Laundre James A.

No Thumbnail Available
Last Name
Laundre
First Name
James A.
ORCID

Filters

4 2
6
Reset filters

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Article
    Long-term reliability of the figaro TGS 2600 solid-state methane sensor under low-Arctic conditions at Toolik Lake, Alaska
    (European Geosciences Union, 2020-05-27) Eugster, Werner ; Laundre, James A. ; Eugster, Jon ; Kling, George W.
    The TGS 2600 was the first low-cost solid-state sensor that shows a response to ambient levels of CH4 (e.g., range ≈1.8–2.7 µmol mol−1). Here we present an empirical function to correct the TGS 2600 signal for temperature and (absolute) humidity effects and address the long-term reliability of two identical sensors deployed from 2012 to 2018. We assess the performance of the sensors at 30 min resolution and aggregated to weekly medians. Over the entire period the agreement between TGS-derived and reference CH4 mole fractions measured by a high-precision Los Gatos Research instrument was R2=0.42, with better results during summer (R2=0.65 in summer 2012). Using absolute instead of relative humidity for the correction of the TGS 2600 sensor signals reduced the typical deviation from the reference to less than ±0.1 µmol mol−1 over the full range of temperatures from −41 to 27 ∘C. At weekly resolution the two sensors showed a downward drift of signal voltages indicating that after 10–13 years a TGS 2600 may have reached its end of life. While the true trend in CH4 mole fractions measured by the high-quality reference instrument was 10.1 nmolmol−1yr−1 (2012–2018), part of the downward trend in sensor signal (ca. 40 %–60 %) may be due to the increase in CH4 mole fraction because the sensor voltage decreases with increasing CH4 mole fraction. Weekly median diel cycles tend to agree surprisingly well between the TGS 2600 and reference measurements during the snow-free season, but in winter the agreement is lower. We suggest developing separate functions for deducing CH4 mole fractions from TGS 2600 measurements under cold and warm conditions. We conclude that the TGS 2600 sensor can provide data of research-grade quality if it is adequately calibrated and placed in a suitable environment where cross-sensitivities to gases other than CH4 are of no concern.
  • Article
    Nitrate is an important nitrogen source for Arctic tundra plants
    (National Academy of Sciences, 2018-03-27) Liu, Xue-Yan ; Koba, Keisuke ; Koyama, Lina A. ; Hobbie, Sarah E. ; Weiss, Marissa S. ; Inagaki, Yoshiyuki ; Shaver, Gaius R. ; Giblin, Anne E. ; Hobara, Satoru ; Nadelhoffer, Knute J. ; Sommerkorn, Martin ; Rastetter, Edward B. ; Kling, George W. ; Laundre, James A. ; Yano, Yuriko ; Makabe, Akiko ; Yano, Midori ; Liu, Cong-Qiang
    Plant nitrogen (N) use is a key component of the N cycle in terrestrial ecosystems. The supply of N to plants affects community species composition and ecosystem processes such as photosynthesis and carbon (C) accumulation. However, the availabilities and relative importance of different N forms to plants are not well understood. While nitrate (NO3−) is a major N form used by plants worldwide, it is discounted as a N source for Arctic tundra plants because of extremely low NO3− concentrations in Arctic tundra soils, undetectable soil nitrification, and plant-tissue NO3− that is typically below detection limits. Here we reexamine NO3− use by tundra plants using a sensitive denitrifier method to analyze plant-tissue NO3−. Soil-derived NO3− was detected in tundra plant tissues, and tundra plants took up soil NO3− at comparable rates to plants from relatively NO3−-rich ecosystems in other biomes. Nitrate assimilation determined by 15N enrichments of leaf NO3− relative to soil NO3− accounted for 4 to 52% (as estimated by a Bayesian isotope-mixing model) of species-specific total leaf N of Alaskan tundra plants. Our finding that in situ soil NO3− availability for tundra plants is high has important implications for Arctic ecosystems, not only in determining species compositions, but also in determining the loss of N from soils via leaching and denitrification. Plant N uptake and soil N losses can strongly influence C uptake and accumulation in tundra soils. Accordingly, this evidence of NO3− availability in tundra soils is crucial for predicting C storage in tundra.
  • Preprint
    Nitrogen dynamics in arctic tundra soils of varying age : differential responses to fertilization and warming
    ( 2013-03) Yano, Yuriko ; Shaver, Gaius R. ; Rastetter, Edward B. ; Giblin, Anne E. ; Laundre, James A.
