Research sponsored by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The NGEE project is a collaboration among scientists and engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Alaska Fairbanks and our partners at leading universities and other state and federal agencies. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC.
Project Summary
"...improving climate model predictions through advanced understanding of coupled processes in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems."
Increasing our confidence in climate projections for high-latitude regions of the world will require a coordinated set of investigations that target improved process understanding and model representation of important ecosystem-climate feedbacks. The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) seeks to address this challenge by quantifying the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska. Initial research will focus on the highly dynamic landscapes of the North Slope (Barrow, Alaska) where thaw lakes, drained thaw lake basins, and ice-rich polygonal ground offer distinct land units for investigation and modeling. A focus on scaling based on investigations within these geomorphological units will allow us to deliver a process-rich ecosystem model, extending from bedrock to the top of the vegetative canopy, in which the evolution of Arctic ecosystems in a changing climate can be modeled at the scale of a high resolution Earth System Model grid cell (i.e., 30x30 km grid size). This vision includes mechanistic studies in the field and in the laboratory; modeling of critical and interrelated water, nitrogen, carbon, and energy dynamics; and characterization of important interactions from molecular to landscape scales that drive feedbacks to the climate system.
Download Logos
NGEE Arctic brochure highlights project goals of advancing predictive understanding of the structure and function of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems in response to climate change. Click to download..
Stan Wullschleger at the DOE JGI 2012 Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting - March 2012
See Video Presentation on "Omics in the Arctic: Genome-enabled Contributions to Carbon Cycle Research in High-Latitude Ecosystems" www.scivee.tv/node/48004
Photosynthetic characterization of Arctic plant functional types
Alistair Rogers, a plant physiologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, is working to improve the representation of leaf gas exchange for key Arctic plant species. In 2012, he measured the response of photosynthesis to internal CO2 concentration in two sedges, a grass, and a forb growing on the Barrow Environmental Observatory, Barrow, AK. The results of this work have implications for the carbon balance of Arctic ecosystems and suggest that the physiological characterization of a more extensive list of plant functional types is needed for the refinement of Earth System Models.
Upcoming Events
NGEE Arctic Team Well Represented at American Geophysical Union Meeting
Scientists working on the NGEE Arctic projects submitted more than 30 abstracts for the upcoming American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting. The abstracts captured scientific results in all areas of interest to the project including geophysics, biogeochemistry, vegetation dynamics, hydrology, and multi-scale modeling. Abstracts reflected a good integration of scientific topics across partners in the project and between scientists working in the field and laboratory and ecosystem and climate modelers.
Presentations and Posters:
- Abstracts
- Dates and locations of posters and presentation
For more information log on to fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/
NGEE Blog Site
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Photo credit: Rich Norby, ORNL. A team of NGEE Arctic modelers, joined by managers from the DOE, Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, and Martin Keller, ORNL Associate Lab Director travel to Alaska August 8 to 14, 2012 to learn more about the representation of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems in climate models. |
Project Updates
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Quarterly Report December 31, 2012 - more info..
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LBNL modelers publish model that links microbiology and nitrogen dynamics: Trait-based representation of biological nitrification: model development, testing, and predicted community composition - more info..
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Quarterly Report September 30, 2012 - more info..
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Informational brochure released for DOE, Biological and Environmental Research - Terrestrial Ecosystem Science (TES) program more info..
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NGEE Arctic and genomics in high-latitude ecosystems highlighted in recent JGI Newsletter The Primer - more info..
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Quarterly Report June 30, 2012 - more info..