SURFACE-ATMOSPHERE TRACE GAS AND ENERGY EXCHANGE IN FORESTED AND AGRICULTURAL ECOSYSTEMS

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: HATCH
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1006074
• Project Start Date: Jul 1, 2015
• Project End Date: Jun 30, 2020
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
BOZEMAN,MT 59717

Performing Department
Land Resources & Environmental Sciences

Non Technical Summary
The central objectiveof this proposal is to improve understanding of the transport of water from the terrestrial surface to the atmosphere (evapotranspiration, ET) given that transpiration (T, water that enters the atmosphere via plant stomata) responds to global changes and environmental drivers in ways that are both similar to and different from evaporation (E). I will improve understanding surface-water exchange across a winter wheat - spring wheat - fallow rotation by improving the representation of plant physiology in a computer algorithm that uses atmospheric transport theory and measurements of turbulence and atmospheric gas concentrations to estimate T and E. Further, I will use observations of the surface-atmosphere transport of water and heat collected by my lab plus other publically-available observations from northeastern Montana and Alberta to model regional climate in order to determine which land management strategies are consistent with the observed summer cooling that has resulted from the widespread abandonment of summerfallow across the Canadian Prairies.

Animal Health Component

20%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

80%

Applied

20%

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
102	0199	1070	100%

Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships;

Subject Of Investigation
0199 - Soil and land, general;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology;

Keywords

albedo

biometeorology

ecological climatology

evapotranspiration

fallow

momentum flux

net ecosystem carbon exchange

wheat

Goals / Objectives
The primary objective of this proposal is to test the ability of a biologically-motivated hypothesis, that canopy conductance to carbon uptake and water loss (and thereby T) exhibits behavior consistent with optimality theory, to improve estimates of T and E in vegetated ecosystems. By combining a biological theory based on an evolutionary perspective with surface-atmosphere exchange measurements from Montana ecosystems, parsimonious models of T, E, and ET can be created. Further, by measuring and modeling the surface-atmosphere flux of water under different agricultural management scenarios, I can provide surface boundary conditions for the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) to test if additional summerfallow reduction or alternate land management strategies will further cool the Prairie Provinces and potentially areas of Montana during summer. The proposed project is intended to be highly relevant to multiple stakeholders in the state of Montana and for both the U.S. and Canada. Results are intended to improve resource management and planning across multiple disciplines including forestry, water resource management, and range management. The proposed project overlaps with the MAES goals to:Provide leadership in developing ambitious, competitive and imaginative research activities that create new discoveries, positively impact undergraduate and graduate learning and gain national and international recognition; andDisseminate new research discoveries and deliver outreach programs that serve Montana in a global economic environment.Findings will be disseminated to stakeholders through online media. Relevant data analysis techniques will be taught in ENSC 465/565 'Environmental Biophysics', which is additionally available through the online MS offered by LRES. It will be ensured that all publications arising from the proposed project will be available free of charge to the public.

