Utilizing novel technologies and cyberinfrastructure to understand global change impacts and feedbacks in an arid ecosystem

Background/Question/Methods Deserts and semi-arid landscapes comprise 35% of the land surface area on Earth and play a much larger role in global carbon cycling than previously thought. An eminent challenge is to predict how global change (including climate change) will impact local to global-scale provisioning of ecosystems goods and services (e.g. food and water), how humans will need to adapt, and how this dynamic impact-response system will feedback to influence the future state and climate of the Earth. Understanding the sources, sinks, pathways and mechanisms controlling the cycling of carbon, water and energy in the Earth System is key to meeting this challenge. Despite this, the mechanisms controlling the uptake, storage and loss of atmospheric carbon in arid landscapes remains poorly studied. Similarly, knowledge of how to minimize uncertainty when scaling land-atmosphere carbon balance from plot to landscape levels is lacking. This study utilizes and further advances a range of technologies and cyberinfrastructure tools that are being developed through a National Science Foundation center grant spanning the Colleges of Engineering, Science and Education at UTEP. This infrastructure is located on the Jornada Basin Experimental Range (which hosts the Jornada Basin Long Term Ecological Research program) and includes an eddy covariance tower that measures landscape level carbon, water and energy exchange, a robotic tram system that measures atmospheric and ground based optical reflectance and an unmanned aerial vehicle system that will remotely sense a range of ecological variables within the tower footprint. Results/Conclusions The key objectives of this study are to: 1) utilize and enhance novel technologies and cyberinfrastructure in order to assess the mechanisms underpinning biological and physical processes that interact to control carbon, water and energy uptake, storage and release in the northern Chihuahuan Desert, 2) develop a system science approach and methods for scaling measures of land-atmosphere carbon exchange from the plot to landscape level, 3) finally, incorporate 1 and 2 above with global change scenarios for the northern Chihuahuan Desert to assess the likely Global Change impacts on ecosystem structure and function and feedbacks to the climate system. As this project is in its early stages, we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with researchers whose interest or infrastructure would be mutually benefitted by meeting these research goals.