Published

Photo shows the NEON and EMS towers as viewed from the Harvard Forest walk-up tower.
Credit: David R. Foster- Harvard Forest Archives

Contradictory to theoretical models, forest carbon uptake has accelerated over recent decades in maturing forests, a legacy of 19th century land use, and to a lesser degree, modern increases in atmospheric CO2, nitrogen deposition, temperature, and precipitation. This and many other insights into forest ecosystem function have resulted from sustained measurements of biosphere-atmosphere exchanges at HFR’s Environmental Monitoring Site (EMS) eddy flux tower, which provides the world’s longest record of CO2 fluxes in a forest ecosystem. It is also the founding prototype for the AmeriFlux network and National Ecological Observation Network (NEON).

 

Learn more

  1. Finzi, AC et al. 2019. The Harvard Forest carbon budget: patterns, processes and responses to global change. Ecological Monographs. (in review)
  2. Urbanski, SP et al. 2007. Factors controlling CO2 exchange on time scales from hourly to decadal at the Harvard Forest. Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences. doi: 10.1029/2006JG000293
  3. Wehr, R et al. 2016. Seasonality of temperate forest photosynthesis and daytime respiration. Nature. doi: 10.1038/nature17966

Contact

Jonathan Thompson
jthomps@fas.harvard.edu

Posted:  July 14, 2020