Project Methods
Despite the myriad issues plaguing transpiration (T) and evaporation (E) measurements, a robust, theoretically sound approach for partitioning evapotranspiration (ET) into T and E exists using the observations of turbulence that are used to create the half-hourly measurements of ET from the eddy covariance system. Scanlon and Kustas (2010)[see also Scanlon and Sahu (2008)] noted that atmospheric eddies transporting mass away from the surface with higher water vapor concentrations and lower CO2 concentrations than average during daytime periods must be due to plant uptake of CO2 and release of water through the stomata, i.e. T. In contrast, atmospheric eddies with higher water vapor concentrations and higher CO2 concentrations than average must arise from ecosystem respiration and E. Expressions for T and E can subsequently be derived following the expectations of Monin-Obukhov similarity theory. Scanlon and Kustas (2010)demonstrated that T and E partitioned from high frequency (10 Hz) eddy covariance measurements using this approach agree with expectations in a maize field in Maryland, USA. Namely, the T/ET ratio increased from ca. 5% before maize development to ca. 75% at maturity with water drawdown from deeper layers of the soil moisture profile consistent with T rather than E as the growing season progressed (Scanlon and Kustas 2012). The approach favors systems that exhibit a single water use efficiency (WUE); therefore observations from agricultural ecosystems will be the focus of the present project. The approach of Scanlon and Kustas (2010)offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore the response of T and E to climate variability across different vegetation types, but has only been tested at a single agricultural field in the U.S. to date. The algorithm does not often converge to a solution due in part to the crude representation of water use efficiency, which is an end member of the relationships between high frequency departures of CO2 and H2O concentrations required to partition T and E. This proposal seeks to address this discrepancy using semi-mechanistic models and theoretical expectations of stomatal behavior. In brief, Scanlon and Kustas (2010)applies reasonable assumptions from Monin-Obukhov similarity theory to estimate all variables related to canopy water use efficiency except the mesophyll internal CO2 concentration, ci. Probably the most commonly-used model to close a system of equations that requires ci is known as the 'Ball-Berry' model (Collatz et al. 1991), which can be writtenci = ca - cam-1RH-1 (2)where ca is atmospheric CO2 concentration, RH is relative humidity, and m is an empirical parameter. Leuning (1995)noted that water vapor moves in response to vapor pressure deficit D rather than RH itself, and formulated a closure model of the formci = ca - (ca­caG ci-1)mL-1fL(D)-1 (3)where G is the leaf CO2 compensation point, mL is an empirical parameter, and fL(D)=(1-D/D0)-1 where D0 is a parameter that describes stomatal sensitivity to D.Katul et al. (2010)used optimality theory to derive an expression for ci:ci = ca - (axD)1/2 (4)where a is the difference in the diffusivity of water vapor and carbon dioxide (= 1.6) and x is a species-specific cost parameter that amounts to a Lagrange multiplier that is bounded by 0 and (ca - G)a-1D-1. If stomata exhibit optimal behavior, x represents the marginal water use efficiency.These three models represent a range of complexity from semi-mechanistic (Ball-Berry) to the model derived using optimality theory (Katul et al., 2010). I will test their impacts on the outputs and convergence of the Scanlon and Kustas (2010)algorithm using observations from winter wheat and spring wheat fields, as well as a fallow field in which ET is dominated by E. In a related project funded by the Humboldt Foundation of Germany, T and E estimates from the revised Scanlon and Kustas (2010) approach will be tested against estimates derived using isotopic and Inverse Lagrangian techniques from an intensive campaign on a grass ecosystem near Vienna (Denmead et al. 2013).Existing observations of surface energy partitioning to sensible heat and ET from a wheat rotation chronosequence in the Judith Basin, MT, coupled with publicly-available eddy covariance observations in a grassland near Fort Peck, MT and agricultural ecosystems near Lethbridge, AB make it possible to prescribe surface boundary conditions for regional atmospheric models that can be used to understand the consequences of land management and fallow avoidance in agricultural ecosystems of the northern Great Plains. Specifically, I plan to parameterize the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) for a domain that includes northeastern MT and the Prairie Provinces with surface boundary conditions that represent historical summerfalow area, present conditions (Long et al. 2014), replacement of summerfallow with cover crops, and replacement of summer fallow with native vegetation. RAMS will be used to quantify if the findings of Betts et al. (2013a; 2013b)and Gameda et al. (2007)- that a widespread summer cooling has occurred due to summerfallow avoidance - are likely to continue. The scenarios will be designed to investigate if alternate management strategies and/or prairie restoration will have similar or greater benefits to regional climate.Briefly, RAMS is a modeling framework rather than a model in and of itself; at its core is the combination of two hydrostatic mesoscale models and a hydrostatic cloud model. As such it has been applied to a variety scales of atmospheric variability from the simulation of large eddies to mesoscale convective systems (for example via BRAMS, the Brazilian Regional Atmospheric Modeling System). RAMS has been coupled to the Ecosystem Demography model to quantify ecosystem-atmosphere feedbacks across forested ecosystems (Medvigy et al. 2005; Medvigy et al. 2009; Medvigy et al. 2010; Medvigy and Moorcroft 2012), although land cover will be prescribed via agricultural and conservation scenarios rather than modeled here. The goal of the RAMS model is to quantify the land management scenarios that result in the climate benefit of regional cooling in an era of net global warming.An important part of linking field-scale observations with regional climatological predictions is the parameterization and validation of a crop and grassland model that can be used as a surface boundary condition for RAMS. Recent wheat model intercomparisons have been undertaken (Martre et al. 2014)following the observation that wheat productivity has been decreasing across many wheat growing areas under heat stresses attributable to global changes (Asseng et al. 2013). Results have found that model means tend to be better than individual models at predicting wheat crop development, but running more than 10 models for improved crop forecasting is impractical and may not link to the project objectives of quantifying bioclimatological responses to agricultural management. I propose to use the SPA/SPAc model (Sus et al. 2010), which has been successfully linked to remotely sensed observations (Sus et al. 2013)and models for regional climatology (Smallman et al. 2013). By combining field-scale observations with models that can be run at regional scales and regional scale climate models, I can simulate the consequences of alternate cropping systems and conservation on both surface-atmosphere exchange and regional climate dynamics.

