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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Quantifying the long-term changes of terrestrial water storage and their driving factors

Global warming is expected to cause changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) across the land surface, with widespread impacts on ecosystems and society. Although extensive research has been performed to analyze TWS changes and possible drivers during the post-2000 period, longer-term evolution of TWS and associated environmental forcings remain relatively unexplored. In this study, we evaluated the performance of the Energy Exascale Earth System model (E3SM) land model ELM version 1 (ELM v1) in simulating global TWS, and used factorial simulations of ELMv1 to quantify global TWS changes and their drivers during 1948–2012. We found that ELM’s agreed best with existing satellites and reconstruction datasets in temperate regions unaffected by irrigation. Biome- and climate zone-averaged TWS mainly increased at rates between 0 and 10 mm/year over 1948–2012, but the second half of that period saw smaller positive trends than the first half or even negative trends. Climate change explained >80 % of the TWS trends across most biomes and climate zones, followed by land use and land cover change. The physiological and phenological effects of CO2 primarily induced noticeable TWS trends in the more humid biomes and climate zones across different latitudes. In contrast, nitrogen deposition and aerosol deposition generally had smaller and negative impacts across the biomes and climate regions. Among the meteorological drivers analyzed, the long-term average imbalance between precipitation (P), evapotranspiration (E), and runoff (Q) contributed >50 % of the TWS trends in most biomes and climate zones, with nonlinearity being induced by spatially heterogenous changes in E/P and Q/P ratios. The accumulated detrended anomalies in P, E, and Q also often contributed substantially, while the trends difference between P, E, and Q contributed little. Together, these findings unveiled an intensification of the global TWS and its diverse patterns of climate change and different non-withdrawal human-induced alterations, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding and projection of the global water cycle.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Estimating the CO 2 Fertilization Effect on Extratropical Forest Productivity From Flux‐Tower Observations

Abstract The land sink of anthropogenic carbon emissions, a crucial component of mitigating climate change, is primarily attributed to the CO 2 fertilization effect on global gross primary productivity (GPP). However, direct observational evidence of this effect remains scarce, hampered by challenges in disentangling the CO 2 fertilization effect from other long‐term confounding drivers, particularly climatic changes. Here, we introduce a novel statistical approach to separate the CO 2 fertilization effect on photosynthetic carbon uptake using eddy covariance (EC) records across 38 extratropical forest sites. We find the median stimulation rate of GPP to be 3.2 ± 0.9 gC m −2 yr −1 ppm −1 (or 16.4 ± 4.2% per 100 ppm) under increasing atmospheric CO 2 across these sites, respectively. To validate the robustness of our findings, we test our statistical method using factorial simulations of an ensemble of process‐based land surface models. We address additional factors, including nitrogen deposition and land management, that may impact plant productivity, potentially confounding the attribution to the CO 2 fertilization effect. Assuming these site‐specific effects offset to some extent across sites as random factors, the estimated median value still reflects the strength of the CO 2 fertilization effect. However, disentanglement of these long‐term effects, often inseparable by timescale, requires further causal research. Our study provides direct evidence that the photosynthetic stimulation is maintained under long‐term CO 2 fertilization across multiple EC sites. Such observation‐based quantification is key to constraining the long‐standing uncertainties in the land carbon cycle under rising CO 2 concentrations.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗
DOE OSTI2022

Process-oriented analysis of dominant sources of uncertainty in the land carbon sink

The observed global net land carbon sink is captured by current land models. All models agree that atmospheric CO 2 and nitrogen deposition driven gains in carbon stocks are partially offset by climate and land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) losses. However, there is a lack of consensus in the partitioning of the sink between vegetation and soil, where models do not even agree on the direction of change in carbon stocks over the past 60 years. This uncertainty is driven by plant productivity, allocation, and turnover response to atmospheric CO 2 (and to a smaller extent to LULCC), and the response of soil to LULCC (and to a lesser extent climate). Overall, differences in turnover explain ~70% of model spread in both vegetation and soil carbon changes. Further analysis of internal plant and soil (individual pools) cycling is needed to reduce uncertainty in the controlling processes behind the global land carbon sink.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Forest expansion dominates China’s land carbon sink since 1980

