Project Grant 2213630

This $200,000 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Texas A&M Agrilife Research to develop self-organizing principles for upscaling ecosystem water and heterotrophic carbon fluxes. The research aims to understand how heterotrophic respiration varies across biomes and climates depending on macroscopic environmental variables such as rainfall and vegetation productivity. It combines experimental data from multiple observational networks and mathematical models of microbial growth and metabolism. This analysis helps map heterotrophic respiration at regional to continental scales and assess potential climate change impacts on soils and ecosystems by enabling more accurate estimates of soil organic carbon losses. The research is guided by the hypothesis that the annual ratio of heterotrophic respiration to plant productivity is primarily correlated with the aridity index. It combines process-based microbial modeling with flux tower data sets and field measurements from the National Ecological Observatory Network and other regional and global networks. The grant supports the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) goal of increasing scientific knowledge and understanding of major problems confronting the nation.