Rosvel Bracho

Rosvel Bracho
University of Florida | UF · School of Forest Resources and Conservation

PhD

About

90
Publications
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6,844
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Publications

Publications (90)
Article
Full-text available
Mapping in situ eddy covariance measurements of terrestrial land–atmosphere fluxes to the globe is a key method for diagnosing the Earth system from a data-driven perspective. We describe the first global products (called X-BASE) from a newly implemented upscaling framework, FLUXCOM-X, representing an advancement from the previous generation of FLU...
Article
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The Archbold Biological Station‐University of Florida (ABS‐UF) Long‐term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) site lies in the heart of south‐central Florida, representing subtropical humid grazing lands in North America and globally. Beef producers in this region face challenges due to climate variability, limited nutritive value of forages, poor soils,...
Article
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Background Grazing lands provide numerous ecosystem services, including the capacity to store large amounts of soil carbon (C); however, our understanding of the factors affecting soil C responses to management is inadequate. Methods In this paper, we synthesized information about the impacts of grazing land management on soil C within the southea...
Preprint
Full-text available
Mapping in-situ eddy covariance measurements of terrestrial land-atmosphere fluxes to the globe is a key method for diagnosing the Earth system from a data-driven perspective. We describe the first global products (called X-BASE) from a newly implemented up-scaling framework, FLUXCOM-X. The X-BASE products comprise of estimates of CO2 net ecosystem...
Article
Naturally regenerated pine ecosystems cover 11.7 Mha of the southeastern United States, comprising 13.8% of the forested land, and represent an important component in the carbon balance for the region. These forests are exposed to strong climatic variability from extreme multiyear droughts to above average precipitation years, many are actively man...
Article
North American evergreen forests cover large areas and influence the global carbon cycle. Satellite remote sensing has been used to track the phenology of ecosystem photosynthesis of these forests by detecting variation in vegetation optical properties associated with physiological and structural features, and most of these methods have been closel...
Article
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Background and aims Prescribed fire is a common management practice in native rangelands that can result in significant losses of C, N, and P from plant and soil. This study evaluated the short-term, fire-induced changes in C, N, and P stocks in subtropical native rangelands in Florida, USA. Methods Changes in C, N, and P stocks were quantified in...
Article
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This new 4-page publication of the UF/IFAS Department of Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences provides information about the role of native and cultivated pastures in climate change mitigation and the opportunities and challenges for improving carbon sequestration in agroecosystems. Climate change mitigation in the context of this publication refers...
Article
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Fire frequency is increasing with climate warming in the boreal regions of interior Alaska, with short fire return intervals (< 50 years) becoming more common. Recent studies suggest these ''reburns'' will reduce the insulating surface organic layer (SOL) and seedbanks, inhibiting black spruce regeneration and increasing deciduous cover. These chan...
Article
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Tree plantations represent an important component of the global carbon (C) cycle and are expected to increase in prevalence during the 21st century. We examined how silvicultural approaches that optimize economic returns in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations affected the accumulation of C in pools of vegetation, detritus, and mineral soil u...
Article
Grazing lands, including the native rangelands, cover an extensive area of the southeastern United States, representing an important component of the carbon balance for the region. In Florida, native rangelands extend over 3.1 Mha, experiencing a natural fire frequency between 2 – 5 years and a strong climatic variability. Management includes presc...
Article
Microorganisms are major constituents of the total biomass in permafrost regions, whose underlain soils are frozen for at least two consecutive years. To understand potential microbial responses to climate change, here we examined microbial community compositions and functional capacities across four soil depths in an Alaska tundra site. We showed...
Article
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Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions due to quasi-co...
Article
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Plant transpiration links physiological responses of vegetation to water supply and demand with hydrological, energy, and carbon budgets at the land–atmosphere interface. However, despite being the main land evaporative flux at the global scale, transpiration and its response to environmental drivers are currently not well constrained by observatio...
Article
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Warming of the Arctic can stimulate microbial decomposition and release of permafrost soil carbon (C) as greenhouse gases, and thus has the potential to influence climate change. At the same time, plant growth can be stimulated and offset C release. This study presents a 15‐year time series comprising chamber and eddy covariance measurements of net...
Article
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Large datasets of greenhouse gas and energy surface-atmosphere fluxes measured with the eddy-covariance technique (e.g., FLUXNET2015, AmeriFlux BASE) are widely used to benchmark models and remote-sensing products. This study addresses one of the major challenges facing model-data integration: To what spatial extent do flux measurements taken at in...