Carbon budget accounting relies heavily on Food and Agriculture Organization land-use data reported by governments. Here we develop a new land-use and cover-change database for China, finding that differing historical survey methods biased China’s reported data causing large errors in Food and Agriculture Organization databases. Land ecosystem model simulations driven with the new data reveal a strong carbon sink of 8.9 ± 0.8 Pg carbon from 1980 to 2019 in China, which was not captured in Food and Agriculture Organization data-based estimations due to biased land-use and cover-change signals. The land-use and cover-change in China, characterized by a rapid forest expansion from 1980 to 2019, contributed to nearly 44% of the national terrestrial carbon sink. In contrast, climate changes (22.3%), increasing nitrogen deposition (12.9%), and rising carbon dioxide (8.1%) are less important contributors. This indicates that previous studies have greatly underestimated the impact of land-use and cover-change on the terrestrial carbon balance of China. This study underlines the importance of reliable land-use and cover-change databases in global carbon budget accounting.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Modeling suggests fossil fuel emissions have been driving increased land carbon uptake since the turn of the 20th Century

Terrestrial vegetation removes CO 2 from the atmosphere; an important climate regulation service that slows global warming. This 119 Pg C per annum transfer of CO 2 into plants—gross primary productivity (GPP)—is the largest land carbon flux globally. While understanding past and anticipated future GPP changes is necessary to support carbon management, the factors driving long-term changes in GPP are largely unknown. In this study, we show that 1901 to 2010 changes in GPP have been dominated by anthropogenic activity. Our dual constraint attribution approach provides three insights into the spatiotemporal patterns of GPP change. First, anthropogenic controls on GPP change have increased from 57% (1901 decade) to 94% (2001 decade) of the vegetated land surface. Second, CO 2 fertilization and nitrogen deposition are the most important drivers of change, 19.8 and 11.1 Pg C per annum (2001 decade) respectively, especially in the tropics and industrialized areas since the 1970’s. Third, changes in climate have functioned as fertilization to enhance GPP (1.4 Pg C per annum in the 2001 decade). These findings suggest that, from a land carbon balance perspective, the Anthropocene began over 100 years ago and that global change drivers have allowed GPP uptake to keep pace with anthropogenic emissions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

The key role of forest disturbance in reconciling estimates of the northern carbon sink

Northern forests are an important carbon sink, but our understanding of the driving factors is limited due to discrepancies between dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and atmospheric inversions. We show that DGVMs simulate a 50% lower sink (1.1 ± 0.5 PgC yr –1 over 2001–2021) across North America, Europe, Russia, and China compared to atmospheric inversions (2.2 ± 0.6 PgC yr –1 ). We explain why DGVMs underestimate the carbon sink by considering how they represent disturbance processes, specifically the overestimation of fire emissions, and the lack of robust forest demography resulting in lower forest regrowth rates than observed. We reconcile net sink estimates by using alternative disturbance-related fluxes. We estimate carbon uptake through forest regrowth by combining satellite-derived forest age and biomass maps. We calculate a regrowth flux of 1.1 ± 0.1 PgC yr –1 , and combine this with satellite-derived estimates of fire emissions (0.4 ± 0.1 PgC yr –1 ), land-use change emissions from bookkeeping models (0.9 ± 0.2 PgC yr –1 ), and the DGVM-estimated sink from CO 2 fertilisation, nitrogen deposition, and climate change (2.2 ± 0.9 PgC yr –1 ). The resulting ‘bottom-up’ net flux of 2.1 ± 0.9 PgC yr –1 agrees with atmospheric inversions. The reconciliation holds at regional scales, increasing confidence in our results.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Effects of nitrogen enrichment on tree carbon allocation: A global synthesis

