Sheep graze on a ridge at sunset in front of the Qilian Mountain Range in the northeastern region of the Tibetan Plateau. A recent study investigated the effects of experimental warming and simulated grazing (clipping) on rangeland quality in meadows and shrublands on the Tibetan Plateau. The Tibetan Plateau is a rangeland system experiencing climatic and land use changes. Researchers found that...
Forests play an important role in the U.S. and global carbon cycle, and carbon sequestered by U.S. forest growth and harvested wood products currently offsets 12-19% of U.S. fossil fuel emissions. The cycle of forest growth, death, and regeneration and the use of wood removed from the forest complicate efforts to understand and measure forest carbon pools and flows. Our report explains these...
This Issue describes how agriculture provides important ecosystem services in the forms of food and fiber, but can also convey many disservices to agroecosystems themselves and to the ecosystems affected by agricultural practices. In particular, agricultural activities contribute substantial amounts of greenhouse gases, including more methane and nitrous oxide than any other human activity. For...
In this TIEE dataset, students address the question of how global global temperatures change during the 21st century, and how these changes vary geographically, seasonally, and depending upon future human activities.
Students consider how to detect trends in large data sets against a background of variation. They use output from global climate models to examine projected climate change during...
The purpose of this report is to distill advances in the science of air pollution thresholds and to describe their use to assess, protect and manage the nation’s ecosystems and the vital services they provide. We focus here on the environmental impacts of nitrogen, sulfur, and mercury and refer to connections to climate change. The discussion draws on the published research of hundreds o...