Determining the terrestrial carbon balance (how much carbon a landscape is gaining or losing) requires correctly estimating the difference between inputs and outputs. Scientific knowledge of the output side is relatively weak, however; in particular, the limited understanding of what is termed heterotrophic respiration (RH), the carbon respired by microbes from soil and decaying organic material, limits our predictive ability. This raises an unsettling question, one that is the focus, and underlying intellectual merit, of this exploratory project: can continental-scale carbon be balanced if the underlying science understanding is unbalanced? To address this problem, funds are provided to host a community assessment on understanding, constraining, and predicting large-scale RH carbon fluxes, bringing together scientists with a wide range of specialties, nationalities, and expertise.
This workshop will benefit from, and take advantage of, a number of converging trends in carbon cycle science: innovative new continental-scale experiments; the sophistication of analytical methods linking individual measurements with continental- to global-scale analyses; and the increasing use of tools to collaborate, document, and analyze shared data sets. To maximize the impact of this workshop, the Awardee will live-stream the proceedings online; post all presentations; write a white paper that outlines the major limitations to understanding continental-scale RH, and offers possible solutions; develop manuscript(s) that address workshop topics, focusing on implications for large-scale science; hold follow-up sessions at national meetings; and encourage participants to use this as a springboard in advancing fundamental scientific research in Macrosystems Biology.