Aim: Increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition may have profound effects on tree carbon allocation dynamics. However, a comprehensive understanding of how nitro-gen (N) enrichment influences carbon (C) allocation across plant functional processes and tree organs in individual trees remains elusive. Location: Global forest ecosystems. Time period: 1990–2018. Major taxa studied: Trees. Methods: We compiled data from 75 N addition experiments and conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the responses of C source (photosynthesis), sinks (growth and respiration) and storage (non-structural carbohydrate concentrations) in different tree organs (foliage, above-ground wood and roots) to N enrichment. Results: N enrichment significantly enhanced C supply via photosynthesis (+39.6%, n = 128). C allocation to growth (biomass increment/production) significantly in-creased in foliage (+15.9%, n = 68) and above-ground wood (+31.8%, n = 64; bole, branch, stem and/or twig) with increasing N availability, but not in roots, whereas allocation increased in roots via increasing fine root turnover rate (+22.6%, n = 11). N fertilization significantly increased C allocation to respiration in above-ground wood (+46.6%, n = 12) and roots (+5.5%, n = 57), but not in foliage. N addition decreased non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) concentrations in foliage (-5.4%, n = 16) and roots (-5.0%, n = 21), but increased NSC in above-ground wood (+6.1%, n = 22). In addition, N enrichment effects were strongly affected by moderator variables. Main conclusions: Our results demonstrate that N addition increased C allocation to growth and respiration more strongly than C allocation to NSC storage, and increased C allocation to above-ground parts more strongly than to below-ground parts. Our results are useful for better understanding the response of tree functional processes at organ level to N enrichment. The existing data also reveal that more long-term ex-perimental studies on mature trees in tropical and boreal forests are urgently needed to provide a basis for forecasting tree responses to N enrichment at the global scale.

Li, Weibin↗
DOE OSTI2026

Ecological and genomic variation in ectomycorrhizal fungal exploration types

Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) produce mycelia with variable extension and complexity, which can be classified according to soil ‘exploration types’ (ETs). ETs have received attention as one of the few mycorrhizal trait frameworks, but without an empirical classification of ET functional diversity and environmental preferences, understanding and interpreting EMF biogeographic patterns has been difficult. We conducted a synthesis combining: comparative EMF genomics to describe functional divergence in decomposition and nutrient cycling genes across ETs; and EMF trait distribution modeling across continental Europe, pairing soil and root EMF surveys to establish biogeographic ET niche profiles. We demonstrate a signature of ETs encoded in EMF genomes, which is independent from phylogeny and linked to biomass production strategies. EMF ET relative abundances were separated by soil, root, and dominant tree leaf type habitats and exhibited unique correlations with forest biotic (e.g. plant productivity and plant pathogen densities) and abiotic (e.g. nitrogen deposition and soil pH) conditions. These findings support a theory that EMF niche partitioning can be partially explained by extraradical mycelial traits, with underlying variation in ET biogeography likely arising from distinct decomposition and nutrient cycling potentials. We also identify important limitations to this trait framework and provide a guided outlook for future research.

biogeography↗
NASA NTRS2015

Land Boundary Conditions for the Goddard Earth Observing System Model Version 5 (GEOS-5) Climate Modeling System: Recent Updates and Data File Descriptions

The Earths land surface boundary conditions in the Goddard Earth Observing System version 5 (GEOS-5) modeling system were updated using recent high spatial and temporal resolution global data products. The updates include: (i) construction of a global 10-arcsec land-ocean lakes-ice mask; (ii) incorporation of a 10-arcsec Globcover 2009 land cover dataset; (iii) implementation of Level 12 Pfafstetter hydrologic catchments; (iv) use of hybridized SRTM global topography data; (v) construction of the HWSDv1.21-STATSGO2 merged global 30 arc second soil mineral and carbon data in conjunction with a highly-refined soil classification system; (vi) production of diffuse visible and near-infrared 8-day MODIS albedo climatologies at 30-arcsec from the period 2001-2011; and (vii) production of the GEOLAND2 and MODIS merged 8-day LAI climatology at 30-arcsec for GEOS-5. The global data sets were preprocessed and used to construct global raster data files for the software (mkCatchParam) that computes parameters on catchment-tiles for various atmospheric grids. The updates also include a few bug fixes in mkCatchParam, as well as changes (improvements in algorithms, etc.) to mkCatchParam that allow it to produce tile-space parameters efficiently for high resolution AGCM grids. The update process also includes the construction of data files describing the vegetation type fractions, soil background albedo, nitrogen deposition and mean annual 2m air temperature to be used with the future Catchment CN model and the global stream channel network to be used with the future global runoff routing model. This report provides detailed descriptions of the data production process and data file format of each updated data set.

