
Alison PostUniversity of Colorado Boulder | CUB
Alison Post
Doctor of Philosophy
Program Manager, Earth Lab, University of Colorado Boulder
About
17
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (17)
Determining the relationship between reductions in stomatal conductance (gs ) and leaf water transport during dehydration is key to understanding plant drought responses. While numerous studies have analysed the hydraulic function of woody species, minimal research has been conducted on grasses. Here, we sought to characterise hydraulic vulnerabili...
Shifts in the timing, intensity and/or frequency of climate extremes, such as severe drought and heatwaves, can generate sustained shifts in ecosystem function with important ecological and economic impacts for rangelands and managed pastures. The Pastures and Climate Extremes experiment (PACE) in Southeast Australia was designed to investigate the...
Drought, defined as a marked deficiency of precipitation relative to normal, occurs as periods of below-average precipitation or complete failure of precipitation inputs, and can be limited to a single season or prolonged over multiple years. Grasslands are typically quite sensitive to drought, but there can be substantial variability in the magnit...
The frequency and magnitude of deluges (extremely large rain events) are increasing globally as the atmosphere warms. Small‐scale experiments suggest that semiarid grasslands are particularly sensitive to both the timing and size of deluge events. However, the assumption that plot‐scale results can be extrapolated across landscapes with variable so...
Shifts in the timing and frequency of climate extremes, such as drought and heatwaves, can generate sustained shifts in ecosystem function with important ecological and economic impacts for rangelands and managed pastures. The Pastures and Climate Extremes experiment (PACE) in southeast Australia used a factorial combination of elevated temperature...
Climate change has intensified the hydrologic cycle globally, increasing the magnitude and frequency of large precipitation events, or deluges. Dryland ecosystems are expected to be particularly responsive to increases in deluge size, as their ecological processes are largely dependent on distinct soil moisture pulses. To better understand how incr...
A foundational goal of trait‐based ecology, including trait‐based restoration, is to link specific traits to community assembly, biodiversity, and ecosystem function. Despite a growing awareness of the importance of belowground traits for ecological processes, a synthesis of how root traits can inform restoration of terrestrial plant communities is...
Significance
During the Dust Bowl drought, central US grasslands responded unexpectedly to a decade of hot, dry conditions. Grass species adapted to high temperatures with higher water use efficiency (C 4 grasses) decreased, while those preferring cooler climates (C 3 grasses) increased. We reproduced this surprising response by experimentally impo...
Climate change is intensifying the hydrologic cycle globally, increasing both the size and frequency of extreme precipitation events, or deluges. Arid and semi‐arid ecosystems are expected to be particularly responsive to this change because their ecological processes are largely driven by distinct soil moisture pulses. However, since soil moisture...
Semi-arid ecosystems are strongly water-limited and typically quite responsive to changes in precipitation amount and event size. In the C4-dominated shortgrass steppe of the Central US, previous experiments suggest that large rain events more effectively stimulate plant growth and aboveground net primary production (ANPP) than an equal amount of p...
Drought, widely studied as an important driver of ecosystem dynamics, is predicted to increase in frequency and severity globally. To study drought, ecologists must define or at least operationalize what constitutes a drought. How this is accomplished in practice is unclear, particularly given that climatologists have long struggled to agree on def...
Experiments are widely used in ecology, particularly for assessing global change impacts on ecosystem function. However, results from experiments often are inconsistent with observations made under natural conditions, suggesting the need for rigorous comparisons of experimental and observational studies. We conducted such a "reality check" for a gr...
Experiments are widely used in ecology, particularly for assessing global change impacts on ecosystem function. However, results from experiments often are inconsistent with observations made under natural conditions, suggesting the need for rigorous comparisons of experimental and observational studies. We conducted such a ‘reality check’ for a gr...
Plant traits can be used to predict ecosystem responses to environmental change using a response–effect trait framework. To do this, appropriate traits must be identified that explain a species' influence on ecosystem function (“effect traits”) and the response of those species to environmental change (“response traits”). Response traits are often...
Intensification of the global hydrological cycle, ranging from larger individual precipitation events to more extreme multi-year droughts, has the potential to cause widespread alterations in ecosystem structure and function. With evidence that the incidence of extreme precipitation years (defined statistically from historical precipitation records...
Background/Question/Methods
While much of the early work on the responses of plants to increasing levels of UV-B radiation centered on the detrimental impacts of UV-B radiation, research over the last decade has been more closely focused on photomorphogenic responses and the elucidation of UV photoreceptor(s). One such receptor, UVR8, has been id...
Background/Question/Methods
One of the more common responses of plants to UV-radiation is the induction of secondary metabolites that serve as selective filters to absorb UV and protect potential targets such as DNA, photosynthesis proteins or other sensitive molecules. However, we still have a poor understanding of how UV is perceived and of the...