climate-carbon models; (2) improving hydrologic representations of the carbon/water coupling in the models; (3) improving continental-scale studies of carbon sources and sinks and their relation to atmospheric CO₂; and (4) systematically evaluating interannual variation in ecosystem responses to climate and switching of threshold or resilient responses of ecosystems, improving representation of lag responses, and detecting impacts of consecutive years of anomalous climate. Under Dr. Law’s scientific leadership, the AmeriFlux Network continues to provide biological, flux, and meteorological data needed for climate and ecosystem model evaluation, and for providing direct observations of the association of climate anomalies and effects on ecosystems.