Globally, soil organic matter (SOM) contains more than three times as much carbon as either the atmosphere or terrestrial vegetation. Yet it remains largely unknown why some SOM persists for millennia whereas other SOM decomposes readily—and this limits our ability to predict how soils will respond to climate change. Recent analytical and experimental advances have… More
Water is a limited and valuable resource in California. A large proportion of the fresh water for southern California is supplied by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. With recent efforts to restore large areas of land in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta region from farmland to managed wetlands, it is important to investigate the effect… More
Corrections accounting for air density fluctuations due to heat and water vapour fluxes must be applied to the measurement of eddy-covariance fluxes when using open-path sensors. Experimental tests and ecosystem observations have demonstrated the important role density corrections play in accurately quantifying carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ) fluxes, but less attention has been paid… More
The amount of published data on annual evaporation on rice remains extremely limited despite the role of rice as a key food source. We report on six years of rice evaporation measurements, based on the eddy covariance method. This rice was cultivated in the hot dry climate of California, where water is a scarce and… More
We present 6.5 years of eddy covariance measurements of fluxes of methane (FCH4) and carbon dioxide (FCO2) from a flooded rice paddy in Northern California, USA. A pronounced warming trend throughout the study associated with drought and record high temperatures strongly influenced carbon (C) budgets and provided insights into biophysical controls of FCO2 and FCH4. Wavelet… More
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California was drained and converted to agriculture more than a century ago, and since then has experienced extreme rates of soil subsidence from peat oxidation. To reverse subsidence and capture carbon there is increasing interest in converting drained agricultural land-use types to flooded conditions. Rice agriculture is proposed as a… More
Understanding the relative contribution of environmental and substrate controls on rice paddy methanogenesis is critical for developing mechanistic models of landscape-scale methane (CH4) flux. A diurnal pattern in observed rice paddy CH4 flux has been attributed to fluctuations in soil temperature physically driving diffusive CH4transport from the soil to atmosphere. Here we make direct landscape-scale… More