Elisabeth A. Holland

• BSc, MSc, PhD Colorado State University
• Professor Ocean and Climate Change at University of the South Pacific

This study seeks to shed light on the rates and drivers of tree cover loss in island catchments focusing on a case study from Fiji. Global Forest Watch (GFW) is critically assessed as a framework for quantifying terrestrial tree cover loss and associated forest carbon stocks. The study assesses the role of the drivers of tree cover loss identified...

Global climate change is often thought of as a steady and approximately predictable physical response to increasing forcings, which then requires commensurate adaptation. But adaptation has practical, cultural and biological limits, and climate change may pose unanticipated global hazards, sudden changes or other surprises–as may societal adaptatio...

This conference report synthesises the discussions and lessons learnt from a workshop with international and local experts and practitioners held in Nouméa, New Caledonia (France, Oceania) from 17th to 21st of October 2022. The workshop was part of a larger transdisciplinary process aimed to anticipate and react to marine heatwaves, coastal erosion...

Global climate change is often thought of as a steady and approximately predictable physical response to increasing forcings, which then requires commensurate adaptation. But adaptation has practical, cultural and biological limits, and climate change may pose unanticipated global hazards, sudden changes or other surprises, as may societal adaptati...

With climate change, coastal communities in New Caledonia are or will be faced with displacement and degradation of their environment and quality of life, generating uncertainties. This qualitative assessment, drawn up during an expert workshop convened by the PACPATH project, aims to highlight the impacts of climate change on the coastal communiti...

The Copernicus Ocean State Report is an annual publication of the Copernicus Marine Service, established in 2014 by the European Commission for Copernicus 1 and renewed in 2021 for Copernicus 2. The report provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, scientific overview on the current conditions, natural variations, and ongoing changes in the global...

Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FinalDraft_Chapter03.pdf

Framing and Context of the Report Chapter 1 Executive Summary This special report assesses new knowledge since the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5) and the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5oC (SR15) on how the ocean and cryosphere have and are expected to change with ongoing global warming, the risks and opportunities these changes bring to e...

Within Pacific Small Island Developing States (Pacific SIDS), the ridge-to-reef (R2R) approach has emerged as a framework for monitoring river connectivity between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The study measured water quality, including pH, over 88.40 km of the Ba River in Fiji. The sampling design focused on measuring spatio-temporal variabi...

The ocean plays a central role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, climate and ocean policies have been historically siloed. After decades of slow convergence, the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue, decided at COP25 and launched online in December 2020, was the first forum for Parties and non-Party stakeholders to the UNFCCC to gi...

Anthropogenic climate change profoundly alters the ocean’s environmental conditions, which, in turn, impact marine ecosystems. Some of these changes are happening fast and may be difficult to reverse. The identification and monitoring of such changes, which also includes tipping points, is an ongoing and emerging research effort. Prevention of nega...

Seagrasses provide a wide range of services including food provision, water purification and coastal protection. Pacific small island developing states (PSIDS) have limited natural resources, challenging economies and a need for marine science research. Seagrasses occur in eleven PSIDS and nations are likely to benefit in different ways depending o...

COVID-19 began to manifest in the Pacific Islands by early March 2020, starting in the US and French territories, spreading slowly to the independent countries of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. All of the independent Pacific countries responded with aggressive measures, closing borders and establishing curfews. Against this background, Tro...

Agriculture is a very important sector in Pacific Island Countries (PICs), providing a significant source of food and income for households as well as substantially contributing to national economies. Agriculture is climatically sensitive, and climate change poses major threats to the continued productivity of this critically important sector in th...

Ocean and cryosphere changes already impact Low-Lying Islands and Coasts (LLIC), including Small Island Developing States, with cascading and compounding risks. Disproportionately higher risks are expected in the course of the 21st century. Reinforcing the findings of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, vulnerable human communities,...

Fiji served as President of the UN General Assembly in 2017, linking climate (SDG13) and ocean (SDG14) as the foundation of blue economies for island and coastal states around the world. The resulting United Nations Oceans outcome statement stressed “the importance of enhancing understanding of the health and role of our ocean and the stressors on...

Past climatological studies use only one or two local stations to describe the full climate of Solomon Islands. In this paper, we examined all available daily minimum and maximum surface air temperature data between 1951 and 2011 for all seven weather stations operated by the Solomon Islands Meteorological Service. Taro has the highest mean tempera...

