CAREER: Constraining Land Carbon Uptake on Regional and Global Scales by Enabling the Interpretation of Two Decades of Trace Gas Measurements

This project seeks to develop methods for using existing and ongoing carbonyl sulfide (COS) observations to estimate carbon tracer gas exchange, including carbon dioxide (CO2) in order to better understand the effect of tree litter on carbon cycling within forests. This is an important step toward increasing our understanding of the carbon cycle, and the knowledge gained through the course of this project will enhance our ability to understand and project the impact of changes to the carbon cycle on climate change and the ecosystem. Additionally, the research team will work with a local high school teacher to develop a high school-level leaf litter sorting activity, which will provide students with hands-on experience related to real-world scientific research. The two specific aims of this work include: (1) to distinguish the influence of different components of forest ground cover on the trace gas exchange of COS; and (2) to integrate the importance of understory COS fluxes on ecosystem- and regional-scale evidence of plant functioning. This work seeks to include the collection of tower flux measurements, the processing of remote sensing and inventory data for these tower-scale measurements, Lagrangian inversions for COS surface fluxes, and the identification of previously unknown COS fluxes. This work also includes an 8-week visit from a local high school teacher to develop a litter-sorting activity, which will then be implemented at other nearby schools. Additionally, four local high school students will be invited for 6-week summer internships in the Rutgers Research Intensive Summer Experience (RISE) program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.