GEOS-5↗
NASA NTRS2019

Five Decades of Northern Land Carbon Uptake Revealed by the Interhemispheric CO2 Gradient

The global land and ocean carbon sinks have increased proportionally with increasing carbon dioxide emissions during the past decades. It is thought that Northern Hemisphere lands make a dominant contribution to the global land carbon sink; however, the long-term trend of the northern land sink remains uncertain. Here, using measurements of the interhemispheric gradient of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 1958 to 2016, we show that the northern land sink remained stable between the 1960s and the late 1980s, then increased by 0.5 ± 0.4 petagrams of carbon per year during the 1990s and by 0.6 ± 0.5 petagrams of carbon per year during the 2000s. The increase of the northern land sink in the 1990s accounts for 65% of the increase in the global land carbon flux during that period. The subsequent increase in the 2000s is larger than the increase in the global land carbon flux, suggesting a coincident decrease of carbon uptake in the Southern Hemisphere. Comparison of our findings with the simulations of an ensemble of terrestrial carbon models over the same period suggests that the decadal change in the northern land sink between the 1960s and the 1990s can be explained by a combination of increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate variability and changes in land cover. However, the increase during the 2000s is underestimated by all models, which suggests the need for improved consideration of changes in drivers such as nitrogen deposition, diffuse light and land-use change. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of Northern Hemispheric land as a carbon sink.

Carbon cycle↗
NASA NTRS2020

Critical land change information enhances the understanding of carbon balance in the United States

Large‐scale terrestrial carbon (C) estimating studies using methods such as atmospheric inversion, biogeochemical modeling, and field inventories have produced different results. The goal of this study was to integrate fine‐scale processes including land use and land cover change into a large‐scale ecosystem framework. We analyzed the terrestrial C budget of the conterminous United States from 1971 to 2015 at 1‐km resolution using an enhanced dynamic global vegetation model and comprehensive land cover change data. Effects of atmospheric CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, climate, wildland fire, harvest, and land use/land cover change (LUCC) were considered. We estimate annual C losses from cropland harvest, forest clearcut and thinning, fire, and LUCC were 436.8, 117.9, 10.5, and 10.4 TgC/year, respectively. C stored in ecosystems increased from 119,494 to 127,157 TgC between 1971 and 2015, indicating a mean annual net C sink of 170.3 TgC/year. Although ecosystem net primary production increased by approximately 12.3 TgC/year, most of it was offset by increased C loss from harvest and natural disturbance and increased ecosystem respiration related to forest aging. As a result, the strength of the overall ecosystem C sink did not increase over time. Our modeled results indicate the conterminous US C sink was about 30% smaller than previous modeling studies, but converged more closely with inventory data.

carbon sequestration↗
NASA NTRS2022

Process-Oriented Analysis of Dominant Sources of Uncertainty in the Land Carbon Sink

The observed global net land carbon sink is captured by current land models. All models agree that atmospheric CO 2 and nitrogen deposition driven gains in carbon stocks are partially offset by climate and land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) losses. However, there is a lack of consensus in the partitioning of the sink between vegetation and soil, where models do not even agree on the direction of change in carbon stocks over the past 60 years. This uncertainty is driven by plant productivity, allocation, and turnover response to atmospheric CO 2 (and to a smaller extent to LULCC), and the response of soil to LULCC (and to a lesser extent climate). Overall, differences in turnover explain ~70% of model spread in both vegetation and soil carbon changes. Further analysis of internal plant and soil (individual pools) cycling is needed to reduce uncertainty in the controlling processes behind the global land carbon sink.

Attribution↗
DOE OSTI2020

Gap-filled water quality, Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index, total nitrogen (nitrate and ammonia) deposition, and land cover data trends for the Continental United States

The purpose of this work was to quantify trends in water quality, total nitrogen deposition, vegetation, and land-use trends for the Continental United States (CONUS). This dataset contains gap-filled daily and yearly in-stream carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations, discharge, and calculated exports from United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Information System (NWIS) stations across the United States of six different nitrogen parameters (Supplementary Table A1), one carbon parameter, and temperature (USGS, 2016, 2018) (https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis). The final water quality dataset is merged with the normalized differenced vegetation index (NDVI), total deposition (TDEP), landcover, and elevation datasets. All data are available at the CONUS scale as well as at the scale of hydrologic unit codes: (HUC) HUC8, HUC6, HUC4, and HUC2 watersheds. There are two zip files associated with this data package. I split the data into two equal sized zip files to comply with the data size limits, however the datasets are the same within each zip file. All data files can be read in directly into the R software.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2016

