Dear Colleague, We hope you will consider submitting an abstract to the session entitled "Drought and Its Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems: Current Understanding and Future Prospects" at the AGU Fall Meeting (15-19 December 2014 in San Francisco; <http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2014/>). You can find details about the session and submit abstracts at the following link: <https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm14/webprogrampreliminary/Session2024.html>. The deadline for abstract submission is August 6, 2014.
Session description: In 2012, >60% of the US was affected by a drought that ranked among the most severe since 1895. Scientists have a longstanding interest in understanding the impacts of severe drought, but this drought and other recent record-breaking extremes have now raised public awareness of the economic and human health consequences. Thus, there is a societal and scientific imperative to better understand and forecast drought effects on terrestrial ecosystems, particularly since the frequency and intensity droughts are expected to increase with global climate change. This session will address our current understanding of drought as a climatological event and the impacts of drought on terrestrial ecosystems. We will identify knowledge gaps and future research directions for enhancing understanding of droughts and their effects on ecosystem dynamics. We invite contributions from biogeochemists, climatologists, ecologists, hydrologists, and system modelers with expertise in the study of droughts and their impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. Confirmed Invited speakers: Christine Hawkes (University of Texas) Yiqi Luo (University of Oklahoma) Nate McDowell (Los Alamos National Lab) Kevin Trenberth (UCAR) We hope that you will be able to participate, as this is sure to be a very interesting session. Sincerely, Melinda Smith Alan Knapp Rich Phillips Osvaldo Sala (conveners)