Progress 07/01/15 to 06/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? PD left institution

Publications

Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of the project is researchers and students in academic science, agricultural producers, natural resource managers including water resource managers, and agricultural extension agents. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has contributed to the graduate research of Adam Cook and Gabriel Bromley, the postdoctoral research of Dr. Tobias Gerken, and the undergraduate reserach of Bill Vandenberg. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project research has contributed to multiple peer-reviewed publications (of which 5 have cited the project) in 2018. I have also presented research to grassland management and conservation organizations, water resource professionals, and academic audiences including six conference presentation that cited the present project in 2018. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue reserach on the interaction between land management and regional climate in the U.S. Northern Plains using regional climate models and climate data analyses. We will shortly submit a grant proposal to NSF that seeks to improve mechanistic understanding of rapid-onset 'flash' droughts with important implications to agriculture and water resource managment. I plan on submitting a manuscript on evaporation and transpiration partitioning that uses field observations supported by the present project within the 2018 calendar year or shortly after.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Project work has focused on understanding the role of increased transpiration in the Northern Plains - largely through decreases in summer fallow area - on convective precipitation and regional climate. To this end, we have published manuscripts describing how increases in evapotranspiration from the land surface have increased the likelihood of convective precipitation (Gerken et al., 2008, Journal of Hydrometeorology) and how this convective likelihood framework may be used to forecast drought events including the 'flash' drought of 2017 (Gerken et al., 2018, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences). I have prepared an advanced draft of a manuscript on evaporation and transpiration partitioning and have sent it to coauthors, and we have also successfully applied the weather reserach and forecasting (WRF) model in convection-permitting 4 km runs to the Northern Plains. Publications from these studies and from a synthesis of recent climate trends is forthcoming. Research has also been integrated into online and in-personversions of ENSC/LRES 465/565 'Environmental Biophysics'.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Bromley G, Stoy PC (2018) Surface moistening trends in the northern North American Great Plains increase the likelihood of convective initiation. Journal of Hydrometeorology 19: 227-244. DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-17-0117.1.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Oliphant AJ, Stoy PC (2018) An evaluation of semi-empirical models for partitioning photosynthetically active radiation into diffuse and direct beam components. Journal of Geophysical Research 123. DOI:10.1002/2017JG004370.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Peitzsh E, Wood D, Rottinghaus D, Wohlfahrt G, Goulden M, Ward H (2018) On the exchange of sensible and latent heat between the atmosphere and melting snow. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 252: 167-174. DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.01.028.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Long J, Gerken T, Stoy PC (2018) Tornado seasonality in the southeastern United States. Weather and Climate Extremes 20: 81-91. DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2018.03.002.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kleindl WJ, Stoy PC, Binford M, Desai A, Dietze MC, Schultz C, Starr G, Staudhammer C, Wood DJA (2018) Toward a socioecological theory of forest macrosystems. Forests 9(4), 200. DOI: 0.3390/f9040200.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Wei D, Fuentes JD, Gerken T, Chamecki M, Trowbridge AM, Stoy PC, Katul GG, Fisch G, Acevedo O, Manzi A, von Randow C, Nascimento dos Santos RM (2018) Vegetation phenology contributes to seasonal patterns of isoprene above a rainforest in central Amazonia. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 256-257: 391-406. DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.03.024.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Tang ACI, Stoy PC, Hirata R, Musin KK, Aeries EB, Wenceslaus J, Melling L (2018) Eddy covariance measurements of methane flux at a tropical peat forest in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Geophysical Research Letters 45: 4390-4399. DOI: 10.1029/2017GL076457.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Williams S, Bromley GT, Ruddell BL, Stoy PC (2018) Convective suppression before and during the United States Northern Great Plains flash drought of 2017. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 22: 41554163. DOI: 10.5194/hess-2018-211.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Fu Z, Gerken T, Bromley G, Ara�jo A, Bonal D, Burban B, Ficklin D, Fuentes JD, Goulden M, Hirano T, Kosugi Y, Liddell M, Nicolini G, Niu S, Roupsard O, Stefani P, Mi C, Tofte Z, Xiao J, Valentini R, Wolf S, Stoy PC (2018) Net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange in tropical rainforests: Sensitivity to environmental drivers and flux measurement methodology. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 263: 292-307. DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.09.001.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC (2018) Deforestation intensifies hot days. Nature Climate Change. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-01536.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Ruddell BL, Fuentes JD, Ara�jo A, Brunsell NA, Maia J, Manzi A, Mercer J, Nascimento dos Santos R, von Randow C, Stoy PC (2018) Investigating the mechanisms responsible for the lack of eddy covariance energy balance closure in a central Amazonian tropical rainforest. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 255: 92-103, DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.03.023.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Ahmed S, Jarchow M, Rashford B, Swanson D, Albeke S, Bromley G, Brookshire ENJ, Dixon M, Haggerty J, Miller P, Peyton B, Royem A, Spangler L, Straub C, Poulter B (2018) Opportunities and tradeoffs among BECCS and the food, water, energy, biodiversity, and social systems nexus at regional scales. Bioscience 68: 100-111, DOI: 10.1093/biosci/bix145.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Oliphant AJ, Stoy PC (2018) An Evaluation of Semi-Empirical Models for Partitioning Photosynthetically Active Radiation into Diffuse and Direct Beam Components. 33nd Conference on Agriculture and Forest Meteorology. American Meteorological Society. Boise, ID. May 2018.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Bromley G, Ruddell B, Stoy PC (2018) An Evaluation of Semi-Empirical Models for Investigating Land-Atmosphere Coupling and Convective Triggering in the North American Northern Great Plains. 33nd Conference on Agriculture and Forest Meteorology. American Meteorological Society. Boise, ID. May 2018.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Ahmed S, Haggerty J, Jarchow M, Rashford B, Swanson D, Poulter B (2018) RII Track-2 FEC: Sustainable socio-economic, ecological, and technological scenarios for achieving global climate stabilization through negative CO2 emission policies. NSF INFEWS PI Workshop. Alexandria, VA. May 2018.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Ahmed S, Haggerty J, Jarchow M, Rashford B, Swanson D, Poulter B (2018) Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage at regional scales: interactions with the food-energy-water nexus, regional climate & biodiversity conservation. Integrated Carbon Observing System (ICOS) Science Conference. Prague. September 2018.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC (2018) The role of land management in creating cooler and wetter conditions during May and June across the northern North American Great Plains. Montana Section of the American Water Resources Association Conference, West Yellowstone, MT. October 2018.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC (2018) Convective suppression before and during the flash drought of 2017. Montana Section of the American Water Resources Association Conference, West Yellowstone, MT. October 2018.

Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of the project is researchers and students in academic science, agricultural producers, natural resource managers including water resource managers, and agricultural extension agents. Changes/Problems:Project graduate student Gabriel Bromley is interested in regional climatology and felt that the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is better suited to his course of study than RAMS given the large WRF research community and its potential to lead to career opportunities after graduate resaerch. This change resulted in no change in project scope. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project itself has directly contributed to the graduate research of Mallory Morgan, Adam Cook, and Gabriel Bromley and the postdoctoral research of Dr. Tobias Gerken, as well as an undergraduate research opportunity for Bill Vandenberg and support for a part-time project technician, Dr. James Irvine. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project research has resulted in four publications so far in 2017 (with two manuscripts in press and likely to be published in 2018), and five conference presentations including one by postdoctoral research associate Dr. Tobias Gerken. We have also created materials with colleagues relevant to bioenergy development in the U.S. Northern Great Plains as detailed at: http://waferx.montana.edu/. I was also invited to give a presentation to a meeting of the USDA Northern Plains Climate Hub and shared research results relevant to the hydrometeorology of the U.S. Northern Great Plains. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We currently have 8 manuscripts in review (soon to be 11) and I anticipate that these will be published in 2018. We will continue our research focus on the interaction between convective precipitation and land management in the U.S. Northern Plains using regional climate models. If our proposed research to NASA is successful, we anticipate extensive work on applying optimality theory to generate evaporation and transpiration estimates from eddy covariance flux networks in real time to inform global estimates of these fluxes from the forthcoming ECOSTRESS mission.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We used the central objective of the project, that canopy conductance to carbon uptake and water loss (and thereby transpiration, T) exhibits behavior consistent with optimality theory, to write a competitive grant to NASA to validate land surface evaporation and transpiration estimates from the forthcoming ECOSTRESS misssion using multiple approaches for estimating T and evaporation (E) using eddy covariance observations. With project graduate student Gabriel Bromley we are initiating runs using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), a mesoscale meteorological model like RAMS, to ascertain the importance of land management on the climate system of the U.S. Northern Great Plains. We have manuscripts forthcoming in the Journal of Hydrometeorology that describe the role of the land surface to convective precipitation events in northeastern Montana (Gerken et al., in print), and multiple conference presentations have been given that detail changes in the hydrometeorology in the U.S. Northern Great Plains. We are in the advanced stages of preparation of a manuscript that describes how the atmosphere was anomalously dry with little likelihood of convective precipitatoin in early (March-May) 2017, well before the devastating 'flash' drought that occured across much of the Northern Plains. We anticipate that these findings will be highly useful for future drought forecasting. Research has also been integrated into online and in-person versions of ENSC/LRES 465/565 'Environmental Biophysics'