Article
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Net primary productivity (NPP) and net ecosystem production (NEP) are often used interchangeably, as their difference, heterotrophic respiration (soil heterotrophic CO2 efflux, RSH = NPP−NEP), is assumed a near‐fixed fraction of NPP. Here, we show, using a range‐wide replicated experimental study in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations that RSH...
Article
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p>The following authors were omitted from the original version of this Data Descriptor: Markus Reichstein and Nicolas Vuichard. Both contributed to the code development and N. Vuichard contributed to the processing of the ERA-Interim data downscaling. Furthermore, the contribution of the co-author Frank Tiedemann was re-evaluated relative to the co...
Preprint
Full-text available
Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions, including thei...
Article
Full-text available
Evergreen conifer forests are the most prevalent land cover type in North America. Seasonal changes in the color of evergreen forest canopies have been documented with near‐surface remote sensing, but the physiological mechanisms underlying these changes, and the implications for photosynthetic uptake, have not been fully elucidated. Here, we integ...
Preprint
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One of the many reasons why a melting planet is a dangerous one is bacteria that break down carbon in soil. Freezing temperatures keep soil carbon locked away from these hungry microbes, but as temperatures rise, that carbon gradually becomes accessible, sending the bacteria into a feeding frenzy and thereby sending harmful carbon dioxide into the...
Article
Full-text available
Plant transpiration links physiological responses of vegetation to water supply and demand with hydrological,energy and carbon budgets at the land-atmosphere interface. However, despite being the main land evaporative flux at the global scale, transpiration and its response to environmental drivers are currently not well constrained by observations...
Article
Recent investigations on the mechanistic underpinnings for nutrient regulated organic matter decomposition suggest that micronutrients may limit microbial activity in nitrogen (N) enriched forest ecosystems. However, these nutrient limitations could be complex for managed pine plantations in the US South that received macro- and micronutrient ferti...
Article
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The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their...
Article
Full-text available
The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their...
Article
Full-text available
Background: In a warmer world, microbial decomposition of previously frozen organic carbon (C) is one of the most likely positive climate feedbacks of permafrost regions to the atmosphere. However, mechanistic understanding of microbial mediation on chemically recalcitrant C instability is limited; thus, it is crucial to identify and evaluate acti...
Preprint
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Rising sea levels are the catastrophic image of global warming But the threat of melting ice at high latitudes goes much deeper Locked within the frozen soil in these regions are vast pools of prehistoric carbon Once freed, this carbon has the potential to accelerate the current rate at which the earth is heating up thanks in large part to microbes...
Article
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Background: It is well-known that global warming has effects on high-latitude tundra underlain with permafrost. This leads to a severe concern that decomposition of soil organic carbon (SOC) previously stored in this region, which accounts for about 50% of the world's SOC storage, will cause positive feedback that accelerates climate warming. We h...
Article
The pedosphere is the largest terrestrial reservoir of organic carbon, yet soil-carbon variability and its representation in Earth system models is a large source of uncertainty for carbon-cycle science and climate projections. Much of this uncertainty is attributed to local and regional-scale variability, and predicting this variation can be chall...
Article
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The multi-scale carbon-carbon dioxide (C-CO2) dynamics of subtropical urban forests and other green and grey infrastructure types were explored in an urbanized campus near Shanghai, China. We integrated eddy covariance (EC) C-CO2 flux measurements and the Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon footprint tool to analyze C-CO2 dynamics at the landscape-scale a...
Article
The susceptibility of soil organic carbon (SOC) in tundra to microbial decomposition under warmer climate scenarios potentially threatens a massive positive feedback to climate change, but the underlying mechanisms of stable SOC decomposition remain elusive. Herein, Alaskan tundra soils from three depths (a fibric O horizon with litter and course r...
Article
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Multiple lines of evidence suggest that plant water-use efficiency (WUE)—the ratio of carbon assimilation to water loss—has increased in recent decades. Although rising atmospheric CO2 has been proposed as the principal cause, the underlying physiological mechanisms are still being debated, and implications for the global water cycle remain uncerta...
Article
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Evidence suggests that 5–15% of the vast pool of soil carbon stored in northern permafrost ecosystems could be emitted as greenhouse gases by 2100 under the current path of global warming. However, direct measurements of changes in soil carbon remain scarce, largely because ground subsidence that occurs as the permafrost soils begin to thaw confoun...
