$100 Million, 10-year Research Plan to Study How Tropical Forests Respond to Climate Change
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Category: ResearchType: News
Source: PNNL
Date: Wednesday, April 1st, 2015
Multi-institutional effort led by Berkeley Lab, called NGEE-Tropics, will couple field research with the development of a new ecosystem model
April 01, 2015 
RICHLAND, Wash. - Tropical forests store 50 percent of carbon found on land in Earth's carbon budget. Forests store this carbon out of the atmosphere, where it would otherwise exist in the form of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas on the rise due to fossil fuel burning. Climate and earth systems researchers aren't sure how much carbon the forests will continue to store in a warmer world. To enhance that knowledge, today Berkeley Lab announced a $100 million, 10-year plan collecting data in and improving climate models of tropical forests, funded by the D.O.E.'s Office of Science.
An international team is involved in the effort, which is called the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics. The NGEE team includes DOE's Pacific Northwest National Lab researchers among a multitude of national labs, government agencies, and non-profits. The plan will begin with pilot studies in Manaus, Panama, and Puerto Rico.
PNNL's Ruby Leung will lead a team to understand and model how surface and subsurface water varies geographically and over time, and how that variability influences water and nutrients accessible to plants in a changing climate. The PNNL team will also participate in other research to develop a way to represent the dynamics of tropical forests in models, and to enhance understanding and modeling of vegetation when it's disturbed by nature and humans and then recovers. PNNL will gain $2.2 million over the 1st 3 years.
Read the news release at Berkeley Lab.
Tags: Energy, Environment, Fundamental Science, Emissions, Climate Science, Atmospheric Science, Meteorology, Biology
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Lab address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,300 staff and has an yearly budget of in excess of $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. As the single biggest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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