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Fu Z, Dong J, Zhou Y, Stoy PC, Niu S (2017) Long term trend and interannual variability of land carbon uptakethe attribution and processes. Environmental Research Letters 12: 014018, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5685.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Gerken T, Ruddell BL, Fuentes JD, Ara�jo A, Brunsell NA, Maia J, Manzi A, Mercer J, Nascimento dos Santos R, von Randow C, Stoy PC (2017) Investigating the mechanisms responsible for the lack of eddy covariance energy balance closure in a central Amazonian tropical rainforest. Submitted to Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.03.023.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Fu Z, Niu S, Luo Y, Niu S, Luo Y, Chen J, Montagnani L, Wohlfahrt G, Rahman AF, Rambal S, Bernhofer C, Shirkey G (2017) Climate controls over the net carbon uptake period and amplitude of net ecosystem production in temperate and boreal ecosystems. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 243: 9-18, DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.05.009.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Niu S, Fu Z, Luo Y, Stoy PC, Keenan TF, Poulter B, Piao S, Zhou X, Zheng H, Han J, Wang Q, Zhang L, Yu G (2017) Interannual variability of ecosystem carbon exchange: From observation to prediction. Global Ecology and Biogeography 26:12251237, DOI: 10.1111/geb.12633.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Ahmed S, Jarchow M, Rashford B, Swanson D, Albeke S, Bromley G, Brookshire ENJ, Dixon M, Haggerty J, Miller P, Peyton B, Royem A, Spangler L, Straub C, Poulter B (2018) Opportunities and tradeoffs among BECCS and the food, water, energy, biodiversity, and social systems nexus at regional scales. Bioscience, DOI 10.1093/biosci/bix145.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Bromley G, Stoy PC (in print) Surface moistening trends in the northern North American Great Plains increase the likelihood of convective initiation. Journal of Hydrometeorology.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: T Gerken, G Bromley, P Stoy. Investigating land-atmosphere coupling and convective triggering associated with the moistening of the northern North American Great Plains. EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts 19, 11160
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul Stoy, Gabriel Bromley, Tobias Gerken, Angela Tang, Mallory Morgan, David Wood, Selena Ahmed, Brad Bauer, Jack Brookshire, Julia Haggerty, Meghann Jarchow, Perry Miller, Brent Peyton, Ben Rashford, Lee Spangler, David Swanson, Suzi Taylor, Ben Poulter. 2017. Regional summer cooling from agricultural management practices that conserve soil carbon in the northern North American Great Plains EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts 19: 5362
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Paul C. Stoy, Tobias Gerken, Gabriel Bromley, Angela C.-I. Tang, Mallory M. Morgan, David Wood, Selena Ahmed, Brad Bauer, E.N.J. Brookshire, Julia H. Haggerty, Meghann Jarchow, Kent McVay, Perry Miller, Brent Peyton, Ben Rashford, Lee Spangler, David Swanson, Suzi Taylor, Jessica Torrion, Ben Poulter. 2016. Cooling Trends from Agricultural Management Practices that Conserve Soil Carbon Resources in the North American Northern Great Plains: Important First Steps in the Transition toward a BECCS Economy. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul C. Stoy, Tobias Gerken, Gabriel Bromley, Selena Ahmed, Shannon Albeke, Brad Bauer, E.N.J. Brookshire, Julia H. Haggerty, Meghann Jarchow, Perry Miller, Brent Peyton, Ben Rashford, Lee Spangler, David Swanson, Suzi Taylor, Ben Poulter. 2017. The food-water-energy-biodiversity-social systems nexus in the Upper Missouri River Basin: Agricultural intensification has led to regional summer cooling, but need it be at the expense of biodiversity? Ecological Society of America 2017 Annual Meeting
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul C. Stoy1, Gabriel Bromley1, Tobias Gerken1, Bruce Maxwell1, Kent McVay2, Mallory M. Morgan1, Ben Poulter2, Scott Powell1, Jessica Torrion3, Aaron Wipf1. 2017. Quantifying the role of Northern Great Plains agroecosystems in the emerging BECCS economy. 2017 Joint Ameriflux and North American Carbon Program Principal Investigators Meeting

Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of the project is researchers and students in academic science, agricultural producers, natural resource managers including water resource managers, and agricultural extension agents. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project itself has directly contributed to the graduate research of Mallory Morgan and Gabriel Bromley. Additional funding obtained with the help of initial project results has contributed to the graduate research of Gabriel Bromley and the postdoctoral research of Dr. Tobias Gerken, as well as an undergraduate research opportunityfor Jamie Douglas and support for a part-time project technician, Dr. James Irvine. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project work resulted in 8 publications that have a journal publication date of 2016, four conference presentations (with an additional four by graduate students in lab), and seven invited presentations including to the Montana Farm Bureau's 97th annual conference. Project work was also communicated to the public via press releases by Montana State University regarding the NSF CAREER award that is aligned with the present project. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Work will continue on evapotranspiration partitioning models, surface-atmosphere flux observations using the eddy covariance technique in dryland wheat/fallow and natural grassland ecosystems (with funding assistance from the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee and the National Science Foundation), atmospheric boundary layer height observations via ceilometer (with funding assistance from the National Science Foundation), and regional climate synthesis as necessary steps for the application of regional climate modeling via e.g. RAMS.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Under project goals we recently published a manuscript (Vick et al., 2016) on evapotranspiration and atmospheric boundary layer processes in response to different Montana agricultural management scenarios; Elizabeth Vick successfully defended her MS thesis last year. I have integrated these findings into ENSC 465/565 'Environmental Biophysics' as discussed. With project findings, I successfully applied for a National Science Foundation CAREER award entitled 'The role of ecosystem management on boundary layer development and precipitation in the Northern Plains'. The project adds resources to the project in the form of a NSF-funded postdoctoral research scientist and PhD student, who have been working on analyses of climate data across the North American northern Great Plains including Montana and atmospheric boundary layer modeling. Results to date have lead to multiple invited and conference presentations for stakeholders in the agricultural and water resource communities, including presentations by postdoctoral scholars and graduate students. Work into algorithms to partition evaporation and transpiration from evapotranspiration observations are ongoing with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. Results so far have been presented at four invited talks in Switzerland, Germany, and the U.S. in 2016.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Vick ESK, Stoy PC, Tang ACI, Gerken T (2016) The surface-atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide, water, and sensible heat across a dryland wheat-fallow rotation. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. 232, 129-140. DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2016.07.018.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Xiao J, Liu S, Stoy PC (2016) Preface: Impacts of extreme climate events and disturbances on carbon dynamics. Biogeosciences 13, 3665-3675. DOI:10.5194/bg-13-3665-2016.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Novick KA, Ficklin D, Stoy PC, Williams CA, Bohrer G, Oishi AC, Papuga SA, Blanken PD, Noormets A, Sulman B, Wang L, Phillips RP (2016) The increasing importance of atmospheric demand for ecosystem water and carbon fluxes. Nature Climate Change, 6, 1023-1027 DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3114.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Fuentes JD, Chamecki M, Gerken T, Freire LS, Ruiz-Plancarte J, Trowbridge AM, Stoy PC, Katul GG, Nascimento dos Santos RM, von Randow C, T�ta J, Dias N, Fish G, Maia JM, Manzi A, Acevedo O, Mercer J, Fitzjarrald D, Schumacher C (2016) Linking meteorology, turbulence, and air chemistry in the Amazon rainforest. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00152.1.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Gerken T, Wei D, Chase RJ, Fuentes JD, Schumacher C, Machado L, Andreoli R, Chamecki M, Ferreira de Souza RA, Freire LS, Jardine AB, Manzi AO, Nascimento dos Santos RM, von Randow C, dos Santos Costa P, Stoy PC, T�ta J, Trowbridge AM (2016) Downward transport of ozone rich air and implications for atmospheric chemistry in the Amazon rainforest. Atmospheric Environment 124 Part A: 64-76, DOI: 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.11.014.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Santos DM, Acevedo OC, Chamecki M, Fuentes JD, Gerken T, Stoy PC (2016) Temporal scales of the nocturnal flow within and above a forest canopy in Amazonia. Boundary-Layer Meteorology 161: 73, DOI: 10.1007/s10546-016-0158-5.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Paul C. Stoy, Jose D Fuentes, Tobias Gerken, Amy Trowbridge, Gabriel George Katul, Rosa M Nascimento dos Santos, Antonio O Manzi, Juliane Mercer, Luiz Machado, Julio Tota, Celso von Randow, Gilberto Fisch, Fernando Ramos,�and Marcelo Chamecki "The Interaction between Surface-Atmosphere Exchange and Convective Precipitation in the Amazon: Results of the GoAmazon Boundary Layer Experiment." 2015 AGU Fall Meeting. San Francisco, CA.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Stoy PC, Gerken T, Bromley G, Morgan M, Vick E. The role of agricultural management on the flux of water, carbon, and heat to and from Montana agroecosystems: Implications for precipitation processes. Montana Section of the American Water Resource Association Annual Meeting. Fairmont Hot Springs, MT, 2016.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Paul Stoy, Elizabeth Vick, Tobias Gerken, Angela Tang, Mallory Morgan, Jessica Torrion, and Kent McVay. The Impact of Agricultural Land Use Changes on Surface-Atmosphere Exchange and Boundary Layer Processes in the Northern North American Great Plains. 32nd Conference on Agriculture and Forest Meteorology, 22nd Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence and Third Conference on Biogeosciences. American Meteorological Society. Salt Lake City. 2016.