Decades of study have attempted to describe the population genetic structure of tuna species, including a significant number of studies focused on yellowfin (Thunnus albacares). Very often, analyses do not agree on how many stocks exist per species, and where their boundaries lie. This is possibly because studies vary so much across numerous variab...

Chla, MES, CDOM, DOC and FDOM distributions were characterized to nutrients TOC, particulate absorption coefficients and TOC via flow cytometry and TRIOS(reflectance) from surveys within the Laucala Bay in the Fiji waters. The goal is to combine satellite measurements and a series of in-situ measurements in a variety of tropical lagoons to establis...

The chapter draws on their experience with facilitating resource management planning by means of a home-grown sustainable development community programme on Gau Island, Fiji. As such, their contribution also voices a wide-spread in-between space precisely where local peoples are mediating and portraying vernacular concerns in the lingua franca of s...

Pacific Island communities are highly exposed to a range of hazards including extreme weather events and outbreaks of pests and diseases. These hazards can cause severe losses to yields of traditional food crops and increase the risks of famine and food insecurity in Pacific Island communities. Historically, the cultivation of sweet potato enabled...

Increasing vulnerability to extreme environmental events (EEEs), exacerbated by climate change, is making adaptation inevitable for rural communities in Small Islands Developing states (SIDs), including the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Particularly the communities’ located along the coastal areas that are experiencing sea level...

More than 85% of the Solomon Islands’ population live in villages and communities within 1.5 km from the coast. Therefore, these communities are exposed to extreme ocean-based events, whose intensity and variation are expected to increase due to climate change. The government realises the expected devastating impacts on the population, and has part...

The science of climate change is a complex issue that presents challenges for regions, nations, local governments, and communities. This article describes a participatory action research project designed to develop new knowledge of how community members react to climate change and communication's role in strengthening local resilience. The project...

Droughts, as complex climatic hazards, can threaten livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems in low-lying island states. In extreme cases, drought may cripple national development in these countries, and produce long-term impacts that hinder national efforts to achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. This study addresses rainfall t...

Farmers in Pacific Islands' communities are considered to be most vulnerable to the impacts of increased temperature, sea-level rise, droughts, cyclones, and heavy rainfall. Farmers living on a raised atoll in the Solomon Islands (Bellona) were interviewed to understand their perceptions and experiences on the impacts of climate change and extreme...

Nitrogen applied to the surface of the land for agricultural purposes represents a significant source of reactive nitrogen (Nr) that can be emitted as a gaseous Nr species, be denitrified to atmospheric nitrogen (N2), run off during rain events or form plant-useable nitrogen in the soil. To investigate the magnitude, temporal variability and spatia...

Nitrogen applied to the surface of the land for agricultural purposes represents a significant source of reactive nitrogen (Nr) that can be emitted as a gaseous Nr species, be denitrified to atmospheric nitrogen (N2), run-off during rain events or form plant useable nitrogen in the soil. To investigate the magnitude, temporal variability and spatia...

Farmers in Pacific Islands' communities are considered to be most vulnerable to the impacts of increased temperature, sea-level rise, droughts, cyclones, and heavy rainfall. Farmers living on a raised atoll in the Solomon Islands (Bellona) were interviewed to understand their perceptions and experiences on the impacts of climate change and extreme...

This paper reports a study of costs and benefits of Coral Triangle Initiatives (CTI) and Mangrove Rehabilitation Projects (MRP) in the Solomon Islands. It was observed that the communities have different attitudes and perceptions toward climate change challenges. The different scales and magnitudes of climate change impacts that are perceived at th...

This chapter addresses the biogeochemical cycles of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The three greenhouse gases (GHGs) have increased in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, and this increase is the main driving cause of climate change (Chapter 10). CO2, CH4 and N2O altogether amount to 80% of the total radiative f...

The relationships between the global discourse on emissions reduction, particularly in regard to international shipping, and the need for more sustainable Pacific Island sea transport services are discussed. Renewable energy applications for such shipping is currently not considered in the drive to reduce fossil fuel dependency in the region. The d...

This paper summarises research and options for sustainable sea transport in Oceania with a focus on domestic shipping. This debate is situated initially within the context of the current Pacific domestic shipping scenario, a region of minute economies connected by some of the longest sea transport routes in the world. All current options are fossil...