Article
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With the likelihood that changes in global climate will adversely affect the soil C reservoir in the northern circumpolar permafrost zone, an understanding of the potential role of diazotrophic communities in enhancing biological N 2 fixation, which constrains both plant production and microbial decomposition in tundra soils, is important in elucid...
Article
In late 2015 and early 2016, work done by the AmeriFlux Management Project Technical Team (amerilfux.lbl.gov) helped to uncover an issue with Gill WindMaster and WindMaster Pro sonic anemometers used by many researchers for eddy covariance flux measurements. Gill has addressed this issue and has since sent out a notice that the vertical wind speed...
Article
Higher temperatures in northern latitudes will increase permafrost thaw and stimulate above- and belowground plant biomass growth in tundra ecosystems. Higher plant productivity increases the input of easily decomposable carbon (C) to soil, which can stimulate microbial activity and increase soil organic matter decomposition rates. This phenomenon,...
Article
Silvicultural practices, particularly fertilization, may counteract or accentuate the effects of climate change on carbon cycling in planted pine ecosystems, but few studies have empirically assessed the potential effects. In the southeastern United States, we established a factorial throughfall reduction (D) × fertilization (F) experiment in 2012...
Article
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Aerodynamic canopy height (ha) is the effective height of vegetation canopy for its influence on atmospheric fluxes and is a key parameter of surface-atmosphere coupling. However, methods to estimate ha from data are limited. This synthesis evaluates the applicability and robustness of the calculation of ha from eddy covariance momentum-flux data....
Article
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Greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost in arctic ecosystems may amplify global warming, yet estimates of the rate of carbon release, and the proportion of carbon released as methane (CH4) or carbon dioxide (CO2), have a high degree of uncertainty. There are many areas where no measurements exist, and few year-round or long-term records. E...
Article
Losses of C from decomposing permafrost may be offset by increased productivity of tundra plants, but nitrogen availability partially limits plant growth in tundra ecosystems. In this soil incubation experiment carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling dynamics were examined from the soil surface down through upper permafrost. We found that losses of CO2...
Article
Diffuse radiation can increase canopy light use efficiency (LUE). This creates the need to differentiate the effects of direct and diffuse radiation when simulating terrestrial gross primary production (GPP). Here, we present a novel GPP model, the diffuse-fraction-based two-leaf model (DTEC), which includes the leaf response to direct and diffuse...
Article
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Quantifying soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition under warming is critical to predict carbon-climate feedbacks. According to the substrate regulating principle, SOC decomposition would decrease as labile SOC declines under field warming, but observations of SOC decomposition under warming do not always support this prediction. This discrepancy c...
Article
Current and future warming of high-latitude ecosystems will play an important role in climate change through feedbacks to the global carbon cycle. This study compares 6 years of CO2 flux measurements in moist acidic tundra using autochambers and eddy covariance (Tower) approaches. We found that the tundra was an annual source of CO2 to the atmosphe...
Article
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The maximum exergy dissipation theory provides a theoretical basis for using surface temperature to measure the status and development of ecosystems, which could provide an early warning of rapid evaluation of ecosystem degradation. In the present study, we used the radiation balance of ecosystems to demonstrate this hypothesis theoretically. Furth...
Article
Rapid Arctic warming is expected to increase global greenhouse gas concentrations as permafrost thaw exposes immense stores of frozen carbon (C) to microbial decomposition. Permafrost thaw also stimulates plant growth, which could offset C loss. Using data from 7 years of experimental Air and Soil warming in moist acidic tundra, we show that Soil w...
Article
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Climatic variables not only directly affect the interannual variability (IAV) in net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) but also indirectly drive it by changing the physiological parameters. Identifying these direct and indirect paths can reveal the underlying mechanisms of carbon (C) dynamics. In this study, we applied a path analysis using flux data...
Article
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Increasing temperatures in northern high latitudes are causing permafrost to thaw, making large amounts of previously frozen organic matter vulnerable to microbial decomposition. Permafrost thaw also creates a fragmented landscape of drier and wetter soil conditions that determine the amount and form (carbon dioxide (CO2), or methane (CH 4)) of car...