Progress 07/01/15 to 09/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:Project work contributed to five peer-reviewed publications and one successfully-defendedMS thesis during the reporting period Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Project work has contributed to the successful MS defense of Elizabeth S. K. (Harris) Vick on the effects of agricultural management on the surface-atmosphere exchange of energy, water, and carbon dioxide between the surface and the atmosphere. Examples from this project have been integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project work has contributed to five peer-reviewed publications for academic audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?I am in the process of hiring a postdoctoral research associate beginning in January 2016 to work on atmospheric boundary layer modeling to make progress on the hypothesis that changes in agricultural management away from fallow has resulted in cooler summertime temperatures and increases in precipitation during the summer months in the U.S. Northern Great Plains.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Two proposals to the National Science Foundation were submitted to obtain funding to test the hypothesis that the reduction in summer fallow has resulted in cooler summer maximum temperatures and increases in precipitation across the US Northern Gretat Plains. Funding has been obtained by the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation of Germany to explore optimality theory-based approaches for partitioning eddy covariance-measured evapotranspiration into evaporation and transpiration for an improved understanding of the pathways through which water enters the atmosphere in agricultural ecosystems. Project work is ongoing.Project work has been used for the development of lessons for undergraduate, graduate, and online versions of ENSC 465/ LRES 565 'Environmental Biophysics'.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Rains FA, Stoy PC, Welch CM, Montagne C, McGlynn BL (2016) Enhanced diffusion helps explain cold-season soil CO2 efflux in a lodgepole pine ecosystem. Cold Regions Science and Technology 121: 16-24. DOI: 10.1016/j.coldregions.2015.10.003.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Welch CM, Stoy PC, Rains FA, Johnson AV, McGlynn BL (2015) The impacts of mountain pine beetle disturbance on the energy balance of snow during the melt period. Hydrological Processes DOI: 10.1002/hyp.10638.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Stoy PC, Quaife T (2015) Probabilistic downscaling of remote sensing data with applications for multi-scale biogeochemical flux modeling. PLoS One 10(6): e0128935. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128935.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Becknell JM, Desai AR, Dietze MC, Starr G, Franklin JF, Pourmokhtarian A, Hall J, Stoy PC, Duffy PA, Binford MW, Boring LR, Staudhammer CL (2015) Assessing interactions among changing climate, management, and disturbance in forests: A macrosystems approach. BioScience 65: 263-274, DOI:10.1093/biosci/biu234.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Novick KA, Oishi, AC, Ward E, Siqueira MBS, Juang J-Y, Stoy PC (2015) On the difference in the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 between deciduous and evergreen forests in the southeastern United States. Global Change Biology 21: 827842, DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12723.
• Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2015 Citation: Vick, E.S.K., 2015. Surface-atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide, water, and heat across a dryland wheat-fallow rotation. Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences. Montana State University.