*Correspondence: Richard T. Sayre, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Consortium, 100 Entrada Dr, Los Alamos, NM 87544, USA e-mail: rsayre@newmexico consortium.org One of the most environmentally sustainable ways to produce high-energy density (oils) feed stocks for the production of liquid transportation fuels is from biomass. Photosynthetic carbon capture combined with biomass combust...

Efforts to estimate plant productivity using satellite data can be frustrated by the presence of cloud cover. We developed a new method to overcome this problem, focussing on the high-arctic archipelago of Svalbard where extensive cloud cover during the growing season can prevent plant productivity from being estimated over large areas. We used a field-based time-series (2000−2009) of live abov...

How long would it take for forests to recover their original productivity following continuous intensive management if they are left untouched? This issue was explored using the model FORECAST, calibrated and validated for coastal Douglas-fir stands on Vancouver Island (western Canada). Three types of forest management (production of timber, pulp, and biomass) were simulated, being different in...

background: this study quantified the effect of four popular culture media in a biodiesel production study on the qualitative and quantitative lipid content, dry biomass, and lipid productivity of nannochloropsis oculata. methods: culture of microalgae was done separately in walne, f/2, sato, and tmrl media. in the logarithmic and stationary growth phases, biomass production and lipid accumulat...

We performed whole-lake manipulations of fish populations to test the hypothesis that higher trophic levels regulate zooplankton and phytoplankton community structure, biomass, and primary productivity. The study involved three lakes and spanned 2 yr. Results demonstrated hierarchical control of primary production by abiotic factors and a trophic cascade involving fish predation. In Paul Lake, ...

Vert-pre et al. (1) identified regimes in productivity for marine fish stocks, with the goal of urging management to develop strategies that are robust to regime-like behavior. Identification of drivers of productivity [i.e., is the stock driven by spawning biomass (the abundance hypothesis in Vert-pre et al.’s analysis in ref. 1) or environment (the regimes, random, and mixed hypotheses)?] is ...

Size-fractionated phytoplankton biomass, primary productivity, photosynthetic dissolved organic carbon (PDOC), vertical distribution of pico-, nano-, and microphytoplankton, and the relationship with bacteria were studied in the Taiwan Strait during 2 cruises conducted in August 1994 and February-March 1995. Nanophytoplankton (3 to 20 pm) dominated the community in the northern Taiwan Strait (N...

Studies examining the relationship between species richness and the productivity of ecological communities have taken one of two opposite viewpoints, viewing either productivity as a primary driver of richness or richness as a driver of productivity. Recently, verbal and graphical hypotheses have been proposed that attempt to merge these perspectives by clarifying the causal pathways that link ...

Plant species richness of permanent grasslands has often been found to be significantly associated with productivity. Concentrations of nutrients in biomass can give further insight into these productivity-plant species richness relationships, e.g. by reflecting land use or soil characteristics. However, the consistency of such relationships across different regions has rarely been taken into a...

Plant species richness of permanent grasslands has often been found to be significantly associated with productivity. Concentrations of nutrients in biomass can give further insight into these productivity-plant species richness relationships, e.g. by reflecting land use or soil characteristics. However, the consistency of such relationships across different regions has rarely been taken into a...