This paper sets out the background, rationale and aims of a newly-established University of the South Pacific (USP) research cluster programme investigating the role that renewable energy might play for sustainable sea transport in the region. Immediate and pressing challenges besetting Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) include the effects of climat...

Background/Question/Methods Pacific Islands (PI) communities have endured countless changes over millennia and have managed to balance their abilities to survive and safeguard traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). More recently, more communities throughout the Pacific Islands Region are dealing with the impact of climate change as they plan for...

We discuss and evaluate the representation of at-mospheric chemistry in the global Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) version 4, the atmospheric component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). We present a va-riety of configurations for the representation of tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, wet removal, and online and of-fline meteorol...

Over the last few years, there has been a great deal of progress in modeling coupled terrestrial global carbon and nitrogen cycles and their roles in Earth System models. The collection of recent models provides some surprising results and insights. A critical question for Earth system models is: How do the coupled C/N model results impact atmosphe...

We discuss and evaluate the representation of atmospheric chemistry in the global Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) version 4, the atmospheric component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). We present a variety of configurations for the representation of tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, wet removal, and online and offline meteorology...

Soils play a central role throughout the climate system, through regulating the atmospheric abundance of key trace gases including, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide exchange, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone and some halogens, i.e. methyl bromide and methyl flouride. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on...

At the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, investigators of ecosystem science and biogeochemistry gathered in a series of sessions sponsored by the National Science Foundation to examine what is known about the coupling of chemical elements in biochemistry and thus in global biogeochemical cycles. As an introduction to the top...

The analysis of coupled biogeochemical cycles (CBCs) addresses the scientific basis for some of today's major environmental problems. Drawing from information presented at a series of sessions on CBCs held at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America and from the research community's expertise, we identify several principal resea...

The bio-atmospheric exchange of reactive nitrogen has changed three to five fold since 1850 as a result of intensified fossil fuel use and agriculture. The changing nitrogen cycle is poised at the crossroads of climate change, air and water quality, agriculture, and sustainability. The carbon cycle has been in the limelight of public attention beca...

The global nitrogen cycle is one of the most altered biogeochemical cycles on earth. Bio-atmospheric exchanges of nitrogen have increased 3-5 fold since the pre-industrial era driven by increases in fossil fuel combustion and agricultural intensification. I will systematically examine the role of the nitrogen cycle in the climate system., including...

As DeLuca suggests, applications of N fertilizer worldwide exceed human consumption of that N in the form of protein by several-fold. Our Policy Forum focused in part on the more than 80% of fertilizer N (and P) that does not make it into our diet—the fertilizer that could in some sense be

Background/Question/Methods Natural lands and oceans have and continue to offset the climate impact of human generated greenhouse gas emissions, including the carbon containing gases carbon dioxide, methane, and some halogens, like methyl bromide and nitrogen containing gases, nitrous oxide and precursor to ozone formation like NOx and volatile org...

Nutrient cycles link agricultural systems to their societies and surroundings; inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus in particular are essential for high crop yields, but downstream and downwind losses of these same nutrients diminish environmental quality and human well-being. Agricultural nutrient balances differ substantially with economic developme...

With the mixed publicity in the media related to climate change, the scientifically credible, robust facts are often overshadowed by mixed, contradicting, or plainly wrong stories. This paper, therefore, dispels myths and lays the foundation behind the scientific evidence pertaining to the on-going changes in our climate and to our planet. Atmosphe...

The Fourth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released earlier this year and has generated world-wide attention This was the first Working Group 1 report to take an explicit look at the global nitrogen cycle and how changes in the N cycle have impacted the climate system. The Working Group 1 report states the followi...

Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and of reactive gases such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, which lead to the formation of secondary pollutants including aerosol particles and tropospheric ozone, have increased substantially in response to human activities. As a result, biogeochemical cycles...

Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and of reactive gases such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, which lead to the formation of secondary pollutants including aerosol particles and tropospheric ozone, have increased substantially in response to human activities. As a result, biogeochemical c...

We examined the possibility that microbial adaptation to temperature could affect rates of CO2, N2O and CH4 release from soils. Laboratory incubations were used to determine the functional relationship between temperature and CO2, N2O and CH4 fluxes for five soils collected across an elevational range in Hawaii. Initial rates of CO2 production and...

