Terrestrial ecosystems currently sequester about one third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions each year, an important ecosystem service that dampens climate change. The future fate of this net uptake of CO2 by land based ecosystems is highly uncertain.Most ecosystemmodels used to predict the future terrestrial carbon cycle share a common architecture, whereby carbon that enters the system as net pr...

Papers published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions are under open-access review for the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Abstract Mediterranean ecosystems are commonly heterogeneous savanna-like ecosystems, with contrasting plant functional types (PFTs, e.g., grass and woody vegetation) competing for the water use. Mediterranean ecosystems are also commonly character...

This discussion paper is/has been under review for the journal Earth System Dynamics (ESD). Please refer to the corresponding final paper in ESD if available. Abstract The role of extra-tropical vegetation on the large-scale tropical circulation is examined in the version 3 Hadley Centre Climate Model (HadCM3). Alternative representations of present day vegetation from observations and a dynami...

We present an analysis of the impacts of weather change and large-scale vegetation conservation programs on the vegetation dynamics in China’s Loess Plateau from 2000 through 2009. We employed a multiple lines of evidence approach in which multi-scale data were used. We employed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MO...

Frequent hurricane landfalls along the northern Gulf of Mexico, in addition to causing immediate damage to vegetation, also have long term effects on coastal ecosystem structure and function. This study investigated the utility of using time series enhanced vegetation index (EVI) imagery composited in MODIS product MOD13Q1 for assessing hurricane damage to vegetation and its recovery. Vegetatio...