    In the northern foothills of the Brooks Range, Alaska, a series of glacial retreats has created a landscape that varies widely in time since deglaciation (= soil age), from ~10k years to more than 2M years. Productivity of the moist tundra that covers most of this landscape is generally N-limited, but varies widely, as do plant-species composition and key soil properties such as pH. These differences might be altered in the future because of the projected increase in N availability under a warmer climate. We hypothesized that future changes in productivity and vegetation composition across soil ages might be mediated through changes in N availability. To test this hypothesis, we compared readily available-N (water-soluble ammonium, nitrate, and amino acids), moderately-available N (soluble proteins), hydrolysable-N, and total-N pools across three tussock-tundra landscapes with soil ages ranging from 11.5k to 300k years. We also compared the effects of long-term fertilization and warming on these N pools for the two younger sites, in order to assess whether the impacts of warming and increased N availability differ by soil age. Readily available N was largest at the oldest site, and amino acids (AA) accounted for 80-89 % of this N. At the youngest site, however, inorganic N constituted the majority (80-97%) of total readily-available N. This variation reflected the large differences in plant functional-group composition and soil chemical properties. Long-term (8-16 years) fertilization increased soluble inorganic N by 20-100 fold at the intermediate-age site, but only by 2-3 fold at the youngest-soil site. Warming caused small and inconsistent changes in the soil C:N ratio and soluble AA, but only in soils beneath Eriophorum vaginatum, the dominant tussock-forming sedge. These differential responses suggest that the impacts of warmer climates on these tundra ecosystems are more complex than simply elevated N mineralization, and that the response of the N cycling might differ strongly depending on the ecosystem’s soil age, initial soil properties, and plant-community composition.
  • Article
    Effects of long-term climate trends on the methane and CO2 exchange processes of Toolik Lake, Alaska
    (Frontiers Media, 2022-09-13) Eugster, Werner ; DelSontro, Tonya ; Laundre, James A. ; Dobkowski, Jason ; Shaver, Gaius R. ; Kling, George W.
    Methane and carbon dioxide effluxes from aquatic systems in the Arctic will affect and likely amplify global change. As permafrost thaws in a warming world, more dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and greenhouse gases are produced and move from soils to surface waters where the DOC can be oxidized to CO2 and also released to the atmosphere. Our main study objective is to measure the release of carbon to the atmosphere via effluxes of methane (CH 4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) from Toolik Lake, a deep, dimictic, low-arctic lake in northern Alaska. By combining direct eddy covariance flux measurements with continuous gas pressure measurements in the lake surface waters, we quantified the k600 piston velocity that controls gas flux across the air–water interface. Our measured k values for CH4 and CO2 were substantially above predictions from several models at low to moderate wind speeds, and only converged on model predictions at the highest wind speeds. We attribute this higher flux at low wind speeds to effects on water-side turbulence resulting from how the surrounding tundra vegetation and topography increase atmospheric turbulence considerably in this lake, above the level observed over large ocean surfaces. We combine this process-level understanding of gas exchange with the trends of a climate-relevant long-term (30 + years) meteorological data set at Toolik Lake to examine short-term variations (2015 ice-free season) and interannual variability (2010–2015 ice-free seasons) of CH4 and CO2 fluxes. We argue that the biological processing of DOC substrate that becomes available for decomposition as the tundra soil warms is important for understanding future trends in aquatic gas fluxes, whereas the variability and long-term trends of the physical and meteorological variables primarily affect the timing of when higher or lower than average fluxes are observed. We see no evidence suggesting that a tipping point will be reached soon to change the status of the aquatic system from gas source to sink. We estimate that changes in CH4 and CO2 fluxes will be constrained with a range of +30% and −10% of their current values over the next 30 years.