The global nitrogen cycle has been profoundly perturbed during the industrial era through fossil fuel combustion and agricultural intensification. There are few observations with adequate temporal and spatial coverage to understand the changing global nitrogen cycle. The atmospheric deposition networks designed to address the impact of acid rain de...

In this study, we present the results of nitrogen deposition on land from a set of 29 simulations from six different tropospheric chemistry models pertaining to present-day and 2100 conditions. Nitrogen deposition refers here to the deposition (wet and dry) of all nitrogen-containing gas phase chemical species resulting from NOx (NO + NO2) emission...

Nitrogen is a major nutrient in terrestrial ecosystems and an important catalyst in tropospheric photochemistry. Over the last century human activities have dramatically increased inputs of reactive nitrogen (N r , the combination of oxidized, reduced, and organically bound nitrogen) to the Earth system (Figure 1). Nitrogen cycle perturbations have...

Two recent papers by Knorr et al. (2005) and Fang et al. (2005) provide variations of model fitting conducted in the former study. Knorr et al. (2005) suggested that more recalcitrant fractions of soil organic carbon (SOC) could be more sensitive to temperature. Fang et al. (2005) argue that this is an implication of the choice of model used. Furth...

We present a new soil respiration model, describe a formal model testing procedure, and compare our model with five alternative models using an extensive data set of observed soil respiration. Gas flux data from rangeland soils that included a large number of measurements at low temperatures were used to model soil CO2 emissions as a function of so...

The documented acceleration of NH3 and NOx (NO + NO2) emissions over the last 150 years has accelerated N deposition, compromising air and water quality and altering the functioning of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems worldwide. To construct continental-scale N budgets, we produced maps of N deposition fluxes from site-network observations for th...

The sensitivity of soil carbon to warming is a major uncertainty in projections of carbon dioxide concentration and climate. Experimental studies overwhelmingly indicate increased soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition at higher temperatures, resulting in increased carbon dioxide emissions from soils. However, recent findings have been cited as ev...

Inez Fung received the Revelle Medal at the 2004 Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony on 15 December, in San Francisco, California. The medal is given for outstanding contributions in atmospheric sciences, atmosphere-ocean coupling, atmosphere-land coupling, biogeochemical cycles, climate, or related aspects of the Earth system.

The biogeochemical cycles are key regulators of the Earth System, linking terrestrial, marine, photochemical, and industrial processes. The carbon, nitroge, and sulfur cycles are integral to and affected by the climate and chemical systems. Important non-linearities are emerging as we move toward integrated Earth System models. I will show our stra...

Atmospheric nitrogen deposition may indirectly affect ecosystems through deposition-induced changes in the rates of insect herbivory. Plant nitrogen (N) status can affect the consumption rates and population dynamics of herbivorous insects, but the extent to which N deposition-induced changes in herbivory might lead to changes in ecosystem-level ca...

[1] We provide a description and evaluation of LMDz-INCA, which couples the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique general circulation model (LMDz) and the Interaction with Chemistry and Aerosols (INCA) model. In this first version of the model a CH4 - NOx - CO - O-3 chemical scheme representative of the background chemistry of the troposphere is co...

This paper contrasts the natural and anthropogenic controls on the conversion of unreactive N2 to more reactive forms of nitrogen (Nr). A variety of data sets are used to construct global N budgets for 1860 and the early 1990s and to make projections for the global N budget in 2050. Regional N budgets for Asia, North America, and other major region...

Until few years ago, N deposition studies and the consequences for ecosystems were focused on North Hemisphere, where most of the modern N deposition occurs. Nowadays, the pattern of N deposition has changed over the globe, calling attention to other geographical areas, including tropical regions which were the important pre-industrially(Matson et...

The bio-atmospheric N plays a key role in the climate system through regulation of atmospheric greenhouse concentrations, including nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, methane, and tropospheric ozone, as well as impacting aerosol abundance. I will examine the evidence for including the full bio-atmospheric nitrogen cycle into earth system models. The mo...

[1] We use a global chemical transport model (MOZART-2) to estimate the effects of surface emissions of methanol on tropospheric oxidants. The importance of methanol in tropospheric chemistry is two fold. First, methanol has a relatively large surface emission with an estimated global emission of 70 to 350 Tg methanol/year. The estimated methanol f...

