A52E-07
Understanding fog-plant interactions at the ecosystem scale using atmospheric carbonyl sulfide

Friday, 18 December 2015: 11:50
3002 (Moscone West)
J Elliott Campbell1, Mary Whelan1, James Stinecipher1, Andrew Lee Zumkehr1, Joseph A Berry2, Todd E Dawson3, Ulrike H Seibt4, Timothy W Hilton1, Sarika Kulkarni5, Roisin Commane6, Wayne M Angevine7, Yaqiong Lu8, Scott C. Herndon9 and Mark S Zahniser9, (1)University of California Merced, Merced, CA, United States, (2)Carnegie Institution for Science Washington, Washington, DC, United States, (3)University of California Berkeley, Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry, Berkeley, CA, United States, (4)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (5)University of Iowa--CGRER, Iowa City, IA, United States, (6)Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States, (7)CIRES, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States, (9)Aerodyne Research Inc., Billerica, MA, United States
Abstract:
Ecosystem metabolism is thought to have powerful feedbacks with the climate system as well as direct impacts on individual taxa that rely on ecosystems for food, water, and shelter. Despite the importance of an ecosystem level understanding, climate change impacts on whole ecosystems remains highly uncertain. In particular, coastal fog-dominated regions are a blind spot for whole ecosystem measurements of the land-air-sea exchange of carbon, water, and energy. To address this critical knowledge gap, our inter-displicary team from the University of California's new Institute for the Study of Ecological Effects of Climate Impacts (ISEECI) has launched a next-generation monitoring program along a gradient of UC Natural Reserve System (NRS) sites. We leverage recent breakthroughs in atmospheric spectroscopy and mechanistic ecosystem models of carbonyl sulfide that provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore the sustainability of coastal systems. Here we present our next-generation monitoring and regional analysis across a North/South transect of UC-NRS sites that has the potential to provide a new window into fog-dominated ecosystems, both currently and under climate change scenarios.