  • Article
    Shallow soils are warmer under trees and tall shrubs across arctic and boreal ecosystems
    (IOP Publishing, 2020-12-18) Kropp, Heather ; Loranty, Michael M. ; Natali, Susan M. ; Kholodov, Alexander L. ; Rocha, Adrian V. ; Myers-Smith, Isla H. ; Abbott, Benjamin W. ; Abermann, Jakob ; Blanc-Betes, Elena ; Blok, Daan ; Blume-Werry, Gesche ; Boike, Julia ; Breen, Amy L. ; Cahoon, Sean M. P. ; Christiansen, Casper T. ; Douglas, Thomas A. ; Epstein, Howard E. ; Frost, Gerald V. ; Goeckede, Mathias ; Høye, Toke T. ; Mamet, Steven D. ; O’Donnell, Jonathan A. ; Olefeldt, David ; Phoenix, Gareth K. ; Salmon, Verity G. ; Sannel, A. Britta K. ; Smith, Sharon L. ; Sonnentag, Oliver ; Smith Vaughn, Lydia ; Williams, Mathew ; Elberling, Bo ; Gough, Laura ; Hjort, Jan ; Lafleur, Peter M. ; Euskirchen, Eugenie ; Heijmans, Monique M. P. D. ; Humphreys, Elyn ; Iwata, Hiroki ; Jones, Benjamin M. ; Jorgenson, M. Torre ; Grünberg, Inge ; Kim, Yongwon ; Laundre, James A. ; Mauritz, Marguerite ; Michelsen, Anders ; Schaepman-Strub, Gabriela ; Tape, Ken D. ; Ueyama, Masahito ; Lee, Bang-Yong ; Langley, Kirsty ; Lund, Magnus
    Soils are warming as air temperatures rise across the Arctic and Boreal region concurrent with the expansion of tall-statured shrubs and trees in the tundra. Changes in vegetation structure and function are expected to alter soil thermal regimes, thereby modifying climate feedbacks related to permafrost thaw and carbon cycling. However, current understanding of vegetation impacts on soil temperature is limited to local or regional scales and lacks the generality necessary to predict soil warming and permafrost stability on a pan-Arctic scale. Here we synthesize shallow soil and air temperature observations with broad spatial and temporal coverage collected across 106 sites representing nine different vegetation types in the permafrost region. We showed ecosystems with tall-statured shrubs and trees (>40 cm) have warmer shallow soils than those with short-statured tundra vegetation when normalized to a constant air temperature. In tree and tall shrub vegetation types, cooler temperatures in the warm season do not lead to cooler mean annual soil temperature indicating that ground thermal regimes in the cold-season rather than the warm-season are most critical for predicting soil warming in ecosystems underlain by permafrost. Our results suggest that the expansion of tall shrubs and trees into tundra regions can amplify shallow soil warming, and could increase the potential for increased seasonal thaw depth and increase soil carbon cycling rates and lead to increased carbon dioxide loss and further permafrost thaw.
  • Preprint
    Carbon turnover in Alaskan tundra soils : effects of organic matter quality, temperature, moisture and fertilizer
    ( 2006-02-15) Shaver, Gaius R. ; Giblin, Anne E. ; Nadelhoffer, Knute J. ; Thieler, K. K. ; Downs, M. R. ; Laundre, James A. ; Rastetter, Edward B.
    Soils of tundra and boreal ecosystems contain large organic matter stocks, typically as a layer of peat that blankets the underlying mineral soil. Despite the low productivity of northern vegetation, organic matter accumulates as peat because decomposition of plant litter is limited by low soil temperatures and often wet, anaerobic conditions (Heal et al. 1981, Jonasson et al. 2001). The total C storage in this northern peat is globally significant, accounting for about one third of the global soil C stock if one includes both tundras and boreal forests (Oechel and Billings 1992, Callaghan et al. 2004a). Soils of northern ecosystems also contain large amounts of organic N that is currently unavailable to plants, but is potentially available and could support higher productivity if mineralized (Shaver et al. 1991, Nadelhoffer et al. 1992, Weintraub and Schimel 2005 a). Controls on soil C stocks and turnover, therefore, are key issues for understanding C exchanges between northern ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this paper, we determine how C losses from peaty soil organic matter are related to its chemical composition, and how that composition changes as the organic matter decomposes. To address these issues we compared four soil organic matter types from three tundra ecosystems near Toolik Lake, Alaska. The comparison included both unfertilized soils and soils that were fertilized annually for eight years before sampling. Under laboratory conditions, we determined how temperature and moisture conditions affect C losses from these organic matter types. The experiment also allowed us to determine how the chemical composition of different types of organic matter changed over four simulated “seasons” of decomposition. The chemical composition or “quality” of soil organic matter is a useful predictor of C turnover (Ågren and Bosatta 1996) although a wide range of definitions and fractionation schemes have been used (Sollins et al. 1999, Harmon and Lajtha 1999). In general, high-quality organic matter is defined as that which is more readily processed by microbes and has a higher rate of decomposition. Fresh plant litter and newly-formed organic matter are expected to be of higher quality than older, more fully decomposed organic matter in which the more labile components have been metabolized (Aerts 1997, Berg 2000). Species composition of the vegetation may also have a strong influence on litter and organic matter “quality” (Berendse 1994, Cornelissen 1996, Hobbie 1996, Hobbie and Gough 2004). In this research we characterized organic matter quality with a widely used sequential extraction procedure (Ryan et al. 1990, Harmon and Lajtha 1999) that breaks soil organic matter into 4 fractions: (1) a “non-polar extractable” (NPE) fraction extracted in methylene chloride, (2) a “water-soluble” (WS) fraction extracted in boiling water, (3) an “acid-soluble’ (AS) fraction extracted in H2SO4, and (4) an “acid-insoluble” (AIS) residue.