Changes to the global nitrogen cycle affect human health well beyond the associated benefits of increased food production. Many intensively fertilized crops become animal feed, helping to create disparities in world food distribution and leading to unbalanced diets, even in wealthy nations. Excessive air- and water-borne nitrogen are linked to resp...

Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and the use of nitrogen fertilizers, have approximately doubled levels of reactive nitrogen in the biosphere. This perturbation has the potential to alter fundamental processes in terrestrial ecosystems where composition, diversity, and productivity are largely controlled by the availability of...

The direct effects of nitrogen deposition on nutrient availability in ecosystems have been well studied, however, little is known about the indirect effects of nitrogen deposition on insect herbivory and subsequent changes to ecosystem processes. Numerous empirical studies have demonstrated that host plant nitrogen concentration can strongly affect...

Atmosphere-Forest Exchange: Important Questions Regarding the Atmosphere's Role in the Delivery of Nutrient Nitrogen and Impacts on Nitrogen and Carbon Cycling Atmospheric composition and chemistry directly affect ecosystem nitrogen cycling and indirectly affect ecosystem carbon cycling and storage. Current understanding of atmosphere-forest nitrog...

We used a new 17-year, high spatial resolution satellite record and a carbon cycle model to explore how changing net primary productivity (NPP) contributed to a proposed carbon (C) sink in North America. We found a small but significant increase in NPP, 0.03 Pg C yr-2 or 8% over 17 years, that could explain a substantial fraction of the C sink. The...

Organic forms of nitrogen are widespread in the atmosphere and their deposition may constitute a substantive input of atmospheric N to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Recent studies have expanded the pool of available measurements and our awareness of their potential significance. Here, we use these measurements to provide a coherent picture of...

This chapter focuses on processes that affect the budget of ozone in the troposphere at the global scale. Without human-induced perturbations, the chemical composition of the atmosphere would be strongly determined by biological processes at the earth's surface. Photosynthesis, respiration, matter decomposition, and microbial activity produce inten...

Terrestrial ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon cycle. This chapter compiled a global dataset of measurements on ecosystem carbon isotope discrimination (Δe) and used this dataset to validate a global terrestrial biosphere model that simulates Δe (BIOME3.5). Measured Δe values (based on ecosystem measurements) averaged 18% global...

Evaluation of the impact of increasing nitrogen deposition on terrestrial carbon uptake requires coupling of chemical transport models and terrestrial biogeochemistry models. Simulations with a series of models and coupling schemes combined with the measurements of nitrogen deposition produce a range of results which can be used to help guide furth...

Terrestrial and marine ecosystems function as sources and sinks for reactive trace gases, and in doing so, profoundly influence the oxidative photochemistry in the troposphere. Principal biogenic processes include microbial methane production and oxidation, the emission of volatile organic compounds from forest ecosystems, the emission of nitric ox...

We describe a submodel to simulate NOx and N2O emissions from soils and present comparisons of simulated NOx and N2O fluxes from the DAYCENT ecosystem model with observations from different soils. The N gas flux submodel assumes that nitrification and denitrification both contribute to N2O and NOx emissions but that NOx emissions are due mainly to...

We describe a submodel to simulate NOx and N20 emissions from soils and present comparisons of simulated NOx and N20 fluxes from the DAYCENT ecosystem model with observations from different soils. The N gas flux submodel assumes that nitrification and denitrification both contribute to N20 and NOemissions but that NO emissions are due mainly to ni...

For the period 1980–89, we estimate a carbon sink in the coterminous United States between 0.30 and 0.58 petagrams of carbon per year (petagrams of carbon = 1015 grams of carbon). The net carbon flux from the atmosphere to the land was higher, 0.37 to 0.71 petagrams of carbon per year, because a net flux of 0.07 to 0.13 petagrams of carbon per year...

Information on net primary production in tropical forests is needed for the development of realistic global carbon budgets, for projecting how these ecosystems will be affected by climatic and atmospheric changes, and for evaluating eddy covariance mea- surements of tropical forest carbon flux. However, a review of the database commonly used to add...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest reservoir of organic carbon in the terrestrial biosphere. Though the influence of increasing atmospheric CO2 on net primary productivity, on the flow of newly fixed carbon belowground, and on the quality of new plant litter in ecosystems has been examined, indirect effects of increased CO2 on breakdown of la...