Article
Microbial decomposition of soil carbon in high-latitude tundra underlain with permafrost is one of the most important, but poorly understood, potential positive feedbacks of greenhouse gas emissions from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere in a warmer world(1-4). Using integrated metagenomic technologies, we showed that the microbial functio...
Article
Permafrost soils currently store approximately 1672 Pg of carbon (C), but as high latitudes warm, this temperature-protected C reservoir will become vulnerable to higher rates of decomposition. In recent decades, air temperatures in the high latitudes have warmed more than any other region globally, particularly during the winter. Over the coming c...
Article
Wet grasslands in the Brazilian Cerrado occupy around 1 % of the Cerrado extension, acting as ecotones connecting well-drained savanna vegetation and gallery forest. Wet grasslands help maintain biodiversity and water balance, and are an important component of the carbon (C) balance, storing an average of 241 MgC h−1 in the top 60 cm soils. However...
Article
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Several lines of evidence suggest that the warming climate plays a vital role in driving certain types of extreme weather. The impact of warming and of extreme weather on forest carbon assimilation capacity is poorly known. Filling this knowledge gap is critical towards understanding the amount of carbon that forests can hold. Here, we used a perfe...
Article
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High-latitude ecosystems store approximately 1700 Pg of soil carbon (C), which is twice as much C as is currently contained in the atmosphere. Permafrost thaw and subsequent microbial decomposition of permafrost organic matter could add large amounts of C to the atmosphere, thereby influencing the global C cycle. The rates at which C is being relea...
Article
Full-text available
High latitude ecosystems store approximately 1700Pg of soil carbon (C) which is twice as much carbon than currently contained in the atmosphere. Permafrost thaw along with microbial decomposition of permafrost organic matter could add large amounts of C to the atmosphere, thereby influencing the global C cycle. The rate at which C is being released...
Article
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Project Goals: Determining the response, adaptation and feedback mechanism of biological communities to climate change is critical to project future states of the earth and climate systems, but poorly understood in microbial communities. Thus, the overall goal of this study is to provide system-level, predictive mechanistic understanding of the tem...
Article
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Arctic warming has led to permafrost degradation and ground subsidence, created as a result of ground ice melting. Frozen soil organic matter that thaws can increase carbon (C) emissions to the atmosphere, but this can be offset in part by increases in plant growth. The balance of plant and microbial processes, and how this balance changes through...
Article
The future carbon balance of high-latitude ecosystems is dependent on the sensitivity of biological processes (photosynthesis and respiration) to the physical changes occurring with permafrost thaw. Predicting C exchange in these ecosystems is difficult because the thawing of permafrost is a heterogeneous process that creates a complex landscape. W...
Article
Full-text available
Planted pine forests (plantations) in the southeastern United States are an important component of the continent's carbon balance. Forest carbon dynamics are affected by a range of factors including climatic variability. Multiyear droughts have affected the region in the past, and an increase in the frequency of drought events has been predicted. H...
Article
Soil organic matter (SOM) cycling between soils and the atmosphere affects a wide range of important ecosystem functions. However the key processes controlling this cycle, fine root inputs and heterotrophic respiration, are poorly understood primarily because they are difficult to directly measure in the field. Radiocarbon measurements and simple m...
Article
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Deforestation in mid- to high latitudes is hypothesized to have the potential to cool the Earth's surface by altering biophysical processes. In climate models of continental-scale land clearing, the cooling is triggered by increases in surface albedo and is reinforced by a land albedo-sea ice feedback. This feedback is crucial in the model predicti...
Conference Paper
Background/Question/Methods and Results/Conclusions The future carbon (C) balance of high latitude ecosystems is dependent on the sensitivity of biological processes (photosynthesis and respiration) to the physical changes occurring with permafrost thaw. But predicting C exchange in these ecosystems is difficult because the thawing of permafrost i...
Article
The savannah of central Brazil occupies 208 million ha, of which about 54 million ha have been converted to cultivated pasture. The aim of this study was to provide the dynamics of evapotranspiration (ET) in a Brachiaria brizantha cultivated pasture in the Brazilian Savannah region at the beginning of the rainy season and determine biological and e...
Article
Results from a systematic investigation of mercury (Hg) concentrations across 14 forest sites in the United States show highest concentrations in litter layers, strongly enriched in Hg compared to aboveground tissues and indicative of substantial postdepositional sorption of Hg. Soil Hg concentrations were lower than in litter, with highest concent...