Dear colleagues, We would like to bring your attention to our session for this year's AGU conference in New Orleans on the carbon cycling effects of moderate severity disturbances. We encourage submission of your work to our session. The full session description and relevant information follows.
Abstract Submission Deadline: 26 July (late submission: 2 August) Thank you for your consideration. Jeff Atkins and Christopher Gough, Virginia Commonwealth University Session ID#: 27244 Session Description: Disturbances, which occur along a continuum of severity, exert a strong influence over the global carbon cycle. A foundational literature has advanced understanding of how severe, catastrophic disturbance alters carbon cycling, but considerably less is known about the consequences of moderate severity disturbances (e.g. insects, pathogens, low intensity fire, windthrow, ice damage, extreme weather, flooding, etc.), which result in the loss of only a fraction of primary producers within an ecosystem. Whether moderate severity disturbance carbon cycling patterns exist across ecosystems or disturbance types is an open question, yet, the answer is fundamental to theoretical, modeling, and empirical understanding of the carbon cycle. This session will highlight experimental, observational, and modelling studies that seek to quantify, forecast, and mechanistically interpret the effects of moderate disturbance on carbon cycling processes. We invite submissions from a broad community of researchers working at any scale, in any system--including terrestrial and aquatic.