Spatial and Temporal Variability of Ground and Satellite Column Measurements of NO2 and O3 over the Atlantic Ocean During the Deposition of Atmospheric Nitrogen to Coastal Ecosystems Experiment

In situ measurements of O3 and nitrogen oxides (NO + NO2=NOx) and remote sensing measurements of total column NO2 and O3 were collected on a ship in the North Atlantic Ocean as part of the Deposition of Atmospheric Nitrogen to Coastal Ecosystems (DANCE) campaign in July August 2014,100 km east of the mid-Atlantic United States. Relatively clean conditions for both surface in situ mixing ratio and total column O3 and NO2 measurements were observed throughout the campaign. Increased surface and column NO2 and O3 amounts were observed when a terrestrial air mass was advected over the study region. Relative to ship-based total column measurements using a Pandora over the entire study, satellite measurements overestimated total column NO2 under these relatively clean atmospheric conditions over offshore waters by an average of 16. Differences are most likely due to proximity, or lack thereof, to surface emissions; spatial averaging due to the field of view of the satellite instrument; and the lack of sensitivity of satellite measurements to the surface concentrations of pollutants. Total column O3 measurements from the shipboard Pandora showed good correlation with the satellite measurements(r 0.96), but satellite measurements were 3 systematically higher than the ship measurements, in agreement with previous studies. Derived values of boundary layer height using the surface in situ and total column measurements of NO2 are much lower than modeled and satellite-retrieved boundary layer heights, which highlight the differences in the vertical distribution between terrestrial and marine environments.

Martins, Douglas K.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Assessing the Impact of Lightning NOx Emissions in CMAQ Using Lightning Flash Data from WWLLN over the Contiguous United States

Comparison of lightning flash data from the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) over the contiguous United States (CONUS) for the 2016–2018 period reveals temporally and spatially varying flash rates that would influence lightning NO x (LNO x ) production due to known detection efficiency differences especially during summer months over land (versus over ocean). However, the lightning flash density differences between the two networks show persistent seasonal patterns over geographical regions (e.g., land versus ocean). Since the NLDN data are considered to have higher accuracy (lightning detection with >95% efficiency), we developed scaling factors for the WWLLN flash data based on the ratios of WWLLN to NLDN flash data over time (months of year) and space. In this study, sensitivity simulations using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model are performed utilizing the original data sets (both NLDN and WWLLN) and the scaled WWLLN flash data for LNO x production over the CONUS. The model performance of using the different lightning flash datasets for ambient O 3 and NO x mixing ratios that are directly impacted by LNO x emissions and the wet and dry deposition of oxidized nitrogen species that are indirectly impacted by LNO x emissions is assessed based on comparisons with ground-based observations, vertical profile measurements, and satellite products. During summer months, the original WWLLN data produced less LNO x emissions (due to its lower lightning detection efficiency) compared to the NLDN data, which resulted in less improvement in model performance than the simulation using NLDN data as compared to the simulation without any LNO x emissions. However, the scaled WWLLN data produced LNO x estimates and model performance comparable with the NLDN data, suggesting that scaled WWLLN may be used as a substitute for the NLDN data to provide LNO x estimates in air quality models when the NLDN data are not available (e.g., due to prohibitive cost or lack of spatial coverage).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Co-deposition of bismuth-nitrogen films on MgO (001) by molecular beam epitaxy

Here, we attempted to grow a thin film of BiN by co-deposition of bismuth and nitrogen on rock-salt structure MgO (001) substrates. Furthermore, we studied the effect of variation of the growth temperature and the nitrogen to bismuth flux ratios on sample growth. For the samples grown and conditions used, we do not find strong evidence for the formation of a bulk Bi-N alloy. Even for very high nitrogen to bismuth flux ratio, we observed only bismuth and no nitrogen using bulk Rutherford back-scattering spectroscopy measurements, and only 1%–2% nitrogen was seen through surface Auger electron spectroscopy measurements. The in-plane lattice measurements show that the resulting Bi (110) samples are strained, which is presumably caused by lattice mismatch between the sample and the substrate when grown without any buffer layer. The use of a high-temperature buffer layer helps to release strain in the sample but only along one axis. Measurements of the atomic layer spacing using x-ray diffraction and also scanning tunneling microscopy confirm the Bi (110) thin film sample structure.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